I start a new thread for tournaments, as vol. 2 has again 27 subsites of posts.

The last T is it worth to send a post due to this result:
1 Lutz Guenther 74.83 sec 2015-12-03 8 pts
2 EWQMinesweeper 74.83 sec 2015-12-04 6 pts

It was one of the few tournaments in which the earlier submission of a time decided on the winner of the T. Of course, a 15x15/116 board wasn't likely to be one with tied times for #1 and #2. But Lutz and EWQM. did it and both submitted exactly the same 74.83 :o!

@Stephan: Perhaps a bit late, but sorry for stole you an opportunity to win another T  :-[, i just couldn't resist... :)

My goal on T3 was to get a sub_6s, and of course, i used the infamous hexx' Int strategy slightly modified ;). Slightly because i cleaned up 2 rows at the same time in order to save clicks. Therefore i was able to finish a "16 3bv" board in just 12 clicks :o in a grid that could be solved in 10 as best scenario.

The part i enjoyed the most was the last one, the conjoined 211 paterns solved amazingly in just 2 clicks. 8-)

The vid is here: https://youtu.be/gkgVJ-ZiNIw

@Lutz: Congrats on winning T4. What was your strategy for that board? I couldn't really figure out how to play it as fast as I would have wanted to. Starting with a solvable edge, playing FL for the most part and then switching to NF or Blue Face near the end seemed to be promising but after the 74 I had too much else to do.

@hexx: Congrats on winning T3 (and thanks for "stealing" a point from Stephan). Nymike and I usually refer to the way you seemed to have played T3 as "half hexx" as the main focus is on clearing the outer rows or columns first whereas "hexx strategy" on int means starting by solving the whole outer circle.

Thank you, EWQM. I didn't have a real strategy. Since I am not capable of switching playing styles during a game I just flagged and tried to be as fast and accurate as possible. Maybe a 70.xx would've been possible for me following that approach but I busted several promising boards.

@hexx: It's always frustrating when I finally manage to beat EWQM. and Lutz (what is a very rare event, indeed), and then, you come along out of nowhere and beat me >:(. And even worse, this nice board was to be played in a week where I was on vacation from Friday, so I needed to play in less comfortable environment than I do usually :'(. But anyway, congratulations to a famous time! Your 5.97 video is almost too fast for me to follow :-/.

@EWQM.: No fear, you will easily win the season as long as you seriously play. There are too few boards out there on which I am still competitive.

Nymike pointed out some interesting trivia to me yesterday afternoon:

He was wondering whether I was holding, since it was quite a while since I last finished a tournament outside of division 1's top3. I just check via Stephan's awesome statistics tables for the tournaments and it turns out that S70T6 ended a streak of 81 tournament submissions that resulted in top3 finishes in division 1. I also checked how long Stephan's, Hexx', Lutz' and Maruda's longest such streaks were. Found none above 50.

@EWQM.: I was really surprised (:o) when I got the T results and saw you ending in #4 (besides the large surprise that hexx didn't beat my latest submission ;)).

81 top3 finishes in a row is an awesome performance. But you had only 7 of 16 submissions in S67+S68, so this statistics is a bit incomplete :D. My current streak is 94 submissions in a row, without having missed any tournament, and always ended at least top5 (even in vacation weeks :-/).

Of course, 94 submissions is still ridiculously low, by the way. So far, the most continuous submissions achieved:
382      Nikolaj (from S3/T8 till S51/T5 (!))
369      Qetuth
354      Caren
307      Maruda
297      EWQMinesweeper
218      Dragon
172      Manuel Heider
168      BoBo
165      Lutz Guenther
152      Stephan Bechtel

We should do even more statistics, shouldn't we?!

@EWQM.:

Got this one: https://youtu.be/LOTpeGjncLQ ::) and no more playing this week :-/...

@hexx: As always amazing. Why no more playing for you this week? I think 45ish times might be possible on this board.

EWQM., you were right ;) - even sub-45 was possible. And congratulations for winning another season 8-), with a large gap to all further competitors.

Stephan my friend, i have a different opinion!?

The EWQM.'s "large gap" you are talking about is the result of intense and compulsive use of "steroids" :(. That's why EWQM. can built "large gaps", "sub-45s" and "whatever he wants" so easily :P.

Otherwise it you be much harder, if not impossible, for him to fulfill his "whatever he wants" goals, and you would have a few more T seasons and many more T wins in your portfolio....

@Stephan: Thanks! I almost forgot to play last saturday evening, for some reason thinking I still had another day left. Luckily it didn't take too long to get a board that allowed for a fast time. I wouldn't exactly call 7 points a large gap for winning 5 out of 8 boards. Without hexx' involvement it would have only been 6 points and T5 and T8 have been close calls.

I also expect S71 to become an even closer competition as I won't be able to play (as) much (as usual).

@hexx: :D It's just hundreds and hundres of hours of practice and yet your records on 3 of the 4 standard levels and most tournament board beat mine.

@EWQM.: An intense race will be an advantage for Lutz. I for my own person don't think I can compete. With 1-2 hours of playing each week, I'm just too less trained to compete with the times of Lutz, hexx, and you (at least on bigger boards).

Even if you won't "play (as) much (as usual)", I guess, S71 will be the season where you manage to get #1 in all-time T podiums. After S70, the ranking looks like this:
1. Stephan 127-162-115
2. EWQM. 125-73-52
3. hexx 112-49-14
4. Maruda 77-97-102

So, you only need a 3-0, 4-1 or 5-2 result vs. myself to jump onto #1.

7 points finally IS a large gap. Why? After six Ts in S70, I had been back only 2 points (that would have been a tight final gap), but unfortunately, the Christmas T (where I needed to play during vacation) had a large grid, bad for me and no chance to win this T.

@hexx: I am happy with my situation and won't complain 8-). EWQM. is much younger than I am, and - with one well-known Portuguese exception ;) - mostly youngers beat the older ones.

@Stephan: The issue of age sounds a bit of excuse. This game is all about motivation :).

I´m motivated to play but can't do it every week, therefore i play just for fun. My goal for current T is a sub-4s ::), so my 3.99s is good enough and it will be final score. ;)

Allow me to presume you will score between 3.20s and 3.40s and EWQM. will win/beat you (if he plays as much as usual...) making something between 3.10s and 3.30s :o. It's so funny to see EWQM. beating you sistematically but he avoids to overtake my best scores (3.01s for this T board).

@hexx:
- This game is all about motivation, you might be right. But when I was student, my motivation to play PC games was definitely higher than nowadays :).
- Thank you for 3.99 being your final score, this helped myself a lot. I tried to reach your presumption, but failed with a final 3.51. Luckily, EWQM. did obviously not find as much time as usually ;).
- About all-time bests: I first try to reach my own all-time bests, but mostly do not get them. Last appearance of T2 grid was about six years ago, so with my current mouse and laptop equipment, I'm not capable to beat my own times (and not even yours, of course).
- You had never submitted a time for T3 grid by now, in four appearances. I presume you'll beat Harryck's 3.70 with a sub-3 :-?.

PS: Thank you, EWQM., for not submitting a faster time in T2 8-).

@Stephan:
-Currently my motivation for Speedcubing is much higher than for Nonosweeper.
-Even if I had had more time to play, I'm just not cut out for these boards. you and hexx are way too fast.
-If you had beaten my time on S70T5 or T8 and had taken first place, our total difference would have been only 3 points instead of 7. If you had beaten me on both boards, you could have won the season.
-S71T3 is again not my kind of board. I'm lucky that my current time required only a few minutes of playing. (Played maybe 15 minutes on sunday and 10 minutes tonight)

@hexx: I never really felt motivated to beat all-time bests for tournament boards. Half of them are too fast for me to bother with anyway.

@EWQM.:
- Speedcubing is fascinating - at least for me who is only able to solve a cube within 1-2 minutes ;D.
- In S70T5, I wasn't at home on Saturday, otherwise I'm sure that I had beaten at least my own bests.
- In S70T8, my 44 already was a lucky punch (with 51 as second-best :-[). So, unlikely to get another one with sub-43.
- 4.43 in S71T3 is not a bad time. Believe that I didn't check the current ranking before but then was surprised when uploading my 4.42 :o.

@Stephan:

About T3: Couldn't play on T3, but why should i beat Harryck's 3.70s if such score is ...hmmm >:(... let's say :(..."running faster than cheetah" :P :P :P
Anything related to Harryck Repse, namely his standard levels records and many (if not all!!!) T submissions, is all about cheat and cheat and CHEAT AND ....SHIT :-X
Anyway, i'm now playing T3 in a custom board with 5.08s as best score for the moment. Perhaps i can make a 4.70s or so. The 3.70s is beyond Harryck's real capacity. :-/

About T4: With my 4.66s :o i saved you 1 point in your Season 71 quest, i hope you win it ;). As always i've the vid. If you wanna see it please let me know. :)

@hexx: Thank you for the 4.66 in S71/T4 ;). The 1 point could be decisive, we never know before.
But as the board types I'm good on are mostly already passed in T71, maybe EWQM. (or Lutz as well) will caught up the gap.

Thanks to EWQM. for not playing as much as usual :D. It was the first time that I could win a season which included tournaments that took place during January :o.

Hi Nono players! It looks like it will be a historical season: EWQM. is about to win all eight tournaments within one season - five of eight are already completed, and no players in sight who might beat him.

Btw, after this fifth T, EWQM. has 132 first ranks in div1, with myself (131) and hexx (112) behind. This means, EWQM. is the most successful player in Nono T history :o! Congratulations!

Nooooo i could have improved my time for t5 a whole bunch but i forgot all about it yesterday ;_;

@EWQM.: Sorry! The 64 points for winning all eight tournaments of one season were as near as never before, I think.

But finally, tiny 0.03 seconds and a very easy board :-[ determined that you "just" tie the current record of 62 points - held by hexx (seasons 9, 14, and 26) and Maruda (season 28).

Despite of missing the 8 wins sweep, 7-1-0-0-0-0-0-0 is a personal best for you in division 1. And 8-0-0-0-0-0-0-0 will follow, I'm quite sure as it is permanently getting harder (at least for me) to beat your times.

@Lutz, Sam and others: I'm counting on you to keep the competition interesting ;).

@EWQM.: You wrote:
got 23.36 in S75T7 in literally the first game I completed, 0.85s faster than 2nd place https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFPm_LV3HW0

Might have been 0.85s faster than my time at that point, but your current 23.02 is still 1.56s slower than my 21.46. Expect you to submit your sub19 on Saturday evening ;)

I never met anybody on this site in person, but I have corresponded with Fritz on facebook since early 2009 when my daughter was born, and for about a 5 year stretch the guy was a madd man.  He had hard time breaking 40 seconds on minesweeper, he broke 50 seconds thousands and thousands of times, before finally succeeding, and proceeded to break 40 seconds over 100 times.  He mentioned he organized minesweeper tournaments in Munich, what he didn't tell you that he put out hundreds of euros of his own money to host and pay for hostel so players can afford to come.  Nobody had more passion for the shit than him.  Btw nobody noticed, and there are no posts about Fritz breaking long standing Mallet mania record, but it was done too.

Minor correction to Mike's post: I paid for the internet cafe in 2010 where we played the Minesweper and Nonosweeper tournaments. I also paid for the youth hostel but the guys who stayed there paid me that money back.

About 40 seconds barrier: What is called sub40 in Minesweeper actually means times faster than 39.00 seconds. Breaking sub40 took me over a year and in total I got close to 80 sub40s. The count for actual solves below 40 seconds is well above 100 though.

More trivia: throughout mostof my active time in Minesweeper I played 3 hours and more every day. That means over 20 hours every week, for a while even over 30 hours. Now imagine what happens if you stop playing minesweeper and instead focus on Nonosweeper. Hint: S57 and onwards.

Stephan wrote on Sep 25^th, 2016 at 5:38pm:

@EWQM.: You wrote: got 23.36 in S75T7 in literally the first game I completed, 0.85s faster than 2nd place https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFPm_LV3HW0 Might have been 0.85s faster than my time at that point, but your current 23.02 is still 1.56s slower than my 21.46. Expect you to submit your sub19 on Saturday evening ;)

@Stephan/all: 20.18 just a few minutes after losing a potential sub20 on the last click. Well, my strategy is pretty obvious from these videos, so what are yours?

Video of the 20.18 is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBdbpZ3GKx8

Mine is the same ;). Just not managed to get one of the easier games (with rare guessing patterns) in fast click time till the end.

@Stephan (Athos): With 13.00s you are about to win T8 and season 75 as well.
You "Athos" almost tied your int best score! ("Aramis" with 14.18s by now, possibly broke is int best score!!!!!)
Seeing "Porthos" and "Aramis" playing T under the rule "1.3x speedup" (or even more) is one thing, they are just kids!
Seeing YOU "Athos" playing the same way is unbelievable. You aren't a kid anymore! You belong to my generation (i'm 41). You have wife and eventually Kids. Is it really necessary to play that way?

YOU "Athos" are not the Stephan i used to know on standard levels!

@hexx:
I don't care about winning T8, but will be lucky to win S75 as it's a hard competition to win a season.

And I really don't understand your problem. You are referring to my int score. S75/T8 has in common absolutely nothing with playing int level. A player of S75/T8 needs to see quickly which squares need to be opened. There are 800 squares, of them 777 mines. So one needs to find 23 squares. For my 13.00, I needed 22 clicks as there were two coherent non-mine squares. If the other squares have a good distribution on the grid, you can open two squares per second, which would result in a sub13.

The video of the 13.00 (showing replay etc. directly after finishing the game) is available here:
S75/T8 13.00

But why comparing with int level? I didn't play int level for ages. My best int times are from 2007/2008. My last 12 was achieved in 2011. Why should I waist time with standard level when my goal is to collect points for winning a season? So, each week, I (aged 39) practice the current T board during a few hours, nothing else, so I usually get some improvement until reaching my personal limit. --> Nothing magic, nothing musceteery, just focusing on T boards.

Am tired now, physically and emotionally.

@Maruda: 12x12/45 in S76/T8, that's your favourite grid, isn't it? It's been a long time since we played it for the last time, in fact it was in February 2006 (!).

@EWQM./Lutz: For both of you, it's likely the first time to play this board. I can honestly say this is one of the boards I hate most >:(, so good luck for you ;). On the one hand, I find it quite difficult to finish without guessing (if even possible), on the other hand, if one gets a good grid, very fast times are possible. It's somehow similar to T7, so fight for the season win, I won't be able to keep my current position.

If Lutz wins S76/T8, I finish 2nd and you finish 3rd, we would all finish the season with 50 points.

It's more than likely that S76 will set a new record for the 3rd place in division 1 with the most points. So far we had 46 points in S15, S43, S49, S72 and S73.

S72 saw the top 3 getting a combined 151 points with only Sam taking a 3rd place away from Lutz. In S73 we got 150 points and there's a chance we might get 150 points again this season.

About S76/T7: Got a very lucky board, wouldn't mind never seeing it again as a tournament board.^^

About S76/T8: Why would you even try playing without a few unforced guesses? I got a few mid 40s within a reasonable amount of time on monday before I got that 38.

50 for the three of us would be funny, even if I have the highest total and finish in #3 then. 46 will be topped, I'll fight for #3 in T8 :).

Of course, I try my best. And I already got a 48.89, my first sub-50 on 12x12/45 is more than 10 seconds below my previous personal best :D. However, I still do not like a board where unforced guessing is helpful to be fast.

Well, that was hard work. I did not even realize that I might have a chance to win the season until I read your posts. Then I got motivated. ;)

Unforced guessing can turn a good board into an excellent one, I think. So I use this strategy frequently (only at the beginning and only two or three times, of course).

Good work, Lutz, and congratulations for winning your 2nd season. Knowing about the possibility to win and really achieving the necessary time to win are two pairs of shoes :).

50:50:50 sounds tight, but it wasn't. Lutz' total of 513.10 seconds was more than six seconds lower than EWQM.'s (519.74). I was far away (563.88) as I lost a lot of time on the bigger boards.

Lutz has also the lowest average rank (2.0), as he achieved 50 points in S76 despite of benefitting least from the 8 points for winning a tournament such as EWQM./Stephan (ø rank 2.13 for those two) did.

Btw, this is my 350th post in this forum. Seems to be the time for even numbers :D, as I just found out to have reached 450 podiums (distributed 150-170-130 8-)) in Nono tournaments since season 4.

Congrats Lutz! That was an amazing comeback in T8 and I likely the first time ever that someone jumped from 3rd to 1st place in division 1 in the last tournament.

@Stephan, Lutz: What happened last week in S78T4?

My strategy was to solve top and bottom row and then columns from left to right, which with a slightly lucky board quickly lead to a 36. What was your strategy?

I didn't really know how to handle that board so I was quite happy with my 54.04. Just tried your strategy and got a 61.45 ... seems that I'm just too slow.^^

@EWQM.: About S78T4 (sorry, I didn't see the post earlier :-[) - if I remember right, I solved the outer rows/columns first, and then as well columns from left to right. But I'm way too slow on unusual sizes like 17 and 13, as I'm not familiar with the patterns then. I had never beaten your 36 :o, so I stopped when reaching my possible personal limit ;)

@Stephan: Congrats on winning S78. I won't have time to play tomorrow as I won't be home before 22:00 after attending a speedcubing competition in Schwandorf. (Not that I would have a chance against you on this kind of board anyways ;) )

T8 doesn't end at 22:00 CET, I think, so you still have the chance to do a night highscore :D. I must admit that I don't hate this kind of board ::), but that wouldn't help anything if you get a good grid.

@EWQM.: Thank you, I'm really happy that me old man is still able to be competitive in some grids and that I could win this season 8-).
Good luck for you on day 2 at the Schwandorf Open!

Here's the 15.76 I just got for S79T3. Nice board, probably won't even bother trying to beat this during the rest of the week.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VXsx_wa0bM

@Stephan: Thanks. You can expect at least 6 more saturdays this year where I won't have any time to play at all. :D

@Lutz: Congrats for obviously having finished S79/T4 more than once :o.
I fought very hard until I could finish a single board. And it was the only one, all before had been lost with less than 60% of the grid solved. So, I'm very lucky with #2 8-), was about to give up.

Thank you, Stephan. :) This was one of my favorite T boards ever since I play Nonosweeper. I spent at least 25-30 hours, solving ~ 15 boards (Chronic also uploaded three or more times).

I think a sub 200 should be possible but it's very hard to stay highly focussed for more than three minutes.

Unfortunately, I'm not competitive on boards like we have this week. So good luck for T5!

Congratulations Lutz, Stephan and Chronic. This was probably the hardest tournament board ever (that was solved and didn't get replaced by a different board).

I got to 40 or less mines several times but then either had to guess or lost because of my own mistakes.

@EWQM.: I was about to suggest replacement ;), but as Lutz had already submitted a time, this wouldn't have been fair anymore :). I also lost some games on my own mistakes or forced guesses...

@Lutz: 25 hours is huge, I spent about 5 in three "sessions". 15 boards is incredible. Very good job, you more than deserve this T win! And I knew I am not at all competitive on these boards ;)
About T5: low 11 is already competitive >:(, I need to play more often again to beat this. Let's see what Sunday says.

@Stephan: Mike asked my on sunday whether I thought we should ask for a replacement. I said let's wait until Tuesday and see if Lutz can solve it. I was quite motivated to complete a board but didn't have a lot of time to play Nonosweeper last week. I suppose I spent around 3 hours on T4 and most likely won't spend any more time on T5.

This was the winning board: https://youtu.be/tR1X2VC6vRg
No guessing involved, I think.

My strategy was to only solve boards with at least three scattered mine-free columns (those appeared quite often) and some high numbers somewhere on the right.

@all: If you have problems in playing S79/T6 as the software announces "Tournament info is up-to-date", you can update the T code manually. Use http://nonosweeper.com/cgi-bin/tourncode.cgi and update the T code and the closure date in %appdata%\Nonosweeper\Nonosweeper.ini.

Oh, S80/T6 has a current standing with myself and Lutz equalled in #1 and #2.
Should that really remain the final ranking till Sunday, I'll be very happy that I was able to play on early Sunday morning and didn't hold back my time ;).

@Stephan and Lutz: I won't have time to play on saturday so I'll stay at 111. Do with this info whatever you want. ;)

S83/T2 14x13/140 19.85s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NpUQ0gQ4tU

@EWQM.: S83/T2 14x13/140 19.85s was too fast for me. This season will be an easy catch for you!

S83/T3 25x25/394 279.03s

about 5s better than in S77 a year ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpLKQ3lEaak&feature=youtu.be

@Stephan: We'll see. With Lutz missing the first 2 boards it's between us two now and we're not very far into S83 yet.

@EWQM.: After 3rd tournament, points are likely 24 vs. 18. If Lutz appears, or Caren, Maruda, anyone will catch up, it'll be 24 vs. 16, 15, 14. Don't think that I'll have a real chance :P.

Well, before the start of the season I knew I had a strong chance because I had decided to take a break from speedcubing. And since thursday this week I have even more time for Nonosweeper after work :'(. That is if I wanted to play more. ;)

4th tournament of the season and 4th PB on previously played tournament boards including 3 new overall PBs for these boards. I like how this season goes so far :)

But where is Lutz? Did anyone hear from him?

Don't worry, I'm still around. Couldn't play recently as I just returned from an extended holiday trip. Seems that I picked the right season to take a break. ;)

BTW: My honest congratulations on your new genius world record! Motivating enough for me to play a little more but I'm not sure whether your 121 seconds can be beaten.

Welcome back, Lutz! Hope you had a great holiday.

Thank you. I'm sure 115 should be possible with a decent board, maybe even 110 with enough luck.

Now S84T3 looks like it could be fun. First game after 5 minutes was a 94, second game after 20 minutes was 87. I suppose sub80 should be possible.

No danger from my side. Got a 101 on a relatively easy board, so I guess, for me, sub-100 will be the limit. But there are other players there, guess Lutz will take the fight for #1.

TBDMfan wrote on Jan 14^th, 2018 at 10:45am:

I suppose sub80 should be possible.

Yep, 77.14. 94 left, 50 right, 144 total clicks at 1.87 cl/s. I won't have any more time to play during the rest of this week. Lutz, it's your board now.

Actually, I am happy with my sub100. If I had more time to play I probably could go for a sub90. But never in a million years could I get a better time than EWQM's 77.

@Lutz, Stephan: What happened last week? The last time this board got played Stephan got a 97. My strategy was to play NF and solve/guess through top and bottom rows, then solve columns. Basically just what I do this week but with rows and columns switched.

@EWQM.: I didn't find time to play a lot (only Sunday evening and Monday evening, not the best times for me to play fast). So, my time was the result of finishing at least some boards (stopped after the 3rd), with flagging mines and opening safe squares. On Monday evening, I was aware that I would never beat your time and just wanted to stay in #2. As this looked okay yesterday, I didn't spend more time.

This week, I'm able to play NF style, think low 70 would be possible for me. 57 is an illusion for me to beat. So, be assured that myself won't spend too much time on this board.

TBDMfan wrote on Mar 25^th, 2018 at 4:34pm:

@Lutz, Stephan: What happened last week? The last time this board got played Stephan got a 97. My strategy was to play NF and solve/guess through top and bottom rows, then solve columns. Basically just what I do this week but with rows and columns switched.

I didn't play much and was not able to find the right strategy. Just tried it your way and got a 122 after 5 minutes which would have been good enough for 6 points. :'( Don't like that kind of boards, though.

Stephan wrote on Mar 25^th, 2018 at 4:42pm:

... This week, I'm able to play NF style, think low 70 would be possible for me. 57 is an illusion for me to beat. So, be assured that myself won't spend too much time on this board.

Very low 70 indeed ;D, but still ages away from 50 :-[

Well done, Stephan! Curious to see if that's enough to secure 2nd place.

I just might participate a little bit soon

Welcome back, Jon! :)

Welcome back, Jon! Good to see you here around again. Btw, it was season 4 when you participated for the last time. So, you only skipped ~13 years or 648 tournament weeks 8-).

And with Jon, division 1 hat 15 players, so only 1 player more, and we would have had division 2 back :o.

@Lutz: Thank you for not beating my 58 in S85/T8. Without your help (achieving #2 in S85/T1), I would never have beaten EWQM. in a whole season's total by 1 point 8-)

Small heads up to everyone else who, like me, has a hard time getting a decent solve on these small boards like S86T1:

You can play this board pretty much in the same way that can be used to achieve 1 second games on Beginner level. Assume that the leftmost column is always a 10. This is the case for ~18.7% of games so roughly every 5th to 6th board. Further solve rows from top to bottom, assuming mines are always in the leftmost possible position. Obviously you're going to lose a lot more games but you should be able to get a fast time within 10 minutes of playing.

@Stephan: Congratulations! A well deserved win!

@Lutz: Nooooooo! where were you? JK, hope you enjoyed the good weather yesterday. ;)

@EWQM.: Your strategy for S86T1 works fine. Beaten Maruda's tough 1.90 after less than 10 minutes ;). But I'm quite sure that this 1.87 won't be enough ;D.

Hehe, maybe I should share some more of my strategies for the dfferent tournament boards. You were definitely right about your 1.87. :P

Indeed. Good strategy. ;)

A different strategy could also be successful: Just play as long as you get the perfect board :D.

Congratulations to Maruda for winning S86/T2. Btw, it's the first win that doesn't come from EWQM., Lutz, or Stephan since S79/T2 (after 55 consecutive wins by those three).

And it's Maruda's first T win since S58/T8, about four years and three months ago :o.
That one was also a big board with relatively low mine density, so Maruda showed again his strength on these boards impressively!

thanks stephan a.k.a mr. statistics :) you guys are fantastic and this was my only chance to win a tournament. i spent a lot of time on this one and it was real fun to play :)

Grats on the win, Maruda. For this tourny, I had seen your 13 after dinner yesterday. I thought my 11 from the evening would be enough to pass you but those dreams got crushed quickly when I uploaded my score...

Congratulations Maruda! Great result on a quite difficult board!

@Stephan: Do you know what the longest streak of consecutive T wins are for 1, 2 and 3 different players?

Managed to shave off quite a bit of time for S86T4 by adapting my strategy a bit.

I start by strictly solving columns from left to right, first clicking all safe squares, then flagging all mines in each column. At 5-7 columns left I switch to solving the remaining rows. Just made the jump from a 232 that felt quite fast to a 216 that felt like an average game. I used 196 left and 139 right clicks, so I guess it comes down to using the right clicks more efficiently.

My strategy for S86T5: Half hexx NF.

Skip boards until you get one with a lot of mines in the top and bottom row. If they aren't solvable right away, guess quickly. Then solve columns left to right or right to left.

TBDMfan wrote on May 10^th, 2018 at 6:45pm:

Congratulations Maruda! Great result on a quite difficult board! @Stephan: Do you know what the longest streak of consecutive T wins are for 1, 2 and 3 different players?

@EWQM.: I didn't know, but could find out :P. And did find out, very interesting topic ;) :D.

Most consecutive T wins for one player:
8 by hexx (S26T3-S27T2) - stopped by Maruda
8 by Stephan (S73T5-S74T4) - stopped by Lutz
7 by Maruda (S28T4-S29T2) - stopped by Alliska
7 by EWQM. (S72T1-S72T7) - stopped by Stephan

Most consecutive T wins for two different players:
29 by EWQM. or Stephan (S60T7-S64T3) - stopped by qqwref
18 by Luca or hexx (S07T7-S09T8) - stopped by Nikolaj
14 by EWQM. or Harryck (S50T1-S51T6) - stopped by Stephan
13 by hexx or Maruda (S06T4-S07T8) - stopped by Luca

Most consecutive T wins for three different players:
55 by EWQM., Lutz or Stephan (S79T3-S86T1) - stopped by Maruda
54 by hexx, Maruda or Stephan (S22T5-S29T2) - stopped by Alliska
49 by EWQM., qqwref or Stephan (S60T7-S66T7) - stopped by Lutz
32 by hexx, Luca or Maruda (S06T1-S09T8) - stopped by Nikolaj

@EWQM.: Was a big portion of luck to finish the nice board in a time that was exactly 0.01 faster than yours in S86T7. Sorry for stealing this T win.

It's a surprise indeed that you didn't submit a faster time in late Saturday evening - would had expected that ;).

@Stephan: Congratulations on winning that turnament. Well deserved for putting in these extra hours on a Saturday.

I didn't have time to play yesterday and I've noticed that lately I find myself spending a bit less time playing Nonosweeper than earlier this year, especially later in the week.

Gonna take at least a few weeks off from playing Nonosweeper. Have fun, guys. :)

The fun is just not the same without you, EWQM. :-/. But good luck for your off-time. Let's see how many "a few" weeks will be finally ;).

Thank you, EWQM. I used the opportunity to finish season 88 with 64 points :D. Included some boards that turned out to be extremely hard to win for me with Lutz as main opponent and specialist for bigger boards, but I'm lucky about the achievement anyway :-).

And as I was in vacation afterwards, and Lutz might have taken some off-time as well, S89/T1 was probably the very first T board in history without a single German player submitting a time :o

@Stephan: Congrats on your fabulous 64 points. Well done!

Yes, I was on vacation as well but returned today. I wonder what you can still do on this week's T board. I got several sub 140 s pretty fast and am quite jetlagged so I think there is still room for improvement (however, not on my side).

Not on my side as well. I don't like the big boards with medium density. So, congrats on your impressive win in T2 (and your very challenging time in T3)  :)

Hey guys, great to see you're still showing incredibly good performances every week. Congrats on finally getting these 64 points! Well deserved after all these years!

As far as taking a few weeks off goes, I think I might be done with Nonosweeper for good. I will probably still drop by every few weeks or months but don't count on me to return to the tournaments.

@EWQM.: Bad news that you retire from tournaments. Was always a pleasure to compete with you. I can understand your step as I am also wondering how long I will continue. Maybe I can reach 200 wins and stop then :-/.

Season 89 is possibly going to be one of the toughest in last few years. After three tournaments played, we have five players within a range of 10 to 18 points collected. Of course, it can still get boring if Lutz finishes the season with 7-0-0-0-0-0-0-0 after missing T1 ;D.

Phew! S91T8 is awesome. Nearly unsolvable, lots of guesses.

@Lutz: I fought hard today to get a single time onto the scoreboard :D.
Lost one board at 435 by unlucky guess. I hate 50-50 situations >:(. 5 mines wrong, but mine arrangement would have suited to the patterns on the rims as well as the real solution.
Had lost another before by unlucky 50-50 with only 3 mines to arrange at 712.

Stephan wrote on Mar 23^rd, 2019 at 1:48pm:

Phew! S91T8 is awesome. Nearly unsolvable, lots of guesses. @Lutz: I fought hard today to get a single time onto the scoreboard :D. Lost one board at 435 by unlucky guess. I hate 50-50 situations >:(. 5 mines wrong, but mine arrangement would have suited to the patterns on the rims as well as the real solution. Had lost another before by unlucky 50-50 with only 3 mines to arrange at 712.

Yeah, this board is tough. Success depends very much on board selection, I think.

I solved two boards: 595 s (with one 50/50 guess at the end) and 440 s (three or four guesses with minor risk).

Btw: The points table doesn't seem to be correct. You should have 49 points by now, two more than me.

Edit: Right after I posted this I got an unexpected 371. Played with no pressure, just tried to improve speed if possible. Just one or two unrisky guesses. Now I will stop playing. ;)

371 is a decent time.

I hadn't noticed the points issue so far. I checked, the points granted for S91T5 are weird. Mostly double points (16 for #1, 12 for #2), but e.g. no one with 6/3 points. I've written to Yariv, hope, he can correct this. I don't want to win the season with wrong calculations.

So, congrats to Lutz who should have won the season with points being equal, but having the lower total time.

Yariv has corrected the points of S91T5. So, points tables should be correct now. And as predicted, Lutz is now listed as season winner. Congratulations!

:) :) :) :) :)

Congratulations to Chronic - very decent time on a difficult board, so a well deserved first T win :D!

Fun fact: Season 96 was the first time a season was won with only 6 participations but still not the overall fewest points to win a season.

Unfun fact ;): Since EWQM. returned, he won every single tournament in which he submitted a time. 10 times, 3 skipped. He seems to be unbeatable :(.

Slightly less unfun fact: For each of these 3 boards I skipped I was 100% convinced you or Lutz were too good to beat ;)

My strategy for S97T3: Skip boards until you get one with few numbers but many mines in the left or right column. Solve/guess this outer column. Then solve/guess the top or bottom row and from there on start solving rows. Try to solve parts of the other outer column as you progress through the rows. I found that this takes a bit longer untill I can solve a board but the solving time itself is much quicker.

Hi EWQM., interesting strategy in S97T3. I would have preferred the historical Int strategy (solving all four edge rows/columns). With the high mine density of that board, I guess it would have been possible. But due to lack of time, I played only a single game... Wouldn't have beaten your time anyway :)

And I want to apologize for my "Unfun fact" post. It was not really fair after all. It was just the disappointment to be too slow again and again. Thank you that you submitted in S97T4, even if my time was fast enough this time :D

Hey Stephan,

I tried the classic strategy for a bit but quickly gave up when even games that felt super fast were still quite a bit slower than your time. Too bad you didn't get to play more. With that single first game of yours being so fast it probably would have been very competitive.

Your time in S97T4 was, as expected ;), amazing. Congratulations! You had me playing until 2 in the morning trying to beat your time at the very last moment.

Don't worry about your joke :)

S97T4 was very low density. I was very happy that at least on this type of boards, I can be competitive. Would have had an 11.65 as well, so 11.05 was not only a lucky coincidence. And sorry for stealing your night :), but I prefer not be beaten at the very last moment. Always a disappointing Sunday morning then :P

In a more equal playing setting (i.e both of us spending the same amount of time on a tournament level instead of me spending way too many hours each week) you'd be competitive on almost every board except those that take extremely long to finish. On smaller or generally faster boards you're still the best.

S97T7 was quite interesting. I didn't really follow any special strategy and got that 120 rather easily. I guess pracitcing Genius level really paid off here. For S97T8 I am pretty much done. That sub4 was only possible with 4 of the squares being close to each other near the left edge and the other 3 squares ebing in a single line near the right edge. I'm sure it's a difficult time to beat but with an equally lucky board I have no doubt you can do it.

S97T8 also has as an interesting/fun/unfun aspect to it: In order to secure the season I either would have needed to not play at all or beat a time of around 50 seconds.

P.S. I can assure you that I won't be playing as much next season and especially very few or even no Saturday nights at all. Sorry to have dampened your mood some Sunday mornings :-/

I also often spend too much time (i.e. 2-3 hours a week) for a T board.

S97T7 didn't pay off for me at all. I don't like Genius-style, so I was way to slow to see the good patterns :-[ and too impatient to wait for a perfect board.

S97T8: 3.42 is awesome fast. Got a sub4 now, 3.76 with a good, but not perfect arrangement of mines. So, I have some hope that I can do better.

My Sunday morning mood doesn't only depend on Nono results, luckily :D. And it's just a matter of expectations. If I expected you that had beaten me during the night, the surprise was a very positive one if that didn't happen ::). And btw, it is always more fun to compete and to lose than not to compete at all.

Happy season 100, everybody. Fun to be participating in these again, even if I'm a bit slower than I used to be.

With season 103 being over, so there have been exactly 100 seasons in division mode since June 2005 :o.

It was a long time with those 800 tournaments, with different players at the top, rising stars and others that retired. As a fan of statistics, it is quite a nice coincidence that I managed to get #1 or #2 in division 1 exactly 500 times 8-). And it seems I have missed only 14 boards in all those years, phew. Maruda submitted a time for 693 boards and accompagnied myself in being part of division 1 in all 100 seasons. EWQM. (66), Lutz (63) and Caren (57 in div. 1, but 97 in total) follow. BoBo has competed in 99 seasons, but missed the last one.

The season 103 had only 8 competitors, had one board that didn't allow time submissions and one nearly unsolvable board with 700+ winner time. Weird one.
How many seasons will these tournaments stay alive? Will be funny to see whether division 1 merges into division 0 once there are less than 8 players :-/. The game deserves more players to play actively, but mouse games tend to lose against cellphone apps nowadays, right?

Curious whether anyone still reads the forum to comment my thoughts :D

Funny, shortly before your post, Stephan, I had also checked my statistics and noticed that I have been playing Nonosweeper since June 2009. I really didn't expect to be around for almost twelve years now. :o

Your numbers are of course even more impressive, congratulations on so much stamina! And of course I should have congratulated you a few weeks ago on a fantastic season 102 ... very well done!

Yes, S103T6 was a crazy board but I kind of loved it. I played 25h+ (and slept far too little) but was only able to complete a single board.

I also think it's a shame that there are hardly any players left. Well, we live in the age of smartphones. And new players are likely deterred by the $ 12.95 cost for the Pro version.  :-/

@Lutz: Thanks :). S102 was special (even if I had managed to get 64 points once before, in S88), as from S101/T7 till S103/T1, I managed a 11-win streak which is a new personal best.

I didn't love S103/T6 at all, but I knew I should get a time submitted to have a chance in season's total :-). Stopped immediately after I managed to finish one game, but spent maybe 3-4 hours for that.

Valid point with the Pro fee :-/.

Hi Stephan, hi Lutz. It's great to see the site is still around and the weekly tournament are still happening. I am mostly back to playing Minesweeper these days over at minesweeper.online. Every so often someone in the chat asks what 3BV is or happens to look up my name on Youtube and then finds a Nonosweeper video.

Funny how time goes by... I looked back at all my best times and they were almost all from 15 years ago... I know that I was playing for some time before that. I've had fun getting my butt kicked by you guys all these years! ;) I don't plan on quitting any time soon as long as Yariv will keep the tournaments going!

S107_T6 has been changed to these specs: Grid: 37 x 30. Mines: 999 (instead of error-creating 1070 before). Submission period has been extended till 2021-08-28. A big thank you to Yariv for changing this!

Happy New Year, dear Nonosweeper community!

In the last 17 years, 878 Nonosweeper tournaments took place. I submitted times for 862 of them. But now, it's enough. I'll retire with immediate effect.

Lutz, the way is set for you to score 64 points in one season ;). But maybe, Maruda or Chronic will interfere?!
Maruda, it was a long common journey for the two of us, from the very first tournament until today, with 106 seasons together in Division 1 :).

Good luck to everyone who is playing this fascinating game! Happy sweeping!

I wish you all a Happy New Year too!

I am very sorry to see you go, Stephan. :'( It has always been a pleasure for me to compete with you. Your ability to solve most board types extremely fast often motivated me to improve my strategies. However, I can understand a certain fatigue after all those years. As for my part, I will keep going a while longer, though.

Take care and all the best!

Hey Stefan, it was always pleasure to fight against you, especially in live tournament. It's really sad to see you retiring, but I understand. Last few years I usualy play only few games a week with standard genius mouse. Gone are those times when I used "profi" device :)
Wish you all the best in your life after nono. Now when Yariv became czech citizen, I cannot retire :D :D :D