American Pie

Scott Hardie | May 29, 2011
As previously announced, the 2011 summer tournament in Rock Block begins now: American Pie, in which you must be the first player to triumph in a series of 31 trials. Some of the trials will take you to little-explored corners of the game, and others are entirely new, while others revisit some of the most popular themes and play rules from the past. You'll definitely get a mental workout along the way! I hope that you have as much fun progressing through the 31 trials as I did creating them.

The tournament begins with five trials, and five more will be added every three weeks, until September 10th when all 31 trials will finally be available. There is no Final Challenge this year -- just defeat the final trial before anyone else and you'll win. Previous champions Steve West and Justin Woods are both eligible to win. Good luck!

If anyone checked the site earlier today looking for this, my apologies for beginning so late. Like today, when additional trials become available every three weeks, they won't appear right at midnight, but at some point later in the day.

Scott Hardie | May 29, 2011
If you're curious, it was intentional that hands would not be balanced -- that is, one player in a given concert might wind up with much more powerful cards than the other. Card distribution is entirely random, within the set of cards available in that theme. I did it this way for several reasons:

- It levels the playing field, as players with less experience can get a lucky hand.
- It speeds up progress, making it unlikely that you'll stay stuck on the same trial for weeks.
- Some of the trials would be mathematically impossible to balance.

What was not intentional was that you could wind up facing the same opponent in two simultaneous concerts. I've just adjusted the code to prevent that from happening again.

Erik Bates | May 29, 2011
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | May 29, 2011
The concerts are automatically generated. You will always have two at a time in the trial that you're trying to win, as challenger. However, since you're randomly assigned to block other players from trying to win in their own trials, you might have any number of additional concerts as the defender, and possibly none. You can't make it go any faster, so just play when your turn comes up.

The random selector has given you a weird start, Erik: You happened not to be assigned to block anyone's progress just yet, so there's nothing for you to do right off the bat. Your two concerts in the first trial are against Matthew and Jon, and you'll get to play as soon as one of them makes a move.

Erik Bates | May 29, 2011
[hidden by request]

Steve Dunn | May 30, 2011
What's up with opting out of a particular player based on "personal history?" Does this actually occur?

'Cause if so, I'm pretty sure I have a personal history of getting my ass kicked by Steve West. Can I opt out of him?

Scott Hardie | May 30, 2011
I wondered when somebody was going to ask that about Steve West. :-) Two pairs of friends who introduced each other to the site have since fallen out acrimoniously. They contacted me back in the 2009 tournament asking if the random selector could please not assign them to each other, because of the potential awkwardness. I have preserved in the code their requests from previous years, even though most of them have drifted away from the site (no current pair of players is affected), and I leave the option open in case it comes up again. Only players with actual personal history are eligible for this.

Someone asked in private: If he wins as defender, does it count? The answer is no. Each concert exists to determine whether one player can advance, and this person is always the challenger. The other player, acting as defender, is only there to hold them back from advancing. If you're in doubt, look at the line at the top of the concert that says, "American Pie: [challenger] must win this concert to advance beyond the [number] trial in the summer tournament. It's up to [defender] to block [challenger]'s progress."

Steve West | May 30, 2011
Can I eliminate playing everyone except Steve Dunn? I'd like to win this and well, you know...

Scott Hardie | May 30, 2011
Fyi, I've made a small change in the system that I may as well explain to avoid later confusion. There are now two separate processes scheduled:

- Every 60 seconds, the site checks to see if anyone has earned advancement to the next trial, and if so it promotes them. You'll see the next row in the chart as soon as this happens to you.

- Every 10 minutes, the site checks to see if anyone has fewer than two concerts going in their current trial, and if so it generates a new concert for them. So when you finish a concert, please allow up to ten minutes for a replacement concert. If you reach a new trial, please allow up to twenty minutes for both new concerts to appear. If multiple players finish around the same time, it might take a little longer.

Steve Dunn | May 30, 2011
I have a negative personal history with everyone on the site, especially Steve West.

Does that mean I win?

Scott Hardie | May 30, 2011
Trivia: I've been kicking around the idea of the Demote play rule for a long time, with the achievement being to "play a Classic Rock Block concert on August 5, the game's anniversary."

Steve Dunn | June 1, 2011
Question. Not a complaint. Just a question.

Any reason you have to play "offense" vs. "defense" in these concerts? Why not just generate matchups and have players advance for wins regardless of who the challenger is?

Under this system, "advancement" concerts would seem to matter more than "blocking" concerts, and it presumably will affect game play. Any reason for this?

Chris Lemler | June 1, 2011
I would have to agree with Steve Dunn

Scott Hardie | June 1, 2011
I mainly did that way for variety of opponents. If you only played against the people in your current trial, you'd be stuck facing the same one or two people over and over again, or waiting a long time if you were alone in that trial. Plus, most of the trials involve multiple sequential steps; players within the same trial might need to win totally different kinds of concerts at the same time.

I could have programmed it so that two players who are on the same part of the same trial who wind up assigned to each other in concert could BOTH potentially advance, but for simplicity of concept and simplicity of programming, I opted for only one designated advancee per concert. Doing it that way seems a little silly when we're all bunched together at the beginning, but give it time.

Fyi, I've retitled the concerts to be more like last year's tournament, clearly identifying in the title who is playing to advance and who is playing to block. All new concerts since this morning will follow the new title format.

Steve Dunn | June 1, 2011
Well that's a heckuva good reason. Thanks for the explanation - makes sense to me.

Scott Hardie | June 7, 2011
Some clarification about how concerts are generated: Only one will begin every ten minutes. It will always go to the player in the lowest-numbered trial who needs another concert. If multiple players in the same trial are waiting for concert to be generated, it will go to one of them at random.

To keep any player from getting overloaded, the site is programmed not to assign someone to block who is already blocking in four other concerts. It wasn't that way at the beginning, but I added that code after a few days when the random selection was starting to pile concerts onto some players.

"Tournament" doesn't feel like the right word for this. Summer concert series? Summer competition? Whatever it should be called, I'm enjoying it so far, and I hope you are too.

Chris Lemler | June 7, 2011
Scott your doing a fine job with all these new changes and looking forward to how all this is gonna turn out

Scott Hardie | June 8, 2011
Congrats on being the first player to complete trials 1-5, Justin! You got way ahead of the pack.

Scott Hardie | June 13, 2011
By now, just about everybody has seen the formerly secret theme called You Know They Got a Hell of a Band. Until now, this was only available to guests who attended GooCon: Citrus Ridge two years ago, who watched an episode of Stephen King's anthology series Nightmares & Dreamscapes about a pair of lost tourists who wander into an idyllic small town populated by famous dead rock stars. The entire episode is worth watching sometime. It's fun, if a little slow to get to the good stuff.

Scott Hardie | June 18, 2011
Trials 6-10 have been added to the tournament. This set is a little more challenging than the last, and will take longer to play through. But it also has some fun themes that are either new, little-seen, or back from a long hiatus -- and a new play rule that offers a big benefit to players willing to pay a price for it.

Congrats to Chris, Justin, and Steve West as the only players who finished trials 1-5 before today! You'll get a head start on the new trials while the rest of us play catch-up. Starting today, it gets a little easier for those of us still on trials 1-5, as we'll get three simultaneous concerts to advance instead of two.

Chris Lemler | June 18, 2011
I want to wish all the other good competitors the best of luck in these concerts and tournament. This is gonna be a fun experience to find out who is gonna win... It's anybody's game...Good Luck Everyone

Scott Hardie | June 20, 2011
Fyi, I've increased the number of simultaneous concerts you can have as a blocker from 4 to 5, to accommodate the higher number of concerts going on at the moment.

Scott Hardie | June 23, 2011
Just curious: After someone advances within a trial or to the next trial, there are 1-2 concerts left running that have no longer have bearing on the tournament. Would you prefer if those unnecessary concerts were automatically canceled, to clear up the list of concerts you have going at once? Or would you like to keep playing them to completion, since even an unnecessary concert is still fun to play? Thanks for the feedback.

Ryan Dunn | June 23, 2011
Eliminate!

Steve West | June 23, 2011
I kinda like them.

Chris Lemler | June 24, 2011
Scott your site admin so you can make the call!!!!!!! :)

Scott Hardie | June 24, 2011
My original thinking was that more concerts equals more fun, within certain reasonable limits (such as not piling too many concerts randomly on the same player). But I've heard from a number of players who feel overwhelmed by the tournament, and if I can help reduce that stressful feeling so that it becomes more fun for them, then I'd like to do so.

I'm still mulling the solution that I will implement this weekend. I'm currently leaning towards an option that you can set for yourself, so that if a concert you're playing becomes unnecessary, it will disappear from the site, whether you were the player advancing or blocking. Programming this would be tricky because of multiple steps within the same trial; if I had the whole thing to do over, I would have made each sub-step its own separate trial for sake of simplicity. Anyway, whatever I choose won't have any bearing on the tournament outcome, since it would only affect the unnecessary concerts.

Chris Lemler | June 25, 2011
I like that idea Scott

Scott Hardie | June 27, 2011
After giving it a lot of thought, I've programmed these changes:

- You can now set an option if you prefer not to participate in unnecessary concerts after either you or your opponent has advanced beyond the need to keep playing. This will reduce the number of concerts that you wind up playing at once. (For those of you who receive email notification when it's your turn, this will occasionally result in a message telling you to play a concert that no longer exists by the time you read it. If the link takes you to the Current Concerts page, you can disregard that email.)

- Because the unnecessary concerts that are not wanted by either player are now programmed to disappear from the site, I have adjusted the random concert generator so that it runs every minute instead of every ten minutes. There's no more need for that delay. Because this process has several other things to do at the same time, it might still take a few minutes for your next concert to appear, but it should now appear much sooner than it used to.

- When generating a new tournament concert, the site will choose as the blocker whoever is currently playing that role in the fewest number of concerts, as a way of better spreading out the responsibility. To avoid the same pair of opponents facing off repeatedly because of this change, you now cannot be assigned to block the last player you just blocked.

- A couple of weeks ago, I added a number counter to the title bar in Dashboard, showing you at a glance how many items are waiting for your attention. Depending on your browser, it looks something like this:

However, this helpful counter can become unhelpful if you're intentionally waiting to make your play later in concerts with the new Patience play rule. You can now set an option that makes Dashboard ignore Patience concerts when calculating that number. They will still show further down the page.

None of these changes involve any difference in the tournament rules, but they should make things easier to play from now on. I'm open to suggestions and requests for more. Thanks!

Scott Hardie | July 9, 2011
Trials 11-15 have been added to the tournament. This set happens to be my favorite of the six sets of trials, and it features one element that I've been looking forward to playing for a long time. I'll say more about that when players get to it.

Trials 6-10 take the longest to play thanks to the Patience play rule, and no one has surpassed them yet, but Justin and Steve are close.

Any players still on trials 6-10 now have three simultaneous concerts to advance, and any players still on trials 1-5 now have four simultaneous concerts to advance.

Scott Hardie | July 15, 2011
Well, I *was* going to write something tonight about how we seem to have a bottleneck at trial 5 (plus delays in trials 7 and 10, but that's a whole other conversation). I wanted to offer some encouragement and advice to the players still working their way past trial 5, starting with how you can have an easier time racking up four in a row by playing only the concerts that you can win or draw, and ignoring the concerts that you're likely to lose, a tip that I hoped would not sound condescending. Honestly, it's a long summer, and there's lot of time left. Perseverance is a big factor in this tournament and it will be rewarded.

But before I could do all that, two things happened today, in this order:
- The site ran out of opponents to assign. Literally, it stopped generating any new concerts because there was nobody left to assign as blocker.
- A fourth player opted out.

I want to be crystal clear: I'm not trying to put pressure or guilt on the players who have decided not to continue; there's nothing wrong in the least with dropping out for any reason. That said, we started with the paltry number of 14 participants, and now we're down to ten, which is not good. The site cannot assign us any new concerts because we're already all playing each other.

For the moment, I have lifted the condition that you can only face the same opponent in one concert at a time, as a way of addressing the immediate issue. But judging from what seems like decreasing levels of activity each week, it seems as if the fundamental problem (this tournament just isn't compelling) is what really needs attention. Unilateral decisions on my part aren't going to help here, so I pose this question to everybody currently and formerly playing: What would you like to do about this? Would fewer concerts help? Would easing the difficulty and/or nuisance factor of certain trials help? Are there other changes that would make you want to play more and see this through? Or, is this tournament unsalvageable, in which case we should just terminate it early? I could rush Pirate Paradise to public launch early, but if Rock Block is in this much of a funk at the moment, it doesn't exactly seem like an ideal time. I could also lure new people into the game, but with this being Rock Block's swan song by design, it seems weird to introduce someone new.

Of course, we can just soldier on with the plan and make no changes, and please say so if you'd prefer that. I think it's in everybody's interest that I remain willing to change tournament rules or play rules (Patience) for the better as needed, so every option is on the table in this conversation. There's no good served by holding back, so please be as frank with your opinion as you like, here or in private. As always, I'm grateful for your suggestions and comments.

For the record: There's a larger conversation to be had about the dwindling level of activity on this site overall, and my acute anxiety that my efforts to reverse that trend will be too little too late. However, I'm not prepared to discuss that at this time; it's too complicated and too emotionally taxing for me. I'm just mentioning it now to acknowledge the 800lb gorilla in the room.

Justin Woods | July 15, 2011
I have no problems leaving the RB tournament the way it is, yes I don't like the patience play rule but having it in there gives it more of a meaning when I accomplish that trial. Plus I think this being the last few months of RB the long drown-out tournament will make the win worth wild to any that wins.

About the 800lb gorilla in the room, I hope that everything works out and if there is anything that we can do to help in the process reverse the trend.

Steve Dunn | July 15, 2011
Scott, I very much appreciate your concept of sending RB off in style. It's a massive thing you've created in American Pie. I admire it, and you. Nothing but love. You're one of a very select group of people who can throw up in my car any time you want. No problem.

That said...

In my observation the Goo game and RB have taken a decided turn for the grueling. There's always been a strong streak of grueling running through the games, but we've really upped the ante in recent months. If the work/fun ratio gets out of whack, play becomes a chore. I have no idea how others feel, but that's how it's been for me lately. Too much effort required, and seemingly (significantly, I think) for effort's own sake - not in the service of fun. The Patience rule is an egregious example but far from the only one.

Fun is the secret sauce. It's a hard challenge, I know, to balance difficulty against fun in game design.

Steve West | July 15, 2011
That's spot on, Steve. But some games are intended to be difficult as part of the satisfaction of playing, of course. But that's one of the reasons I don't play chess. When I first started guessing goos, the primary attractiveness was the inherent silliness in it all. Rock Block came along and I was captivated by the strategy that existed on a much simpler plane than chess. Some concerts in this tournament have a grinding quality that saps the fun right out of them at times but I've been able to maintain a big picture view and it's sustaining my participation.

Jon Berry | July 15, 2011
Agreed Steve and Steve, the big pictureness of it all really just... hell it was making me more anxious than anything.

And with goos, taking out the 7 day rule and point system (as well as ending with a timed tourney) just sadly turned into something I couldn't work into my everyday life if I wanted to stay competitive.

Great games, but rockblock was becoming too stressful for me.

Scott Hardie | July 16, 2011
Thanks for the feedback, and the kindness. It's certainly possible that after running the games for this long, I've lost the spark that made them fun and don't know how to get it back. We've been talking about this same problem in so many words for some time now, and I've made a lot of conscious choices to keep fun in the games, from silly goo themes and goos that require lateral thinking and cleverness to figure out, to new ways to play Rock Block in the various tournament trials (most of which sadly haven't been reached yet). But if I understand correctly, you're not saying that there isn't some fun in the games; you're saying that there's too much work in them, overwhelming the fun. Is that correct?

In the goo game, there are two potential sources of the "grueling" feeling that I see. One is the extra-hard tournament goos from May that were just way too tough to be any fun at all, and I have no intention of repeating that. The other is just the ten-week regular season itself, which seems like a long time to go without the competitive spark that keeps players coming back, but I'm not sure what adjustment in time or other structural change would really help there. It's most definitely open to discussion (have we ever stopped debating the goo game format?), and if other aspects of the game feel too much like work, please let me know.

In the American Pie tournament, there are definitely a lot of concerts to play. It's tough for me to address the problem that the game feels more like work than play, because I enjoy all of those many concerts and don't really understand what it's like not to. I expected that most players would feel as I did, that more concerts would equal more fun, but I can see how that can morph into a feeling of being overwhelmed with obligation to play, especially for the players who don't visit the site as often and may feel like they're holding others up or that it's always their turn in too many concerts at once. And on top of the high volume of play that I intended, there are even more concerts happening, due to the extra chances earned by players who haven't advanced as far as I thought the majority would by now. I added the option to skip unnecessary concerts to lighten the load, although a quick glance in the database tells me that few players have activated it. I could add another option establishing a maximum number of tournament concerts you're willing to play at once, but I don't think most players would use it, for sake of staying competitive and other reasons.

The "pie chart" trial seems to be the primary logjam, and the primary source of too many concerts that feel like work. I'll alter it today to make it much easier to pass; some players might instantly jump ahead as soon as I'm done, based on their performance to date. I might do away with the pie chart completely, but it's one of the central ideas of the tournament ("bye bye Miss American...") so I'm inclined to seek ways to keep it in place.

Although the Patience play rule is mean, that wasn't its purpose; I didn't put it in just to be a dick. My intention was to add an element of willpower to the game: Those who had the strength of will to wait would get a reward, and those who preferred to skip ahead wouldn't. The original idea for the play rule (suggested by someone who will remain nameless) was that players would automatically have to wait 24 hours before they could make a play; the site wouldn't give them the option of playing any faster. That seemed like an arbitrary burden to impose for no real reason, so I revised it to something that the players had control over instead, and offered a choice. We can debate whether or not it's a good idea in the abstract, but in practice, it was contributed greatly to sucking the fun out of the proceedings. I can't retroactively correct the existing concerts that used it, but I'll make a change today that will improve all future concerts that use this rule.

I also think I'll add an automatic advancement condition: If you draw or lose five concerts at the same step of progress, you'll progress automatically. This seems like a good way to keep the game from becoming stale, without eliminating the incentive to play well.

What else would help shift the work/fun balance back in the right direction? Fewer themes within certain trials, so that advancement happens faster? The addition of your favorite play rules in certain concerts to make them more fun? All options are open. Thanks for sharing.

Justin, about the "800lb gorilla," thanks for saying so. The short version of my anxiety is: I know what I need to do to transform this into a healthy site with a growing user base instead of a shrinking one, and I'm doing it as fast as I can, but those many changes are a huge amount of work and there's only so much time to reverse the trend before it becomes fatal. Changing Internet trends are complicating the process, forcing me to alter my plans mid-stream. Continuing to spread the word about this site to friends and acquaintances, when it's appropriate, is the best way to help.

Scott Hardie | July 16, 2011
The changes so far are complete. There's already been one advancement under the new terms, and I expect several more over the next 2-3 days that wouldn't have happened so soon otherwise. Players who have been stuck with Patience for a while (Chris, Justin, Steve) will have to wait just a little bit longer to see the benefits, but it should provide some relief when it kicks in.

Scott Hardie | July 25, 2011
At last, someone has passed the tenth trial. Congrats on being the first, Steve!

Steve West | July 25, 2011
At last, is right! That was definitely the hardest stage to surpass. Good luck to everyone.

Scott Hardie | July 26, 2011
This Saturday, the fourth set of trials will be added to the tournament. Normally when I do this, I give everyone in the earlier trials an extra concert as a means of helping them catch up to the lead, and the effect is cumulative. So, if we followed the plan, players in trials 1-5 would get five simultaneous concerts to catch up, players in trials 6-10 would get four, and players in trials 11-15 would get three.

Personally, I prefer it this way, both for the extra chances to catch up and because "more concerts = more fun." But I've heard from a few players who feel like there are too many concerts in the tournament already and feel a bit overwhelmed, although it's possible that all of the players who feel this way have dropped out. So, I put the question to you: Should I continue adding extra chances this weekend, or give it a rest this time since there are enough concerts going already? Thanks!

Scott Hardie | July 31, 2011
Unexpectedly, I've just had a very long day at the end of a very long week. I need to delay setting up the new trials until tomorrow morning. The nearest player is still four trials away from reaching them, so the effect on the game is minimal. Have a good night, all.

Scott Hardie | July 31, 2011
Trials 16-20 have been added to the tournament. This set introduces some fun for Beatles fans, and uses a very old aspect of the game in a brand new way. I hope that you enjoy it.

I've given everyone in earlier trials one additional concert. I've also added some code that should make it rare for you to wind up with two concerts against the same blocker when you're trying to get ahead. Finally, the auto-promote option now only applies to the latest set of five trials -- if you're in 1-15, you can instantly advance after a certain number of concerts without a win, but not in 16-20.

Scott Hardie | August 14, 2011
Frequent players keep facing the same 2-3 blockers over and over again. I've adjusted it so that you won't face the same blocker twice in 24 hours.

Scott Hardie | August 21, 2011
Trials 21-25 have been added to the tournament. Unlike the very slow trials 6-10, this new set is probably the fastest set of trials. That said, it does contain one potentially very difficult obstacle, unless you get lucky.

Players in trials 16-20 can now automatically advance after playing a certain number of concerts without a win, but not in trails 21-25.

An extra simultaneous concert has been added to each of the previous sets, as before. This should make it easier to break past that tough 10th trial. If you can breeze through the teens smoothly, like Justin and Steve have, then you stand a good chance of catching up to the stalled front-runners. Once the gate opens on the final six trials on September 10th, victory will be up for grabs. Good luck, and have fun!

Scott Hardie | August 23, 2011
More RB trivia coming up thanks to the tournament:

- The Stairway to Heaven and Like a Rolling Stone themes have resurfaced, after their retirement at the end of the 2009 and 2010 tournaments. This is the only way to play them.

- Viva Las Vegas was one of the rarest themes in the game, previously accessible only to the players who unlocked Blackjack (Chris, Steve, and me). Although the low-ranked cards in that theme don't really lend themselves to achieving the blackjack effect, it's still nice to see more people playing it.

- The Fatso play rule is an idea that I've kicked around for a while, along with Tic Tac Toe and a few other game-altering possibilities. The Fat Elvis card image was originally created for an achievement: Every time the Elvis Presley card appeared on the site, there would be a random (1 in 100?) chance of it displaying Fat Elvis instead as an Easter egg, and you would merely click on him to unlock the achievement. Although that part didn't happen, I'm glad that I was able to turn the concept into something else that did work. Plus, Elvis is a huge figure (ha) in rock & roll and I wanted to do more with him in the game.

- I have been waiting years to play Fourside. It was one of the earliest themes, a brain-teaser that required different strategy. In the early days of the game, there were few 4-4-4-4 cards, but I created the theme anyway in anticipation of there being many such cards someday. That never came true; I think we had maybe three naturally-occurring 4-4-4-4 cards up to now. When it came time for the American Pie tournament, I promoted a bunch of R3 cards and manually edited their sides to balance at 4-4-4-4 so that Fourside could be played at last. It was worth the wait.

- I don't know if anybody has noticed, but I've incorporated the new play rules into some pre-existing themes: Demote is now part of the Promotion Devotion theme, Patience is now in the Guns 'n' Roses theme, Fatso is now in the Livin' Large theme, and Yield is now in the Pearl Jam theme. There are two more to come.

Even after someone has won the tournament, I intend to leave it running through early November, to give everyone a chance to play the various trials and unlock the new content. You'll have the option of not playing then, as you do now.

Scott Hardie | September 10, 2011
Trials 26-31 have been added to the tournament. This final set of trials pays tribute to the early days of Rock Block, by focusing on some of the earliest bands and themes, and some of the things that are no longer with us.

This is it! The contest is now a wide-open race to the finish. Whoever is the first player to complete the difficult 31st trial will have earned the title of champion for the last time in Rock Block. No more roadblocks, and no "final challenge" like in previous years. To every player chasing victory, I wish you the very best of luck.

Dork alert: I was listening to some instrumental music while coding the final trials, and Vangelis's slow-building, dramatic "Hispaniola" came on. The apocalyptic score for Christopher Columbus's clash with Native Americans definitely put me in the mood for some big final battles. I'm pumped! Let's do this! :-D

When someone finishes the final trial, the site will automatically announce them as the winner on the tournament page, but that's all: The rest of the tournament will continue playing out like it has, so that everyone has a chance to experience all 31 trials for themselves. After we have a winner, I'll make some manual adjustments to make the post-tournament gameplay smoother for everybody.

Scott Hardie | October 1, 2011
Congratulations are in order! After a long summer campaign with many ups and downs, Justin Woods has become the first player to complete all 31 trials in the tournament, making him the 2011 champion. It took a lot of hard work and clever maneuvers on Justin's part to catch up to Steve West, who held the lead for most of the summer. Although we had fewer players this year, the level of play brought to the game by everyone involved was impressive; kudos to all!

I will leave the tournament running so that everyone has a chance to play their way through all 31 trials. This was never just about the competition; it was also a chance to realize a number of old plans for the game that never happened until now, and a chance to visit some long-lost or little-traveled corners of the game. If you'd like to be removed from the auto-generation of concerts, or you'd like back in if you already left, just let me know.

Chris Lemler | October 1, 2011
Congrats Justin on your victory in RB

Justin Woods | October 1, 2011
Thank you Scott and Chris!

Erik Bates | October 1, 2011
[hidden by request]

Justin Woods | October 1, 2011
I think it was mostly luck the last ten games I couldn't lose! but you helped ;)

Steve Dunn | October 2, 2011
Congrats Justin. You're a heck of a competitor!

Scott Hardie | October 4, 2011
Let me tell you a story about something I learned while running this tournament.

Steve West is a genius.

I don't just mean that he's good in concert, manipulating cards and play rules so that he wins most of the time. We already know that. We all know how it feels to lose to him over and over.

Steve is a genius on a level that doesn't even occur to most other players. It didn't occur to me or Justin until almost at the end.

By playing the way that he did, Steve made it exceedingly difficult for anyone else to accomplish victory in the end. Only exceptionally unlucky cards or a similar calamity would allow another player to squeak past him. That kind of bad luck is what happened in the end that allowed Justin to take the lead at the last moment, but it doesn't diminish what Steve accomplished.

How did Steve do it? He cracked the game.

I don't mean that he hacked the website like Anonymous, although at this point I wouldn't put anything past him. I mean that he figured out on a fundamental level how the tournament worked, and how to advance through the trials at the maximum possible pace.

I've said above in this discussion how the site generated tournament concerts. The site assigned you whoever was blocking the fewest opponents already, but it would skip over the players who were already blocking you in another current concert, and it would skip over the players who had blocked you in a completed concert within the last 24 hours.

If the site ran out of opponents to assign you under these terms, then it would give up those fancy conditions and just assign you whoever had the fewest concerts going at the moment. But It never reached that fallback stage with Steve.

See, there were two kinds of players for most of the tournament: Seven fast players who checked the site throughout the day, and four slow players who might go several days between each turn. I don't mean that as a judgment of any kind, just a statement of fact. There was no wrong way to play.

The seven fast players had the fewest opponents at any given time, since they wrapped up their concerts faster. This meant that the site preferred to assign you to one of them if it could, only skipping over them and giving you a slow opponent if they weren't available to you. Do you see where this is going?

One part of Steve's strategy was to use the site setting called "cancel unnecessary tournament concerts." I recommended this option several times to all players in this discussion, but most players didn't bother.

When Steve set this option for himself, it gave him fewer opponents. If Steve was up against player A and player B in a trial, and he beat player A and moved on, then the concert against player B would disappear from the site. It was as if he never faced player B, thus freeing up player B to be re-assigned to him in the next concert. Other players in the same scenario would still face player B in an unnecessary holdover concert from the previous trial, and be assigned someone else, player C.

But more importantly than that, Steve timed his own moves very carefully.

There were seven fast players, like I said. Steve was one of them, and he couldn't play himself of course, so that left six others to play against him.

Steve timed his moves so that he wouldn't advance more than four steps in a 24-hour period. Thus he wouldn't have more than four recent blockers under his belt. Thus there would always be two other fast players free to be assigned as his next blockers. Thus he didn't have to face slow opponents.

Contrast that with another player like, well, me. I would have quick bursts of progress where I would zoom through a few trials all in one afternoon. But before long, I would be assigned slow opponents because they were the only ones left to play against me, and I would have to wait a week or more before advancing again.

It's like the fable of the tortoise and the hare. I was the hare, taking off at a faster pace for a while, but soon stopping to "rest." Steve was the tortoise, moving at a more deliberate pace, but never having to stop. You know who won that race in the end.

The thing about this strategy of Steve's is that once he took the lead, it became almost impossible to catch him. Over the long term, there was no faster way to advance through the trials. The best that the rest of us could really do was match his pace.

Steve is a genius.

No, not just a genius. Steve outplayed us in a whole extra dimension of the game that we could barely perceive. What is the prefix in physics for something that exists in multiple dimensions at once, hyper-? Steve is a hypergenius.

Maybe I'm giving him too much credit. He did move into a new house in the midst of all this, along with plenty of other obligations, so maybe he just lucked into this great timing. I asked him if it was intentional, and he didn't answer me.

But in previous summer tournaments, Steve would stay on the site for hours every night, playing every concert that he could, so that he would advance as fast as he could. And he was just as committed to winning this year (see his comment in the previous link). Wouldn't you expect him to repeat the same aggressive schedule this year? For him to go weeks at a time at the more deliberate pace, not advancing more than four steps in 24 hours, and not getting assigned slow opponents, I doubt that it was a coincidence.

So what happened that allowed Justin to close the gap when it mattered most? A number of things, including a unlucky shifting of the opponent assignments when some players dropped out, and a couple of good plays by Justin and bad plays by Steve at critical moments. But above all, Justin realized what Steve was doing while there was still time to win, and employed the same strategy. I know this because I talked to him about it. There was a big difference in Justin's advancement speed in the final two weeks versus what came before.

I don't say any of this to take away from Justin's victory. He played hard all summer and deserves his congratulations. But I think he would agree with me that Steve recognized the winning patterns in the game long before the rest of us, and deserves praise for it.

Kudos, Steve.

Steve West | October 4, 2011
It's not quite as Holmesian as you make out but there was a certain logic to it that appealed to me and it seemed to work. If I didn't answer you before it's only because the question escaped my notice. Numbers appeal to me and maybe I do things inherent to my understanding without any over-analysis from where the instinct comes. Yes, I do count cards at the blackjack table, not because I want to - it just happens. Thanks and these aren't the droids you're looking for.

Scott Hardie | October 5, 2011
Even if it was based on instinct instead of reasoning, it still happened. I knew it! :-)

I often feel this terrible anxiety soon after publicly praising somebody. I think it stems back to a day in college when I inadvertently said a horrible insult about a friend in an attempt to flatter him in front of mutual acquaintances, and I didn't learn how the comment was taken until later. Anyway, I hope it doesn't seem like I shortchanged Justin on praise by going on so long about Steve, since Justin was the one who triumphed after all. Justin's accomplishment, though very hard-earned and well-deserved, was self-evident, and I wrote his victory announcement when it happened. The praise for Steve was written a month ago when the details of how he did it were still fresh in my mind, and it took a lot more words to get the idea across. If anything, it was probably tl;dr for most people. My points are: 1) I think Justin is awesome, and don't assume that I don't just because I photoshopped someone else reading the Matrix. 2) A number of people on this site suffer anxiety about what they say online, and if it seems like I don't, I do.

Steve Dunn | October 5, 2011
Scott, I am grievously aggrieved insofar as you have failed to acknowledge MY prowess in all fields of goo competition. Please remedy this posthaste else I assert further grievance.

Scott Hardie | October 5, 2011
I would be happy to write up a very flattering induction to the Goo Hall of Fame for you, but Aaron told me if that happened, he would burn my and/or your house down. Sorry.

Scott Hardie | October 6, 2011
Now that the race to the finish is over and we're (officially) playing for fun, I've set the tournament to assign three concerts at a time in all trials, and allowed auto-promotion on all trials.

Scott Hardie | November 20, 2011
It was discussed openly at GooCon, but I'm surprised that nobody on the site asked how the Broken play rule works; usually players spend a few weeks figuring it out and then someone just comes out and asks. Does anybody who wasn't there at GooCon want to offer a guess?

Steve West | November 23, 2011
This does Not. Make. Sense! Help a brother out.

Scott Hardie | November 24, 2011
With Broken, every time a card is played, it has a random 50/50 chance of failing to capture anything. The success or failure is determined once when the card is played; it's not reset in subsequent turns like the effect of Psychedelia. Invincible and a Gold Record can overcome it.

On the surface, Broken may seem like another "strategy-free" rule like Invincibility, but it can shift the way that savvy players approach their turns. Normally, many players are happy to leave one of their cards vulnerable to capture, because they can either re-capture it or take the card that captured it. Broken makes that kind of offensive play very risky, but defensive plays are still solidly predictable. So with Broken, a conservative approach is better: Make moves that will prevent your next card from being taken no matter what, and look for a chance to capture just a single card while still doing that.

Steve West | November 24, 2011
I thought it was more Fermat-like than that. Guess that's why it stumped the shit out of me.