Onward and upward

Yes, I was puzzled, and disappointed, on Tuesday to find out a former member of our team had bailed on all of us without saying goodbye, after telling us for weeks how much she loved our group. According to one of our teammates whom she had the decency to acknowledge after the fact, she will not give the reason for bailing on us. That's weak. We're a group of game players who all appreciate and support each other. There's no reason to treat us like that.

It's hard to remain upset about somebody who treats us that way. I've never cared about whether or not we win a group competition, or cared if everybody in our group is highly active. We've found some active, fun new people in the past week, and our group is better off than it was a week ago. I said in the group chat earlier today that it's time to move on, and it is. Onward and upward!

Last week I was able to take it easy during the final days of the Family Feast. I wasn't logging four hour a day of game play early in the contest, and I wasn't our scoreboard leader during most of the contest, including at the end. But I played a lot, usually while watching mindless late night TV. And I loved it. I hardly played the normal tournaments during the Feast, I ignored the prize climb and the dice master challenges. I bypassed some of my active games in order to head straight to the Feast. It was a lot of fun, even if 10 days seemed like it was a little long.

I don't remember when Yahtzee allowed us to create families, but it has been going on since sometime late last year. Like many of you, I spend too much time using computers and/or digital devices. I'm on a computer right now, typing a note five of you will read. And with no regrets.

But I knew last week I was going to make some changes in my life, short term changes. And now is the time to begin. I'm going to take a step back, so to speak, but you might not notice.

I will continue to request tournament passes and free rolls each day, and I will offer help whenever I get the chance. My help score might go down a little bit, but I'm not going away.

I might not contribute to the day-to-day chat very often, but I'll be around, and will certainly chime in whenever necessary.

There will still be contests, but I can't say how frequently they'll occur.

I will be reducing the number of games I'm playing simultaneously. That might be for a period of weeks, or it might be for months.

I won't be as visible, but I'll be around. Of that there is no doubt.

And it's time to change my screen name. I named both the group and myself after my podcast website. I don't detest being referred to as "Can't," but I'd rather be referred to by something else. So in a minute, I'll have a new player name. But the icon should remain the same. It's still me.

Spring is here, and after two hard months of winter here in Minnesota, things are much better, and I'm looking forward to big personal challenges in the months to come. I look forward to sharing my accomplishments with all of you, and eventually I'll churn out another podcast episode for your listening enjoyment.

Enjoy the spring, everyone, I know I will!

In memory of the Flamingo

While we have a Yahtzee “family,” we’re simply a loose-knit collection of players.

I didn’t create the family with any great purpose. I did it simply because I could. I named it after my podcast because I do little things like that to promote a fledgling podcast I record 10-13 times a year. I invited people I had played against to join the family, and waited for random people to fill the slots. As I’ve learned how the families benefit us as players, I’ve taken advantage of that, like many of you have. I have removed players who haven’t been active, but I never wanted the group to be militant. I never wanted a high bar for participation. It’s a game, not a lifestyle.

Our Flamingo friend, whose name is Cathy, has been an active player. Our most active player. She’s been a cheerleader for the group. And as we know, she was our most prolific Family Feast player. I don’t remember how she ended up in our group, but she did. We were all fortunate for that.

She won one of our contests, and I sent her the prize. She seemed to appreciate it. So much so that she collected souvenirs from Route 66 and sent them to me recently. I never expected anything in return, she simply did that out of the kindness of her heart.

We chatted periodically by email. I hate writing long messages on my cellphone. Sometimes our notes were about Yahtzee, sometimes they were about anything else.

She made a reference in the group chat last week about trading in iTunes gift cards to get more free rolls on Yahtzee for the Family Feast. That surprised me. I didn’t realize she was that committed to playing. I assumed her significant contribution to our team score was fueled by hundreds of free rolls, just as mine was.

Cathy really enjoyed the game, and seemed more motivated to win than I was. When we were in fourth place, my hope was we could finish in the top 3 and earn the special “chef hat” family emblem. I would have been tickled with that. She dreamed bigger, and accounted for about 30 percent of our total points. Without her, there’s no way we would have finished in first place.

She never asked to have any role in the “leadership” of the team, but offered an occasional suggestion, and provided a second opinion, when I asked. When I asked for simple help, she went beyond my request.

I figured that if I couldn’t be available for a period of time in the future, she would be a good team leader, which doesn’t actually require you to do much if you don’t want to. I never asked her to be a co-leader, I just anointed her as the co-leader, and she seemed quite honored.

Late last week I thought about how to recognize her contribution to our team. I wondered if I should initiate a small “charity” fundraiser in celebration of our accomplishment after the Family Feast, and use that to provide an iTunes gift card to her as thanks, unbeknownst to everyone. I don’t know her financial situation. For all I know she is independently wealthy. I decided that giving her a gift card didn’t seem quite right, but I wanted to find a way to put together a small gift from a bunch of us in recognition of her effort. Perhaps we still can. I have her address.

I also have a small prize in my collection for the next time she wins a contest. The prizes I award are cheap, and not specific to any one person. I have one that I picked up especially for the next contest she wins, which will be never. 

Our family is a simple group of game players. I didn’t expect that the group would be interacting 10 or 20 years from now. We’ll move on for one reason or another, or the game will cease one day, and life will go on without a “family.” I can’t imagine why Cathy went from cheerleading for us in the final hours of the Family Feast on Monday afternoon and celebrating with us in the hours after to leaving the family suddenly, without a word to any of us, and then joining another family. 

Understanding people we don’t really know is a challenge, and sometimes we will never understand why they decide to do the things they do.

I was tired last night when I typed up my Family Feast recollections and posted them. I had planned to invite Cathy to share her own recollections on this blog page, as I thought it would be fun to read some of her thoughts about the hours she spent helping us win. I guess we can forget about that.  

Cathy sent me a collection of Route 66 gifts last week, did more than anyone else in our group to help us win the Family Feast and then left us without a word. I can’t explain it, and I may never understand why. And that’s the way she wants it, evidently.

We did it!

I don't remember all the details, but I was continuously surprised by the performance of our Family Feast team.

I'm impatient, I don't always seek out the information when playing an online game. I prefer to learn by playing.

When I first learned the basics of the Family Feast game, and saw the leaderboard, I didn't have any expectations. I had no idea who would play, or how often. I had no idea how many teams would chase the lead.

Once I learned the nuances of the game, we were among the early leaders. I didn't expect that to last.

With a couple of days we were in the top 3, but clearly not the top team. I had no reason to expect we could maintain that pace.

Then a fourth team charged up the leaderboard, passing us, and turning the Feast into a four-team scramble. We were in fourth. I wondered if that was the best we could hope for.

It seemed that the top team (Animal Lovers) had a modest lead it wasn't going to give up. We bounced a bit between second and fourth. And then one night, about a week ago, I watched my mindless TV show, which I never watch without doing something else, and played Yahtzee. And played and played and played. We inched into first place. Barely.

I knew it wouldn't last, but I thought it was a moral victory, and would have been happy with that, even if we never regained the lead. I knew the Animal Lovers would bounce back. They were the toughest team out there for the first half of the Feast.

After trading the lead a couple of times, something weird happened. We built a small lead, and the Animal Lovers couldn't catch us. And the lead grew bigger. And bigger. And every time they'd cut into it by 500 points, I assumed they were going to rally. But then we'd build a bigger lead. By the final weekend we were up about 8000 points. I couldn't believe it.

And the other teams? Dicelicious was the first to fall off the pace, and they really ran out of gas. A League of our Own eventually fell off, as well, but managed to stay far ahead of fourth place. Dicelicious was passed on the final weekend and finished fifth, despite being a contender in the opening days.

Instead of having to sweat the final weekend, we could have sat on our hands. So many of you helped build that cushy lead. Thank you. It was fun to be part of a winning team.

So why did we outpace the other teams? I have a theory.

Both Flamingo and I invested a ton of rolls into games, a luxury not everybody has. And we dedicated time to converting those rolls into points. Too much time, but we did. Lots of you made a meaningful contribution. Without all of you, Flamingo and I wouldn't have done enough to crack the top 3.

I can't speak for Flamingo, but I didn't spend a dime to play the game. I had more than 2,400 free rolls at the start of the feast, and earned a bunch along the way. I estimate that between my starting total and earnings during the feast I had a bank of 2600 rolls. And when it was over I had 950. I spent over 1600 rolls, one way or another, trying to fill bags and earn points. Given how infrequent I use free rolls otherwise, the feast seemed like a perfect use of that ridiculous stash of free rolls I had accumulated. It's as if I had been saving them for months just for this occasion, which, of course, I couldn't have known.

My assumption is that the major players of other teams didn't have as many free rolls as I did, and couldn't keep up their pace of play for 10 days. And perhaps there was some burnout, as well. Some folks might have quit trying when they efforts were failing to keep them in contention for the top spot. It's all speculation on my part, but I suspect the combination of reasons I listed resulted in the downfall of every team. We were in a position to outlast them all, and we did it. Congrats to you all.

I'll have more info to share in the next few days. There won't be regular blog posts here, but it's fun to be able to write a short essay for our group now and again. (It comes easy for me, if you didn't know. I'm a newspaper reporter.) And if this blog has no purpose after this week, that's OK.

One last thing for now, I have vowed I will not go nuts if they start a new feast any time soon. And I mean it. For now, I don't have the 1500+ free rolls to carry me through a 10-day tournament at the same pace. And I won't spend money to play any Yahtzee games.  Additionally, winter might be over here in Minnesota, and while I'm not outside until midnight every night, summertime is always busier for me than the winter, and I will stay busy through Halloween. Coupled with the fatigue of the inaugural feast, I'm not in a hurry to dedicate hours to another feast, as much fun as the challenges were.

That's enough for tonight. More to come in the near future.