And I phail for not recognizing the failure of the server to update, thereby resulting in duplicate posts.






And I hate duplicate posts.

For some reason the blog entry comments take longer to show up than regular comments. I have no idea why that would be.

the Advisor Blog vflagged to Discussion

first of all, lol das.

now on to more boring things...

i thought this discussion was sort of dead after 20 posts, and havent been back to check in on it.. and now lo and behold its 100+. so i read through then skimmed everything. plus Verms has been poking at me saying that i should add a 5 billion word post to destroy the internet. so i will try.

oddly enough, i think the person that speaks with the most wisdom in the thread is Pat Whalen (its odd because i have always hated pat). and i also tend to agree with the Brain (sorry verms) that there is no right/wrong in this discussion of vflags. 90% of the posters might completely agree with the 3 rules, but i guarantee there is like 1% of the players out there who understand the situation and realize that the best way to win this game is to find out a way to exploit the fact that 90% of kdice is agreeing on something.

maybe that doesnt make sense. let me tangentialize (thats an intransitive verb that i just created). back at the end of 2007 (back when the game was in the glory years before all noobs and bad things came (SARCASM)), 90% of kdice played a certain way: conservative and smart, with truces here and there, and counters sprinkled in too. there were a few pgas and otfs, as there always have been and always will be it seems. it was a pretty level playing field.

and that drove me crazy. my competitive ache was desperately seeking some loophole to exploit before anyone else found it. except the loopholes i look for do not involve buying points, sharing accounts, whatever. the loopholes i look for simply use the tools that we are given on the kdice page. (self glorification is so awesome). so i realized that in the current state of the game, 90% of kdice agreed that the proper way to go was correct strategy, smart connects, smart truces and counters, 8v8s at critical times, whatever. but there was one tool that was not used (abused?) to its max potential: the chatbox.

i realized that i could just turn on some charm (and im good at that, being a people-pleaser), and people would love me so much that they would go against good strategy to help me because i was good at using chatbox (making jokes, heaping false flattery on them, whining like a little helpless princess). so i was the 1% that realized how to take advantage of the other 90%, and i earned a lot more points than i shouldve because i was on the forefront of innovation.

now, 2 years later, most of kdice has adapted to the point that 90% of kdice agrees with me that the chatbox is the ultimate tool to succeed in kdice. its at the point that i can hardly manipulate a 500 game any more, because even those are chock full of my kgreatgrandchildren who live and breath chatbox manipulation. so, for me, the playing field is level again. and kdice is dying for somebody to sneakingly figure out the next loophole (hopefully legal one) to exploit this level playing field.

ok narcissistic tangent done.

as far as vflags go, i will present several hypothetical situations which will only support my conclusions, while avoiding any situations that would disprove my wisdom.

lets look at it from the vflaggers perspective:
1) oh shit that dude can easily rape me and destroy me. i dont want to die.
2) i offer him a vflag, no matter if it is round 0.1 or round 50.
3a) if he respects it, i make out like a bandit, and get lots of dom, and an unfair advantage over everyone else who is still alive.
3b) if he rejects it, i can whine/bitch and feel like i was wronged and try to gain something from that edge.
4a) (honorable) if he respects it, i am obligated to help ensure that he finishes as high as possible, because the lower he finishes, i finish one spot lower. (sometimes when i have been in this situation, i actually shout out to someone else who might be ralling a 5v2 easy counter win: "hey dont worry, we flag 2nd and 3rd to you", without even running that past the dude i vflagged to. he is generally upset at this because i just told him he cant fight for 1st, but within a couple seconds he realizes that if i hadnt intervened like that, there was a huge 5v2 counter coming and we wouldve likely gotten 5th at best. man these situations are fun.)
4b) (dishonorable and conniving like pat or das or me sometimes): now i can build till i am stronger than the dude i vflagged to, and when someone starts to fight him, i dont help him because i claim some bullshit like "oh but we werent truced". then i watch him get smaller and more desperate until he either offers me higher placement than him or bitches and whines to his death, because i am an asshole.

ok, now from the person who was offered the vflag:
basically it all comes down to one decision: is it better for me if i let this empty vflagger steal a lot of dom but leave me a peaceful front with a small chance of any counter organizing, or is it better for me to just destroy him now and get a lot of dom, but risk not having any flags/truces with me. .... i was in a situation last night with Gurgi (a snake like me), where there was an unspoken truce evolving between me him and kj sado. it seemed that we would win eventually, but i happened to be the most vulnerable of the 3, and it would end up with me getting 2nd, and Gurgi a large-dom 1st probably. the biggest non-truced player was JoeRespectsFlags, and he was directly in front of me, whereas Gurgi didnt have any large non-truced neighbors around him. Gurgi and i realized the exact same conclusion: he would get 1st and me 2nd (all of this was unspoken, and we talked about it after the game). but then, out of nowhere, JoeRespectsFlags says to me, i flag monte. oh shit. now theres an interesting twist. at the time he was an equal with me, and i had no stacks near our front, so it even caught me offguard. but he was correct in his assessment that there was a silent truce forming based on the actions and niceties between me sado and Gurgi. he realized that a counter wouldnt work at all (in this game situation at least), so he better do something nontraditional, and offer a round 2.5 vflag to me, even though i was hardly in any current threatening stance. i thought about it for a sec, realized that sado would never attack me, since he was weak and in my ass like a flaccid penis. realized that the only other person who could keep me from 1st now was Gurgi. but if i had JoeResFlags flagged to me, they would end up fighting each other, and i would have 1st. i processed all this in about 5 seconds, and was like... ummm... I ACCEPT THAT VFLAG. then Gurgi was like wtf?!? and i (being a snake) said something like, we werent officially truced, so i obv should accept this vflag and therefore take 1st. it definitely disturbed Gurgi (but he knew it was the right decision for me, since it would give me 1st. and it didnt disturb him as much as when later that game i cut him into 4 and he got 5th instead of the 1st that seemed in his grasp).

the point of the story is there is no simple and easy formula to tell you when to accept and when to reject a vflag. but you have to look across the whole map, and come to a pretty fast decision as to whether it will help you get more or less points. and you have to decide fast, because if you dont decide fast, either 1) the vflagger will build stronger, and be upset that you havent said anything, or 2) the rest of the table will conclude that you accepted, and will form a counter.

now from the perspective of the rest of the table:
1) someone offers a vflag to someone else.
2) start typing in chatbox (but dont hit enter): "everyone lets counter this empty vflag, or else we get 3rd-7th".
3) wait to see if the vflag is accepted or not.
4a) if its rejected, you got nothin to worry about.
4b) if its respected, make a quick analysis: will a counter be plausible and successful?
4bi) if counter makes sense, then hit enter and corral the counter.
4bii) if counter doesnt look possible, do NOT hit enter, but instead immediately tell the dude who respected the vflag: "hey the rest of us flag to you too. nice 1st". by doing this, you basically command that guy that it is NOT a truce, and he should let everyone else fight for 2nd-7th. this keeps the vflagger from getting continued help from the respecter, and allows you to even form a minitruce against his empty lands (minitruce definition = a truce that doesnt want to get 1st/2nd).

ill end on that flat note.

and back to pat/brian/verm discussion.

Verms cannot say this or believe this, because he is a moderator. but this is the way that pointwhores work, and i guarantee that they will gain more points than someone who blindly follows Verms 3 wise points.

the main pillar of pointwhoredom is that you bend the rules as much and as often as possible to your advantage. this isnt just a vflag-situational-thing either.

like, when i played my secret alt in early 2009 for a few months, i realized the harsh reality of the high tables. people bent rules like crazy. like, if you as a 'noob' were early 8stacked right next to an old hand point whore (OHPW) who was also early 8stacked, then one of two things could happen:

1) you go first.
1a) you decide to move the 8v8 away, so that the two of you will easily get 1/2 instead of obliterating each other. he then rapes your ass, and when you say wtf why did you do that, he says, oh, i didnt know if i could trust you.
1b) you decide to not move away because you know he will rape your ass. he then whines and bitches that you are stupid because you should use your 8stack while you have it.
2) he goes first. he moves away, and when your turn comes around, you maul his ass, and then he whines and bitches that noobs never understand unspoken actions that show obv truce signs.

point being, that if you want to succeed (definition of success here = points, which is admittedly lame), then you have to bend those rules from game to game. which means if you are a vflagger in game 1, you only quote twisted wisdom to support why its ok to vflag there. but in game 2, where someone else is in the EXACT same situation you were in the previous game, and they vflag to you, you quote twisted wisdom to support why vflags arent magical invincibility potions.

i appreciate pat telling it like it is.

Great posts monte. All the secrets of kdice are now revealed.

"(dishonorable and conniving like pat or das or me sometimes)"
LOL @ SOMETIMES

ok. I will blank out this entry as soon as I can come up with something to replace it. Sorry to cause confusion.

NO DONT BLANK IT OUT. #@#%$@%%^#$

das, i meant it as (pat) or (das or me) sometimes. HAR HAR.

so i played a game with Gurgi last night (a different one) where we truced for an easy 1/2. but then i kept releasing enemy stacks into him, and he was like wtf, are we truced or not... and i was like ya ya, no worries. then ofc i got 1st and he got 2nd. afterwards he was like that was weird that you did that.

so then i explained to him why we went through like a year plus (maybe still now) where we realized we can never truce each other because during the entire truce we are trying to continually manipulate the rest of the table into attacking our truce partner so we can secure 1st without relying on lucky 8v8s.

Gurgi was amazed. and a little sickened i think.

Man, with all this knowledge you are dropping on Gurgi, he might never lose another month again.

Egofests are tiresome, but make for the best games.

Monte, if you seriously believe no one can be right, arguing a particular viewpoint is foolish. I do believe that some viewpoints are more accurate than others, but it seems that is not the consensus here and it's just causing trouble. (And since I am in the minority on this, I will at least consider I may be wrong. Seems reasonable.)

And fyi - rules 1 and 3 as they are worded do not require you to "blindly" follow them. Rule one just says someone can attack you if they want to even if you're flagged. The decision as to whether or not they want to still theirs.

Rule 3 says it's effectively a truce offer (sure there's exceptions but most of the time the net result is the same) but how you DEAL with it is up to you.

The second rule was the only one that I worded as a must-do, but if you reread the paragraph where I went to it in detail it is clarified better. In particular: "Good strategy on their part if they think they can get away with it, but poor form on the other players' part to let them do so."

Obviously the better players will manipulate everything under the sun to their advantage. I almost added a section on that to the post originally but didn't want to get into it. That doesn't mean there aren't thing we can generally hold to be true or typical responses, or factual reasons why Ryan added flags to the game.

I'm not really sure why I'm arguing a point if I can't be right or wrong. All I've done is waste our time. Meh.

Unfortunately I can't delete the whole entry or the title, and I don't want an official blog entry with a title that doesn't match the text. I'll come up with a few sentences to drop in when I'm not so frustrated and tempted to write "Whatever view you have on flagging is completely correct. No one can be wrong."