A very good round. But there is still a lot of work to do – for both the good guys and the impostor!
Three columns sans face-down cards – check. Many turnovers – check. In-suit builds – check. Lady Luck – hmmm, even I haven’t figured out a way to get her on our side 100% of the time yet. And there is still that pesky impostor to deal with. Nevertheless, I would fancy our winning chances with expert play.
There have been no complaints about my “improved format”, including the happy star spoiler-blocker thingy inspired by that stupid short-story competition when my best efforts weren’t enough for even an Honorable Mention. I especially like how Bart and SA try to come to their own conclusions before consulting the Kolourfull Kibitzers. This is an excellent way to improve your game.
I was slightly concerned with the possibility that one or more rounds will involve lots of turnovers making for a very long blog post with many comments, but fortunately this didn’t eventuate (yet) with approximately 10 turnovers per round so far. Ergo, I have no need for any shenanigans like splitting a round into two separate blog posts etc.
It would be really awesome-on-a-triple-word-score-plus-fifty-points-bonus-for-using-all-seven-letters if Bart/SA could make an effort to encourage other readers to join in, but that may be asking too much. At least we didn’t finish this round with a horrible Spider GM joke (with the stop-it-dad meme) so things are looking up!
Edifying Thoughts of a Spider Solitaire Addict 
Master Chi-Yuen again it is time to pause for a second and thank you for hosting this madness and also give thanx to you and Esteemed Scholar Bart for being my mentors and to let you know that it truly has improved my game and that I am having more fun playing than I ever have.
The format did indeed come together quickly and the StupendousStarsSquare is great for me as even with my compound eyes I sometimes get myopic and do not stop scrolling before exposing ideas far better than mine long before I am finished with my incorrect assessment of the current situation.
Master, I would like to “bookmark” a few places that I hope you can return to in the future and give you valued opinion.
(I hope these positions are correct, I will start making notes as we go so I can be more sure of my accuracy)
First, at the draw, I think position 476, both Esteemed Scholar Bart and my Lowly Self wanted to attack Col 9,at the expense of uncovering an ace, but the play went elsewhere. I am very interested in your thoughts.
Second, at Position 466 you used your Random Number Generator to choose between myself and Esteemed Scholar Bart. Did you have a preference?
Lastly, at position 462 I went totally rogue and destroyed Col 8 to the point that we probably would not get a turnover in it for at least three years. The others went for a simple move eb. Do you have comments on my diversion?
And to any and all Lurkers, yes, if you truly want to improve your play at 4SSS SansZKey, or even if you like the ZKey, join in the conversation here. It is one thing to think it through and then read what others have said, and quite another to actually put your ideas to print. Embrace the abyss and come on in !!!!!!!
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Master SA, some responses to your questions:
Position 476: The reason why the play went elsewhere was attacking column 9 was based on the pessimistic assumption of bad cards turning up. We’ve all been there. I probably should have pointed this out earlier, but it is tacitly assumed that we always reconsider our plans after each turnover, unless the new card is clearly more useless than a drug-addled rot13(PBIVQ-cbfvgvir cebfgvghgr) promising anything you want in return for Spider Solitaire lessons. An example would be exposing a third Ace when no Twos are visible. Most of the time I find that cards do change something – or force us to reconsider – even if they don’t increase our minimum guaranteed turnovers.
Position 466: That was an unwritten rule. If Bart/SA vote different options the first tie-break is the kibitzers. The second tie-break is RNG. If Spider GM were a tie-breaker then Bart/SA could potentially game the system by deliberately voting different moves 😊
Position 462: I thought that was a trivial decision: decision 18, Red 4 on the Black 5. Your subsequent discussion “supermove he,ah,supermove bh, supermove eh blah blah blah” is again based on the pessimistic assumption of getting “bad cards that don’t change anything”.
HTH
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Thank you, Master Chi-Yuen, for your time taken to reply and for your referring to me as “Master”. I am humbled.
Usually we Hoppers, and many other Six Leggers try to avoid that particular term when preforming self evaluations due to the fact we are often used as fish bait and a combination of the two may cause some to change the rating of the message to XXX.
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