Clearly this strategy is best applied once you already have a win under your belt so that your existing win can be used to get a maximum multiplier out of the increased part score. If she won her first game and THEN implemented the metagame strategy her score would have come out as (28+30+30+30)*2.75 = 324.5, which would have easily qualified her for finals. If after the first win the strategy had been implemented in just _one_ of the other three rounds her score would have been between 207-230, not good enough to be a finalist, but a significant raise in standing. While there isn't a great danger of the entire tournament going this way, it only takes two self interested metagame conscious win leaders to convince two other people to accept the strategy in order for it to become relevant. -Caleb --- Joshua Kronengold <mneme@xxxxxx> wrote: > Elliott C. Evans writes: > >Sure; OK; if everybody in the tournament agrees that none of them > >wants to actually win the tournament, this would work. I don't see > >it as highly likely, though. > > It's in the microcosm that this kind of metagaming actually makes a > difference, I think. > > In my fourth game of the Ice-offs, I had 2 wins, and was pretty sure > that double-winners were thin on the ground. In the game was another > double-winner, a single winner, and Josh Drobina (who had no wins) > > So...what was, metagame, important, was that the single-winner not > win. As long as he didn't, there was a good chance that I'd make the > finals; if he did, I had to compete on score. > > What actually happened was that I played my best game, and got timed > out during the attempt to rescue my iced defenders that I got from a > late deal with Josh D, leaving JD in posession of the field. But a > valid metagame (but to me, not a very fun actual-game) strategy would > have been to attack the single-winner mercillessly, not worrying about > anything aside from staying out of the icehouse and not letting him (? > I think so) win, on the grounds that short of winning myself, that was > the best way of making sure I'd make the finals. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com