The Wise Old Weasel’s Five Factors
Factor 1: Explosiveness
Part 3
OK, TELL ME ALREADY- HOW DO I GET AN EXPLOSIVE SCORE?
Fascinating question, and a great opportunity for me to expand a bit on the mission of The Five Factors. They are softcore analytics, meant to provide data points that help evaluate players and provide benchmarks on what makes a good (Caboosey) or great (Toppy) player. While TFF should reveal what a player’s strategic goals should be, the mechanisms to make those goals happen are a bit harder to find and require other forms of qualitative research. In other words, the Five Factors are meant to show you WHERE to improve, not how.
SO THE FIVE FACTORS ARE LIKE A REPORT CARD, BUT WITHOUT THE SPECIFIC FEEDBACK.
That’s… actually pretty accurate. This article will show you what Explosive games look like. I’ll throw some suggestions as to how to be more explosive at the end of this- I’m hoping we can discuss further in the comments.
OF COURSE IT WAS ACCURATE. NOW WHAT AM I AIMING FOR?
Well, alter ego, I created a cheat sheet for how to get the score you’re looking for. This will be really handy for people who are on the bubble heading into Weasel Pyle.
Hit the jump to know your target for each type of explosive game.
SO SHOULD I ALWAYS BE LOOKING TO GET 18 TO EXPLODE?
Yes… and no. While it is the best to solo, it has only happened a handful of times in 350 games. Any explosive game is of value to your season, and thus should be your second priority if you can’t solo.
LET’S START WITH GOOD GAMES.
I like that you’re starting small! I went and analyzed every explosive game since the switch to The Blessed Scoring System. 51% of explosive games fall into this 40-50 point category. Here’s the toppers average centers, runner-ups average centers, and percent of good games by country.
“Ye Ole Good Game”
Avg centers: 11.5
Avg 2nd place: 9.6
Country(%): T (22), F (21), E (19), A (13), GIR (8)
This information on its own is not super actionable- although it should give you a little more confidence when playing Turkey. So, to make it more practical, I created a flow for what you need to score at least 40, letting you know what your lead needs to be at each dot count. This is based on dot counts and the count of the runner up.
Centers (Margin over 2nd place)
10 (2.5)
11 (1)
12 (any)
HOW EXACTLY DOES ONE SPLIT A DOT?
Ha ha. The Sacred Sum of Squares Scoring System is an assessment of board dominance. This means it is better to have a margin over all of your competitors. So, while an 10-8-6 will net you a good game, a 10-8-8 may not. Thus the half dot margin- if it is a dominant margin of 10-8, you’re good. Otherwise you’ll need three.
YOU’RE SPLITTING HAIRS HERE.
Welcome to WEASTATS.
Here are the stats and flow for great games (50-60), which account for 33% of explosive games.
“Ye Ole Great Game”
Avg centers: 12.8
Avg 2nd place: 9.2
Country(%): G (24), T (20), E (17), R (13), AIF (9)
Centers (Margin over 2nd place)
11 (3.5)
12 (3)
13 (2.5)
14 (1.5)
15 (1)
16 (0)
Couple thoughts here. Obviously, we can see the margin needed is bigger. Because a great game involved taking 50% of the points plus, you can’t have someone bigger than you.
Also some data to support the “Germany is a boom bust country” narrative.
And for 60+ point games, which we are referring to as monster games, which account for 16% of our explosive games.
“Ye Ole Monster Game”
Avg centers: 15.6
Avg 2nd place: 7
Country(%): AEI (22), R (17), IG (13), F (9), T (4)
Centers (Margin over 2nd place)
13 (6)
14 (4.5)
15 (4)
16 (3)
17 (2)
18(duh)
WOW. SO MONSTER GAMES YOU NEED TO FREAKING MURDER PEOPLE.
Yeah you pretty much have to run away with the thing. Proper response to any score over 60 really should be “GODDAMN” given that monster games happen in club play about as often as solos do in tournament play.
THOSE COUNTRY RATES ARE INTERESTING.
Yeah, it appears that France has a ceiling for how explosive it can be. Turkey slumping in the monster category is likely just due to how slow it takes to develop. Also seems that AI are hard to top with, but if you do, look out.
I’ll probably look more at explosiveness by country when I update the country-by-country Wise Old Weasels.
ANY OTHER FANCY STATS?
Not any good ones. One question this did bring to my mind is if alliance play is conducive to explosiveness. I took a look at each game type and how frequently the 2nd place finisher was from the same theater.
GOOD: 26% chance of runner up from same theater
GREAT: 7% chance of runner up from same theater
MONSTER: 17% chance of runner up from same theater
Caveat- this is a very poor metric for alliance play. It is a proxy to indicate if an alliance probably held out to the end, or at least the last year.
BUT?
It does kinda show that being explosive is harder with long term alliance play that doesn’t result in a stab. While you can get away with it in good games, great games really seem to mean winning your theatre. If you’re having a monster game, it doesn’t really matter either way.
THIS SEEMS LIKE THE TIME FOR HYPOTHESES OF WHAT MAKES A PLAYER EXPLOSIVE, IE HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR EXPLOSIVENESS.
Yep. Some thoughts:
- Be willing to stab. You can’t explode if you don’t get a margin. You won’t get a margin unless your ally is a carebear.
- Stab well. As mentioned in previous articles, stabs are like breaking from the peloton. The further ahead you can get, the better.
- Get away with leads. If people try to stop you, you can’t improve your margin.
- Eliminate rivals. Tough to score bigly if someone is hot on your tail. This requires balance of power play, especially when you’re in the lead. You’d rather have two five centers powers than one seven center and one three center.
- Win the last year. Lot of dot tossing occurs in the late game, especially in bar games. Dot tossing is an easy way to pick up free points.
Now I turn it to you folks- how do you get better at these things?
