Ryan thanks for all the tweaking and the hard work you have put into Kdice. Just started testing the "tweak" but so far so good. Its nice to know how much you care about the game and the community.

I can't tell the difference when I'm playing, but I'm not bouncing like a yo-yo today, so...that's good

Probably wont really find out a lot until the 400 games start today.
But it seems that this tweak discourages the "noob juicing" phenomenon. And highly encourages hard fought battles for the top three players. I believe that Ryan made a tweak last week that encouraged first and second to battle it out. This one seems to further that trend. i would imagine skrum finds this fascinating. :P

Apparently I have a reputation. Since my profile usually shows fewer seconds than firsts or thirds, it must be that I tend not to settle for second.

oh that also Skrum... Just meant your a math geek.

Hi Ryan,
Really appreciate your continued dedication to the game. I've been testing the new system by playing on the 10 tables to see if strategies need to be changed.

I think I found a small bug where the score # next to your flag isn't accurate. It seems the # next to your name in the box is what you actually get.

I agree with Mikeypoo that tweaking is great fun for the players to work out.

Does this mean that when there are just two players left there is no real incentive for the loser to flag? Maybe it's just me, but that two player 8*8 phase is the most boring of the game, and it can tend to stretch out to take up more than half of the length of the game if the second-place finisher doesn't have an incentive to drop.

Taken to extremes, a losing player could just make his turns last as long as possible and goad the leader into settling for second rather than spending twenty minutes collecting the last six points.

Tirian:

Perhaps a game time limit per player as in chess. Clock can start when there are only two players left.

All:

The new ante system rewards skill in "subgames" (one-on-one contests in a corner or peninsula) as a buildup to the endgame.

Honestly, I find the one on one 8v8 end games to be *the most* strategic part of this game. It's on that field that you can see true strategic skill shine through again and again. Only the ones who can't play call them luckfests.

at the end game you still have incentive to flag if you're the smaller guy since 1st place has an increasing dom share. Your dom share will drop each round. But you won't be putting extra points into a pot with a bad dom share, you'll be getting less points from a static sized pot.