Welcome back Daniel (who submitted only once in the last 41 tournaments) and Gero (once in last 54 tournaments)!

Stephan wrote on Oct 13^th, 2007 at 9:46am:
Thanks!  I started to play more regularly when the site went down, but I didn't know how to submit for the tournaments.  I've been concentrating on getting my expert score down (since my int falls into the category of "good enough"), but the tournaments are fun to play as well.  This board is incredibly annoying, though, so I hope my score sticks.  I'd like to make it into division 2 eventually, probably not this time around since there were three boards before I started playing, but there's no harm in trying.

Of more importance to me is that I got my 3rd-5th best expert times (93, 93, 96) last night!  I also finished a genius board, but it was not a record and was a very difficult board, so I finished at 415 seconds. 

@Daniel: The rule is "First come, first serve". On small boards, there is always a likely risk of losing a rank without any gap to the player ín front of you

@Qetuth: Great time for T6! Your 101 is by now the second-fastest time ever played on this board. Good luck with winning your first tournament 

@Stephan: Thanks! I couldn't believe it! I suspect a few others might have something to say about who wins before the week is out, but it was a nice board. At worst I'll know I'm making people work for their points 

I also took 15 seconds off the fastest ever time for the current Mallet Mania board 15.1, so I'm having a good week. 

@Gero: Unlucky, though on the other hand it's unlikely it'll rob you of any points. I hope to see you continue to pop into the tournaments, even if you aren't making a serious comeback.

@Daniel: Wow. You know you managed to equal the score afterwards of someone who didn't have access to the game until 3 or 4 hours before the end of the tournament? Kobbie only got to post at all because he gave me a lift home from the squash courts. Not sure when exactly you posted your time, but it must have been close. If you missed out because I let him have a go before me, sorry...that's very unlucky, even moreso than usual when equalling times.

I hate such boards. imo that's torture rather than nonosweeper. But what really annoys me is that I got on the very only board in the season that anyhow fitted my playing style a little bit a second place and I'm still way away from being savely through.
I mean: 6 tournies 4 of which with boards I really can't enjoy playing, 1 not really long rectangle which is somehow playable and one not really small rectangle which was ok. There was no small board and not a single low density board yet. I've no fun anymore with having to play such disgusting boards over and over just to find another point. I'm really thinking of quiting competing in 1.Div and just let myself drop out to second or third and playing only boards I like to play (which are getting rare these days).

Christoph, I start to feel the same way when there seem to be 5 tiny boards in a row. I'm not trying to criticise your complaint, just offer another point of view. It's a pity you don't enjoy them, I find the challenge of a hard to figure out board the best part.

To me, the small boards (including long narrow ones with fairly high density) seem all pretty much the same, and I often don't see a lot of point trying to be competitive in them unless I get particularly lucky or I'm particularly bored. And there are far more of those than 'interesting' boards.

Several times I've considered bringing up a revision of the tournament distribution so it isn't biased so much towards the small board experts, but every time I'm about to do that we finally get a decent board.

I've interpreted this season as: {tiny, geniuslike, low density, smaller than int, annoyingly tiny, low density} which is a fair bit different from yours. Two low density boards is odd, but I'd personally take it over more than half the season being target practice boards. So I suppose in the end it evens out, and this is just a better than usual season for me, worse for you.

Btw, note that I have the third best genius time of an active player (if gero is being truthful about not really being back  ) and yet have never (as of last sunday) managed a third overall in a tournament. Maybe that says something about the lack of 'interesting boards Hey, you have two firsts, one of them better than 80% of second place 

Hi Christoph, hi Qetuth,

it's funny that you discuss about this season being a good or a bad one. Definitely, it was a bad one due to the technical problems in the first Ts And in fact, I don't really appreciate the boards of this season as well, so I would agree with Christoph.

But let me tell you some analysis I just checked out:

As far as I know, the random generation of T boards still follows the idea of the T pool, set up in 2006.
The pool of boards knows five categories: Small boards (A), big boards (B), long rectangles (C), low mine density (D), and other (E).
Yariv wrote in nonosweeper news: "Each season will contain 1 board from each category (=5 boards), 1 board from a random category and 2 randomly generated boards, so we should get a better mix of boards from now on!"

In S18, we had so far:
15x4/32 -> group C
30x10/180 -> group B
12x12/40 -> group D
8x8/32 -> group A (untypical one, but the limit for A is a maximum of 8 squares for rows and columns, regardless the mine density)
10x4/31 -> only fits in E
15x15/100 -> group D

In S17, there were the following boards:
7x7/15 -> A
30x/138 -> C
25x25/600 -> B
10x15/124 -> E
19x14/160 -> E
10x15/120 -> E
5x15/42 -> C
15x15/8 -> D

So, with two boards from group D (density lower than 50%), but both boards with a relatively high low density, S18 is maybe a rather untypical season. However, S17 had only one board from group D, with an extremely low low density. But that's the coincidence.

And nonotheless, there are still two boards remaining for season 18. I would prefer a really big board with extreme high or low density but who knows which board type will come....

I think the pool system really allows a better mix, but of course, we could still make categories more extreme to make sure that a higher amount of extreme board types is taken into account in each season. On the other hand, I prefer the current solution as there is a positive chance of having seasons without 12x12/45 type boards

Happy sweeping and a fair competition!

@Nikolaj: You know that I'm slow on this type of board. So, 129 is already 21 seconds faster than my second-best time in this week and was done on quite a good board...
I think I can (I have to, respectively) live with #5 or #6 in this week, and I maybe concentrate on bringing my int average down to 13.0 or 12.8

Current standings are really nice.
@hexx: What about finishing in 101.73 - would be nice symmetry and maybe Qetuth's T win?!