Friday, November 14, 2008

Foiled By The Malevolence Of Fortune

Friday 7th November was one of those evenings at the games table when the tiles always looked promising to the Poor Little Cypriot and were almost always treacherous.

There was the case of being Tempai after four turns, but on such a dreadful wait that it was pointless to go for it. The Poor Little Cypriot needed the 8-Bamboo to finish, but two had already been discarded by the other players and one was the Mekuri-pai, turned over in the wall. Things were still not so bad since the 7 and 9 of Bamboo were safe to throw... but by the time the Poor Little Cypriot had rearranged - or confused - his tiles, somebody else had completed their hand.

There was the case of being Tempai after six turns with a choice of a safe discard and a two-tile wait, or a more risky 3-Coin discard and a three-tile wait. The PLC wanted to improve his probability of taking the had and threw the 3-Coins, which Noda was waiting for to go out on.

There was the case... well, there were so many cases that it felt like the lost baggage depot of Terminal 5 at Heathrow.

Terminal. A most apt description of the PLC's game. Such was the malevolence of Fortune that by the end of the evening the PLC had dropped four places in the Grand Accumulated Points Table rankings to land on the/his bottom.

Part of the problem, of course, was that Noda had lost the week before and so it was to be expected that he would be on the hunt. Jaime also seemed to want to rise to the minus-200s for the first time in a while.

The year end is drawing nigh and with only a few sessions remaining none of the foreign players can yet be confident of not hitting the bottom, but nor can the PLC be confident of ever getting off his bottom... Our only hope is that Mr Nobu will find some time to play and prove rather rusty...

Noda +62, -20, +50, +7 = +99
Jaime -2, +54, -4, +22 = +70
===
David -60, -34, -46, -29 = -169

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