@John : turn 2, command an attack-only move to France, so that you have 80% luck your 2 mobile troops in Spain actually stay up front.

i do like triple picking for certain mapboards.
It sometimes pays out, and you can protect yourself for a lot of trouble (not getting it all). Where to put your first and/or to pick the first at more unlikely 1st picks scenarios.
In this specific situation, not getting the 1st would be bad, and i didnt plan carefully.
Was in a week i was trying to aim for the west china build up, but for that, i had to use army advantage somehow and i didnt. The proper move to use the situation in that game would be a powerfull attack in indonesia, that australia moves were risky and lucky.
You can enter in more details, but its intersting you found a loss, i have more wins with it.

@Mian - Thanks! You're right about the attack only, wish I rememberd that at the time.

@Duke, I have no clue why he didn't pressure Europe either, but that was my biggest fear.

http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=3569964

Tried triple picking knowing there was a really good chance he would go for the same countries. Turned into a counterpick and I knew where he was by turn 3 and had access to everything, and kept expanding with my one safe pick. Easy game.

Billy, would really love your analysis of my post on 12/13.

http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=3527803

so... u get europe.... than u cant expand if there s someone in africa..... you won because the opponent was slow in takin bonus. An abandon in algeria and u are done.....

John,

You got really lucky on turns 10, 11, 12 and 13 as well as a couple of others. If you fail to hold your countries (which you held due purely to luck) you would lose.

Not much can be learned from this game. Anybody can win with any picks if they get ridiculously lucky for 4 critical turns in a row.

Billy, how does one "get lucky" by doing the same turn over and over again when the math works in their favor? You abandoned Southeast Asia to him, so he was going to have similar income to you regardless. You had given up the two positions where you could really threaten to take his bonus, and instead concentrated on the place where he could defend from a single territory.

The worst thing you did, and not luck or his playing, was failing to attack Algeria on turn 10. He had four troops there, but instead of putting everything down to get next to Europe, you screwed around with spreading out some defenses for no good reason. Defending Pakistan would have been as good a turn as that. You clearly were under the impression that he was going to reinforce to ensure he could break Pakistan, but instead of taking advantage, you screwed around and wasted your chance. Then he just put everything into defense each turn because you couldn't stop him from doing that.

Also, why would you bother putting troops into Lybia each turn instead of putting them in your main stack? If he was going to attack Lybia, then that would work in your favor, since it would open up Algeria to do so, and you could attack Europe. Instead, you wasted those troops turn after turn in attacking Algeria in such a way as to give him just enough advantage. You seem to be calling it "luck" that you put troops in bad positions and couldn't break Algeria, but that seems more a lack of skill on your part.

As for actual luck as measured by the game, you guys were even for the early turns, but you gained a huge amount of luck in the later turns (you know, the ones you were complaining about him being lucky in?). It's actually you who were lucky there.

Ben,

Easy to critique a game when you can see all of his territories and all of mine and what he ultimately ended up doing. When all of that is unknown, it is not so obvious what the best moves are.

As for turns 10-13, as I said, he got very lucky to defend.

He really didn't. He had two points of contact with you. In Southeast Asia you weren't fighting back, so he had no reason to put any troops there. In North Africa neither of you could complete a bonus, and he had no reason to do anything other than defend until after he completed SE Asia.

He wasn't "lucky" to defend, it was merely the only course of action he had. A smart player would have noticed that. A smart player would also not have broken down his troops into multipl smaller attacks (Lybia, seriously?) and would have broken into Algeria.

Ben,

Easy to critique a game when you can see all of his territories and all of mine and what he ultimately ended up doing. When all of that is unknown, it is not so obvious what the best moves are.

As for turns 10-13, as I said, he got very lucky to defend.

wow

You got lucky, simple as that.

If luck went my way instead of yours on any one of 6 turns in that game, you would have instantly lost.

So (1/6)*(1/6)*(1/6)*(1/6)*(1/6)*(1/6) = 1/46,656 times you win, 46,655/46,656 times I win. I don't call that destroying somebody, more like winning the lottery, but whatever makes you feel better.

Billy: LUCK DID GO YOUR WAY EACH TIME, AND YOU STILL LOST.

Is my caps lock broken? No.... I'm YELLING!!!!!

John,

Sorry to inform you, but you're wrong. You were the one who got lucky.

Even if you were right that I was the one who got lucky, you still got lucky - lucky not to get unlucky.

Say you had an 85% chance to win those 6 times. 85% to the 6th power is 37%. So 63% of the times you should have lost at least once - but you didn't, you won every single time. Each time, if you lost, the game was over.

Sorry if your intellectual fortitude is such that you can't grasp the relatively simple math involved here, but you got lucky. Period.

I think I found your problem. Math.

It's an error in judgement on your part to keep making attacks with a 15% chance to succeed. Previous iterations do not change future odds, so the sixth time you attacked with a 15% chance to win was just as stupid as the first try. Each turn you attacked you thought "15% chance, huh? That sounds good." Each turn John says "85% chance? I'll take it."

That's even ignoring the fact that you DID get lucky over the course of those turns. You just needed to get really really lucky in order to win the attack. So you weren't attacking with a 15% chance to get lucky, (because that paid off, but didn't take the territory). You were attacking with a .01% chance to get lucky enough to break Algeria with your plan in action.

That was a hypothetical. I had an advantage. I said even if he had an 85% change of winning, he still got lucky.