Post-Mortem Analysis – Round 4

Link to Round 4 is here

Link to PMA Round 3 is here

Link to yet another silly story is here

At first sight, the situation looks desperate: With two Kings popping up on columns 8/9 we are most definitely not swapping the ladies on those columns any time soon. But what’s lost on the swings can be made up on the round-abouts if you pardon the terrible cliché, and we suddenly find Spades are looking promising.

We also took care to “almost-expose” the Ace of Hearts in column 3. Although exposing Aces is usually undesirable, we might be close to completing Hearts, so a reasonable compromise is to have the Ace buried by only one or two cards.

This highlights one of the necessary skills for the improving player – the ability to change gears when necessary instead of stubbornly sticking with the wrong plan. Our game plan should be “Spades or bust”. We have every card except the Jack. Moreover, we can arrange these cards into two columns: one for the KQ and the other for T98765432A. Team Good finally gets some luck from the tableau with some useful cards in column 10. The critical decision arrived at “Score=419”.

Red suggested “jf” on the basis that (1) it avoids exposing another Ace and (2) if we get our million-dollar card then we still get to remove Spades. The big hole in Red’s suggestion is if we get a bad card then our “almost-Spade-suit” is separated into three columns, which is a lot worse than only being separated into two columns. Hence Team Good correctly went with “0xcbdbafad”. No wait, Spider is played with 10 columns, not 16. I meant to say Team Good correctly went with “cb,db,af,ad”. It is much more important to set up Spades than to be scared of an extra Ace. Poor Red probably needs to sneak through just one more bad decision to regain control of the hand, but Team Good isn’t giving an inch. Any game involving blobs from Among Us is not for the faint-hearted!

With no more turnovers available, 17 face-down cards in the tableau seem daunting, but experienced players know that if we can catch a lucky break or two, everything can quickly collapse with victory to the good guys. Oh yes, having one suit already removed definitely helps!