Open Loop 5

2012-10-15

Notes & Links

Transcript

Here is an AI generated transcript of this episode. This has not been edited or checked for accuracy, yet.

This has a cork.

As Mahdit does.

I’m undoing it right now.

I like beards with corks.

It was for the debate.

For the debate I cracked open the Ovald Orox horn aged on rhubarb.

Was it good?

I did not enjoy it.

Jen thought it was fantastic.

Wow.

Aged on rhubarb?

Like rhubarb in it?

No, like you know how some beers are aged on oak?

Oh yeah, yeah.

So instead of putting oak cubes in it, yeah, they put chunks of rhubarb in it.

Either that or they made a barrel.

Barrels made out of rhubarb?

Sounds amazing.

I can’t get the cork off this.

Come on.

How do I get this cork off?

I’ve found a slow pulling process to be the most effective.

Or if you had a sword. [laughter] You ever seen those?

They have these swords that you can cut the top off of a bottle with?

Yeah, yeah.

I’ve seen it happen.

I don’t think I’ve ever imbibed anything after that.

Frightening. [sigh] Okay.

One sec.

I gotta get a tool.

I need like a plier or something.

Like a vice.

One second here.

I’m back.

Welcome back.

I tried to use a garlic press to clamp onto the cork.

Which didn’t work, but it ripped the top of the cork off.

So then I had to actually get a wine opener.

And that worked?

Yeah.

Now I got a glass full of foam.

Alright.

This is not starting well.

My beer is not starting well.

This beer, so this beer, I, uh, this was a gift.

I got this from my mother’s husband.

And it’s supposed to be really hoppy.

It’s not like super hoppy on the nose.

We’ll see how, I gotta let this settle down before I drink it.

So what are you drinking?

This is the Hofbrauhaus Maybach.

Oh.

So last night was, I am just writing the blog post now.

Last night’s beer class was, are you recording?

Yeah.

Nice.

I missed the announcement.

I just start recording when we just talk.

I love it.

I love it.

I just record it.

From now on all of our conversations are recorded.

I’ll just assume that.

[Laughter] Last night’s beer class was European Amber, Dark Lager, and Bach.

Huh.

And I was responsible for half of the beer.

How many people are in your beer class?

Eight.

And it’s at somebody’s house?

Yeah, over in North Minneapolis.

That sounds fun.

It’s super fun.

It’s super fun.

Last night was 16.

How much of that beer do you drink?

Like 16 beers?

You just have like a little thing?

16 beers that we had that we deemed appropriate style, and there were a couple more that we decided were just not appropriate for the conversation.

Either off, so far off, or mispurchased, something like that.

It’s just my fault.

And do you like, is this like wine, like you sip it and spit it out?

No.

But you have like, you’ve got to have more than an ounce.

What is it, like three ounces or something?

It’s like a beer flight.

I use those little cheap Ikea juice glasses, and I usually fill it up about halfway.

It usually takes two of those to actually get an accurate taste to sort of work through all the aroma and the flavor and the mouse feel and carbonation and all of that stuff.

And how many classes are there in total?

And you’re on number two?

Three, yeah.

Wow.

And then there’s a test.

Let’s see here.

Style guides.

Yes, so European Amber Lager, Dark Lager, and Bock are styles three, four, and five, and we are going to be going up to 18, 19.

We’re going to go to 19.

Wow.

So at the end of this, will you be like, could you judge a beer contest?

Yes.

That’s cool.

At the end of this, to be recognized as a judge, I need to be the recognizer certified.

I think it’s certified.

To be a certified beer judge, after this class, I will go through a tasting class of six beers and need to talk about that, I need to judge them to some degree of satisfaction, and then I will be a beer judge.

That’s great.

Yeah, it’s super fun.

I wish that you were drinking this beer that I’m drinking.

I’m really enjoying it.

So I took it because I wanted to get a better understanding of the ingredients and their impact on beer.

So far I’m getting that.

Really cool.

So have you gotten the hoppiness of that beer?

This beer is really interesting.

I feel like this beer is outclassing me.

It reminds me a little bit of a Golden.

It’s not super hoppy, and the hops are not floral or fruity hops at all.

But it’s really nice.

It’s a really nice beer.

Strong amber red ale.

It’s an amber red.

Yeah, that it is.

It is cloudy.

It’s Afro-Vincent’s and slow.

This doesn’t strike me as particularly hoppy.

No, no, it’s not at all hoppy.

No.

IBUs of 22.

That’s nothing.

Nothing.

But it’s very good.

Wonderful.

Well, anyways, I’m enjoying the Mahdit, and at 8% alcohol, I’ll be sure to be enjoying it a lot.

Yeah, fantastic.

I chose the Maibach, partially because I’m a huge fan of Maibachs, but because this was the winner last night.

Oh.

It was the only beer that tasted like it was supposed to.

It fit its classification.

It fit its classification, but did so in such a way that we all go, “Wow, yes, this.”

So, if you’re officially beer tasting and judging, Surly says they go out of their way to just make beer that they like to hell with the classifications.

Yeah.

Does this class give you a different perspective on that?

Do you think, “Well, I don’t know, not really.”

What it says to me is, “Here are a collection of common targets and common vocabulary.”

Sure, you can make a, you know, whatever the Surly 6 is, you can make that, and that’s great, and that can fall under the specialty category, which is the miscellaneous bucket.

But I was thinking of this this morning, like, how does this work in understanding styles mapped to my brewing?

And what I think it does is gives me a target.

And some target is definitely better than no target.

So, at least then I can say, “All right, if I’m going to aim for this target, can I hit it?”

Right.

It’s part of the learning process.

I always try and hit one of these predetermined targets, but I don’t know that that matters.

But when being able to have some sense of accuracy in it, I think makes all judging whether or not you’re doing it against styles more effective.

Right, because you can then, you now have vocabulary, and you have a way to talk about what you’re tasting and smelling and experiencing that you wouldn’t otherwise.

A framework.

All right.

That’s enough beer.

Fine.

And we talked about something last week that we gave a preview on, and now it’s out there.

And that’s the PlanetCube sites, the PlanetCube network.

I wanted to give a quick update on that.

Fantastic.

We have people, we have teams using it.

We have 11.

That’s fantastic.

I did a count.

So, we have 11 teams signed up, and it’s working phenomenally well.

The number of teams using it, I mean, they’re posting, it’s going in the feed, it’s getting traffic and click-throughs.

And I think that I’m also really happy with how it’s set up.

It’s the first time that I’ve set up a WordPress network, and the whole network aspect of WordPress is something that I previously never really had a reason to look into.

And when setting it up, I was just pleased at every turn with how easy it was to make new sites and get them up and running with very, very little effort.

I mean, it takes like a minute to get a new site up and running.

So, it’s working well, and people are getting into it and are starting to post content.

User-generated content.

That’s right.

On the open web, too.

That they can decide to say, “Oh, hell with you all, PlanetCube.

I’m taking my blog and going home.”

Export it and do whatever you want with it.

Take it wherever you want to take it.

Fantastic.

And hopefully, I mean, so far it’s all teams, and I think once people get comfortable with it, maybe we’ll get some clubs using it.

I think it would also be fun for an event to use it.

Oh, one of the things that has also been added is language files.

So, we can now support other languages, not just English.

So, maybe we can get a club in Europe or in Sweden to sign up and use it as well.

We’ve got a Kubb and Coffee coming up.

If you’re in the area, if you’re in the listening area and are around and available Saturday morning, October 27th, come play some Kubb with us.

But, Gary, isn’t the listening area the entire Internet?

No, we’re from our sponsors.

[Laughter] Yeah, time, place, all these things are irrelevant.

[Laughter] I have really come to totally dig when setting up.

I set this up for all of my websites, but then I also, it’s become part of the Planet Kubb network as well as this open source package, PyWik.

I know you get the emails, but do you ever log into that and look at it?

Rarely.

Yeah.

It is pretty damn cool.

So, PyWik is an open source alternative, or it’s an open source, own your own data, web analytics package.

So, it would be competitive with Google Analytics or in the pay for space, something like Omniture.

As you’d expect, being open source, it’s not quite as fancy as all those things, but it’s amazingly powerful.

And you can also run it without a super heavy duty footprint.

So, the database that I have for it is about 100 megabytes of data.

And it doesn’t take a, it’s not a huge drain on the server.

It’s not negligible.

I mean, there’s maybe a 5 or 10% load for adding all the tracking data.

But it’s great because it gives you that usage information that you want.

And it supports some really, it’s really nice.

It already supports do not track, which I don’t believe any other analytics package supports.

It also has a feature that I have enabled where it will hide, it essentially anonymizes the data.

It deletes the last octet of the IP address.

So, you still get all the information about sessions and visits and geographic distribution.

But I actually don’t record that to the specific IP.

Which I think is a really cool capability that kind of allows you to still see what’s happening, but not record everything down to that individual.

Is PyWik on the same server as the rest of the WordPress install?

Well, the way I have things set up, I’ve got a database server and then a web server.

So, the PyWik front end is there and then the MySQL part is on another server.

And the MySQL part is the MySQL part for everything else as well?

Yeah, all MySQLs run on the other server and then all of the PHP and Nginx and all that runs on the web server itself.

Nice.

Yeah, it works.

It’s one of those things that when you look for web analytics, it’s a pretty barren search.

You end up finding the stuff that has been around since the days of lore.

I mean, Perl stuff that you’re supposed to run with CGI.

And it’s just ridiculous.

And so, when I discovered PyWik, I was just like, “Whoa, hey, this is great.”

And by the way, it has this WordPress plug-in that is also network aware.

So, whenever I create one of those PlanetCube network sites, it automatically through PyWik’s API creates a new website profile and adds the tracking information.

So, it’s seamless.

I don’t have to do anything.

And it just starts recording what’s going on in that new site.

One of the questions that the guys in Chaska today asked me about the team sites is if they had tracking analytics on them.

And I said, “Yes, yes they do.”

And you’ll get a weekly report in your mailbox every Monday morning.

Do you want a weekly report?

Everybody wants a weekly report.

Make a site.

Yeah, there you go.

And so, I don’t know.

I’ve been really…

PyWik’s one of those software packages.

I mean, the other thing about it is that it’s getting regular upgrades.

It just released an upgrade that added a whole new layer of geo data.

So, they now allow you to download the free database from MaxMind.

So, you can get down to city, which was probably my biggest frustration with it before was that I could see very little geo data and now it takes it right down to the city.

And that was a big gap.

And they also added the kind of report where you can see like a given page and then you see this very fancy visual that shows all the pages sending traffic to that page and then all the pages getting traffic from that page.

Those are a couple of things that Google Analytics did that PyWik didn’t do.

I mean, it’s an active open source.

Is that stuff present in the WordPress dashboard side of things?

That’s not in the dashboard.

You have to log in to the PyWik console to see that stuff.

That stuff is brand new.

Literally, that was released on Monday.

So, I upgraded on Monday morning and got that all in there.

And, yeah, it’s looking really good.

So, you can see that there’s people from Sweden who go to PlanetCube.

Hello to all you.

Actually, PlanetCube gets a lot of traffic from all over the world.

So, you know what’s cool about all that is that all of my websites, when you visit all my websites with only a couple of exceptions, there’s no company on the Internet is watching you use these websites.

Right.

The only thing watching is I’m watching myself so that I can know what people are doing.

I may have to call Foo on you.

Why?

Because of a bug that I found in 2012 the other day.

Really?

2012 has a tracker?

2012, depending on your definition of tracker.

Does it ping home to mama?

To Google mama.

Really?

Yeah.

A Google Analytics call?

Fonts, googleapis.com, open sans.

Oh, it’s using the Google font?

Yeah, rather than having it local in the CSS, they’ve linked to Google’s and – yeah.

So, Google is tracking.

We’re going to fix that soon enough anyway.

Going to have to override that font.

Yeah.

Cut it out of the header.

That’s what I did on my site the other day when I noticed it.

I’m like, “Oh, jeez, why?

I don’t know why you would do that.”

You know where there’s a call to Google Analytics that will also surprise you?

When you install a MediaWiki wiki instance.

Really?

Yeah.

As you walk through the admin-only setup screens, it pings Google to let them know that – they use it to track the number of times that people have set up a wiki.

And they sure could have just called themselves, you know?

Yeah, exactly.

Just call a URL that increments a counter somewhere.

Okay, sure you don’t get geodata and all this other stuff.

Yeah, it’s just one little call in there that says, “Hey, a new wiki has been set up.”

So, there are 39 Kubb games in the Planet Kubb wiki right now.

Okay.

Which I think is good.

I’d definitely like to see more in there.

It’s a good test case, good test set.

Yes, yes.

But I think there is enough, even with that 40, I mean there’s enough data in there, I think, to start to see things that we may not be able to see otherwise.

The stats stuff that we were talking about earlier this week?

Yeah.

Going down this road of what is the batons per field kube, or field kubes per baton rather, is the more meaningful stat there.

Right.

And, you know, with those focus on tight end casting and close groupings and short game, and all those times that you see cherry picking.

Yeah.

Right?

Is it worth it, or is there another strategy?

Can the numbers tell us that there might be another strategy?

I think even with these 40 games, I think there’s another strategy.

So, tell me, you got this number, what was the number?

1.39.

Okay.

So, explain, that’s the number of kubes felled per baton.

On any turn, if there are field kubes, how many batons did it take to knock down all the field kubes?

And then divide them.

Yeah.

So, there were six kubes, it took four batons, so that’s 1.5.

Yes.

Right.

Exactly.

And did you put minimums and maximums on this?

What do you mean minimums and maximums on this?

So, if there was one field kube, and it took two batons, is that a .5?

It’s .5.

So, you didn’t say, like, well, I’m only going to use this if there are more than four field kubes to hit.

I did not.

I said there are field kubes, what’s it take to hit them?

I think that that’s going to drive your number down.

Well, sure, because there are far more instances of – One baton at one kube.

Right.

But the multiples should pull it up, even though there are more singles.

Right.

If the multiple is – if there’s accuracy in getting multiples when the multiples exist, it should pull it up.

See, now, I like a different metric.

Right.

I like the metric of the number of field – not even the number of – well, yeah.

The number of kubes thrown, and then you take the number of kubes hit with the first two batons, and you divide them.

So, if the first two batons hit four, and there were six thrown, then you get a factor of 1.5.

Or, no, not 1.5.

I would agree that that is a really good judge of the in-caster blaster pairing.

Yes, it’s actually a .6.

So, yeah, you get a .6, which is essentially the team’s efficiency at clearing the field.

Right.

Which I think – what I want to do is I want to take that, I want to put that into the scoring system, and I want that to – I think that needs a – it needs a – well, maybe it doesn’t.

I mean, it should be tried.

It doesn’t necessarily need a minimum.

I’ve been thinking that that number is not calculated unless there are, say, three kubes thrown.

That when there’s just one Kubb thrown, it’s not – that number doesn’t come into play.

I don’t know.

I – yeah, just as likely to miss that one as anything else.

I agree.

I think we need to look at what it might actually justify as having that number be based on two – do the number where there’s no limit and then also do the number where there’s kubes greater than four.

Right.

And I think if we go to – go back to the field kubes per baton, we could do that for one, two, three, four, all the way up to ten.

Yes.

Yeah, all the way up to ten.

Yep.

Right.

So if you have a kube, it’s going to – you have this percentage.

If you have six, it’s going to take you this many batons to clear six.

But, yeah.

You know, actually, as we’re talking about this, there’s another way to do it.

You just create – you create bins for the number of kubes in play, and then you determine the average number of batons it takes to clear that.

Is that what you were just saying?

That’s what I was just saying, yeah.

That I like.

I kind of like that because then you essentially say that that is probably a more effective stat because you can actually use that in a tournament and say, “Well, I know that this team, when they have seven kubes in play, they take on average four batons to clear that.”

Right.

And so I know – and, in fact, I know that when they have nine kubes in play, their average is actually greater than six, so they leave an advantage.

That’s a more actionable calculation.

I like that.

And then you can do it for every slot.

Each number of potential field kubes?

Every number, right?

Every team has an average number of batons to clear from one field Kubb to ten.

Yes.

And then it’s also nice because you could do a nice graph.

Yeah.

You could have one through ten on the bottom.

Like the graph that you have in there right now.

One through ten on the bottom and then the number of batons, which should hopefully be a log graph.

Right.

I don’t know why we would bother putting a vertical scale on that.

[Laughter] Oh, that’s brilliant.

I hope the Onion does more of those.

I think that is a really – that, I’m loving that.

That I might have to put in.

I might have to put that into the system.

And so here’s the other calculation.

Not only do you calculate the number of batons that it takes for them to clear it on average, you also calculate the percentage of time that that team yields an advantage at that Kubb count.

Yes.

So you can say at seven, it takes them 4.2 batons on average, and 28% of the time they’re going to leave an advantage.

Mm-hmm.

Oh, that’s brilliant.

Yep.

This is where that short game – short in-casting versus long in-casting can be drawn out in the actual game play.

Dude, this is bigger.

This is the kind of thing that actually would give a team that’s going against another team, if they know this data, they know how to play them.

You see where I’m going with this?

If I know that I can break Team A at seven kubes – Right. – and I’m looking at five in play or six in play, and I know that my team breaks at, I don’t know, eight, right?

You could actually develop a strategy where you get to that seven, you purposely do not put more kubes in play.

Because you know that your team is at an advantage as long as you’re at seven.

[Laughter] You see what I mean?

Yes.

Yes.

That is pretty damn cool.

Just try and hold them there until they crack.

Just hold them there, because there’s an X percent chance they’re going to leave an advantage line and they’re going to crack.

Oh.

And if you go to eight, you know the odds flip against you.

Oh.

Don’t hit the baseline.

Exactly.

I mean, they’re going to try to hit it, right?

But if you knew that number, you’d know where to place – this is where you want the game to sit for the longest period of time.

Let them fail.

Yeah.

Dude.

Wow.

Okay, everybody.

You just heard it right here on Open Loop.

That number needs to be determined.

That needs to be calculated.

What’s your thought?

Is this something that you could get into the template and flip a few dials and turn a few switches and get it?

Yeah, definitely.

Awesome.

Because, I mean, I already know when you leave an advantage line, and I know how many kubes are in play at that point.

So I know if you left that many kubes in play and you got an advantage line, then I can determine the percentage of advantage lines left.

The number of batons that clear the field, I also know because I know field state.

Yep.

So I know if there are fields left and if there are no fields left, and I know what baton you threw.

So I can essentially say at the point that you clear all fields, just count the number of batons that have been thrown, somehow shove that into something, and then determine an average.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Essentially, it would be a new hash table that would have kubes 1 through 10 on it and then have an aggregate calculation of the averages as well as the percentage likelihood of advantage line.

Yeah.

Does this live on the team, on the player, on the game?

I don’t think it could be a valid player stat.

I think it is only a valid team stat.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it can’t be a valid player stat.

This is the behavior of the team.

Got it.

You could do a valid player stat on the number of advantage lines left.

It would be very similar to the player stat on the number of kings missed.

But I don’t think that would be a very good stat because it would be inordinately weighted against franchise players.

Essentially, franchise players are the only players that could get that.

Now, you could argue as well that penalty kubes can only be received by incaster a’s.

Right.

So there’s precedent for stats that only apply to certain game positions.

So, yeah, maybe it could be left.

But on the other hand, I think an incaster a has a lot of control whether a Kubb has a penalty.

And if a franchise player gets up and there’s four fields on all four corners of the pitch and he’s got one baton, that seems kind of brutal to say.

I guess the only way, the way you could do it would be that you could say that if there’s one field, whoever is throwing at a single field, that that’s a missed opportunity to shut down an advantage.

That would be an interest.

That would be fair.

You could essentially just say, like, if you’re throwing at a single field, then that’s a different item.

You know what I mean?

Right, right.

Because if you miss a single field, that’s a pretty painful thing for the team.

Speaking as a franchise thrower.

I like this.

I like this.

That slotting for one through ten is brilliant.

And that’s different than this whole A plus B divided by N.

That I think.

And plus it’s a wonderful visual.

You’re cutting out again.

It’s a wonderful visual.

You know, I mean, very cool.

Very cool.

Cool.

Cool.

But your point, so we went off on it too when I was playing the guys on Chaska today.

We went off on a whole tangent there.

We did.

Yeah, you were going to make a point about what the 1.38.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, right.

So all of this, that whole tangent, I mean, so this conversation will change this number, I think.

And it’ll give us a field cube quantity specific number.

But what I, from the 40 games and all the turns they’re in.

These are tournament games, right?

I mean, almost everyone is a tournament game.

Almost everyone is a tournament game.

So it’s real games, not people goofing around.

Real games with elite players.

And the average field cube per baton is 1.4.

Yeah.

Yeah, which to me is so low from 2.

Yeah.

You know, that I think help guaranteeing doubles is a far, to me, to me this number says that in-casting to doubles is a better strategy than in-casting to a big old pile of lumber.

I think the only footnote I would apply to that is that if you can make the pile of lumber touch.

Right.

Like, if they all physically touch.

So when one falls, they all fall.

Yeah.

If there’s any error, any error greater than one inch between those, you know, then I think you got problems.

But as long as they’re closer, I mean, as long as they’re to the point where if one wiggles, they both fall down.

I mean, that’s what Dobby does.

You know, that’s what he does so well.

He sets them up so they touch.

Here is my argument against that is if you look at the numbers, it’s still going to be 1.4.

Yeah.

Even with those in-casts, because there’s even tight groupings, there’s so much cherry picking that happens.

I want to see that where you factor out all times that there’s less than four field groups.

Well, we’ll get that when we do.

Yeah.

Because the argument that Dobby would make if he were on the phone here, we’re not on the phone, but if he were on Skype.

Okay, here’s.

Can’t believe I just said that.

Would be that it doesn’t, that the drilling doesn’t matter when there’s less than four cubes in play.

I think that’s an excellent question is that when does tight in-casting really matter?

So I’m picking a knockerheads game.

Semi-finals at Nationals this year.

Turn, no, that’s qubits.

Here we go.

Okay, fine.

Turn three, Josh in-casts four.

It took two batons to knock those four down.

Next turn, he in-casts seven.

It took two turns to knock those seven down.

So four and a three.

A four and a three.

Let’s grab another one.

Where is?

I do agree with your assertion.

Why are you so few knockerheads games in here?

Here we go.

I do agree with your assertion that the player on the pitch has a rational expectation of multiples.

Yes.

I agree with that.

Here we go.

Here we got Josh in-casts nine.

Yeah.

It took four batons.

What should be, so that’s like two point, what, 2.2?

The first one’s a complete miss.

Right.

I remember that one.

Yeah.

Josh threw it, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, I remember that.

Is that in the finals?

Yeah.

It was with an advantage line too, wasn’t it?

This one doesn’t say it has an advantage line.

Oh, no, okay.

All right, yeah.

Here we go.

Here we got the next one.

The next turn does.

I bet Josh remembers that one too.

He throws a nine again.

It takes, with an advantage line, one, two, three, four, five, six.

Six, and they left an advantage.

Yeah, so we’re looking at like 1.4 there.

Yeah.

I want to talk a little bit about this thing we’ve been chatting about, about in-casts arrays, multiple in-casts arrays.

Yeah, I like it.

Because this is something that is a good connection to what we were just talking about here.

There’s all this talk about teams of six or how many batons can players throw.

You mentioned it’s right, the way the rules are always set, or the turnouts are always set up is that no player can throw more than X batons.

Right.

And so team of three is no player can throw more than two batons.

And I- Alice, team of six, no player can throw more than one.

And when our fellow Minnesotans were there and they were short a guy, they threw five.

Yep.

For, I don’t know, three or four rounds until their six showed up.

Yeah.

And so they’re just a baton short.

I still wouldn’t want to play Ted Kubler with five batons.

I wouldn’t want to play Ted Kubler with three batons hopping on one leg wearing goofy hats.

[Laughter] Not in tournaments at least.

[Laughter] I mean the shuffle is distracting enough.

Yeah.

So, I, and you know, I’ve been going, I mean we haven’t been talking about it much on Open Loop, but I really, you know, the in-caste area to me is like the pitcher.

Yes.

Or like the quarterback.

And it’s like, you know, the star position.

And- You know what, I think the quarterback is a better, I think the quarterback is a better analogy than a pitcher in baseball.

Says the in-caste array.

Because, thank you, the in-caste array is a better, the quarterback in-caste array analogy is better than the pitcher in-caste array.

I don’t know if I agree with that because- Why?

Because- The quarterback calls the plays.

The quarterback is always throwing- The quarterback calls the- Things his teammate can catch.

The pitcher is, the pitcher is the opposing team.

No, no, no.

What?

The quarterback is calling the plays and quarterbacks aren’t always the team captain.

Right.

So- Right.

They’re more like pitchers.

The quarterback doesn’t throw stuff that his team can’t catch or shouldn’t be throwing stuff that his team can’t catch in the same way that an in-caste array should not be throwing stuff that his team can’t hit.

I’ll give you that.

I’ll give you that.

Hence my whole debate about throwing long.

Right.

That in-caste array should throw- I keep telling myself that.

Only in-caste what you can hit.

Yeah.

You should throw long if your team needs you to throw long.

But I really like this idea and we both have the same conclusion is that perhaps it’s time to visit a rule and maybe we just play like this but perhaps there’s a time when there’s a rule that says that an in-caste array can’t throw more than five.

And I think I would, I would really love a serious exploration of that.

Yes.

Yes.

And I think we, I think we start that exploration by playing that way.

And I think what that does, I think that does two things I think.

One, it relieves your in-caster, especially if the in-caster is also supposed to throw batons and that’s a separate conversation.

And it splits real nicely, right?

You only, you’re only going to really need a relief in-cast array when you start getting a lot of wood.

Yeah.

Right?

When the game is just long and intense.

It’s a short game.

Yeah.

A couple of, a couple of field cubes, you know, finish it up.

You don’t need that.

But if you’re, if you got all ten, you’re gonna need some help.

I really also, I mean, I, you know, common sense would suggest that if, if the same, if one person has thrown seven, that they’re going to be better at placing eight through ten.

But tournament play says maybe that’s not the case.

I mean, I think that it’s very possible that, you know, somebody throws five and then that’s actually better for a fresh arm to come in and throw the next four.

Yes.

Yes.

I don’t think, I mean, it’d be interesting to try like interleaving and throw one, throw one, one, one, one, one, one.

But, you know, I think this is something that we definitely should try.

And I think one of the things I think needs to, that we need to be careful in Coov is that teams don’t just become an incastorate with some dudes.

Right?

It’s like, oh, look, there’s, you know, there’s Dobby and then some dudes, you know, or.

So tell me, tell me more because it sounds like a pretty rocking garage band, Dobby and some dudes.

Well, I mean, you know, last year in Coov Nation had the big drilling thing.

And I think in the last two years, you know, everybody’s been doing drilling.

And now, I mean, it was even said today on Ask Planet Coov, you know, on Dano in Pennsylvania, was asking, you know, is the eight meter the new most important throw now that everybody can drill?

And my reaction was, well, when did it ever become not the most important throw?

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean.

It’s almost the only throw.

And I pulled together the quick selection of games that were done in any most of those games were over in three or four turns.

Yeah.

Right.

And that’s just because of baseline accuracy.

Yeah.

I mean, I guess my point is that there’s this is where to me the baseball analogy, you know, I mean, pitching is important, but it’s not the whole game.

You got to have hitting too.

And and I think, you know, for a period of time, there was just a extreme focus on that.

And I think that that’s not necessarily great for the game.

So and I actually I really do like the idea of forcing multiple in caster areas.

I think it I think it would force teams to be more balanced.

I mean, it’d be really interesting.

You know, think about nationals.

If in that final game, Dobby doesn’t throw every coup.

And who was in caster for the kuzicles?

Was it Mark?

No, Zach.

Oh, I don’t remember.

Yeah.

So, I mean, I think it’d be really, really interesting to see what happens.

Yeah, I totally agree.

And I like that.

I don’t know.

It’s it’s one of those things where it’s.

Easy to try out.

You don’t need you don’t need to have a rule passed to to see if this is a good idea for your team.

Yeah.

The only I mean, the way that it might require a rule is if it turns out that it’s it actually hurts your play.

I mean, you know, the thing I’m thinking of here is, you know, in Formula One, the groove tires.

Are you familiar with this?

No, I’m not familiar with this.

So in Formula One for years, they raised slicks and and they and slicks were amazing.

I mean, they’re like, you know, they’re like glue.

But they they were so good that the cars were just stuck to the ground.

And and, you know, there was less excitement for the fans.

And so they changed the rules years ago to require groove tires and much to the chagrin of the teams, because that meant that the cars spun out of control more often.

They couldn’t corner as fast.

They are, you know, they not arguably, they clearly did not drive as well as they did with pure slicks.

Got it.

But it was better for the sport.

And so, you know, you may very well find that having two in castor a’s means that you play much, much less well than a team with a single in castor, but that also might make the sport better.

Aluminum bats hit balls farther.

Pros don’t hit with aluminum bats because they hit every home run.

Right.

Right.

I mean, that’s very common, I think, in sport that you’re not you’re not always choosing the most optimal route.

You’re always choosing the route that makes for the best game is an interesting question.

So if you had if you had if you were playing when you’re in Castro, you can only throw five.

Who throws the first ones?

I think the relief guy does.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Relief.

The relief in Castro, presumably being a lesser in Castro.

Presumably.

Yes.

Different than baseball, although you don’t really have a starter in baseball.

They’re just entirely different type of pitchers.

So the analogy doesn’t work.

But what do you mean entirely different kind of pitchers?

Well, you have starting pitchers and then you have the relievers and then the closers and the left handed specialist.

Yeah.

But I mean, your starters are the workhorses that can throw six innings and then your relievers can throw.

And then your relievers come in and, you know, work, work the heat and then the closers can shut it down.

And then that you don’t there’s no analogy there.

So fair enough.

But I do like this idea of not throwing more than five.

This goes back to that conversation with Akebe or team team from team Akebe.

Right.

Just get better.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It also goes to us having games that go for eternity.

Right.

Which I think is another way of saying get better.

I am so jazzed about this idea of that slots.

Yeah.

It takes four point two batons for this team to clear seven field cubes.

I mean, that’s the kind of thing that like like Aaron Albringer when he’s commentating.

Right.

To be like, all right, kubicles are throwing seven.

Right.

In tournament play, kubicles take three point eight batons to clear seven.

Let’s see how they do.

They clear it with two.

Yeah.

And that’s gorgeous.

We got some new people come into the to our Cuban coffee on Saturday.

Yes.

Yes.

I thought I thought it would be good to, you know, make it make it a friendly.

Get some get some new people out there.

We got at least five.

Send out emails inviting inviting people who I think should play.

Yeah.

That is is Patrick going to be there.

He says he’s going to try and make it work.

Please, Patrick, if you’re listening, please make it work.

All right.

Because I just want to hang out with Patrick.

He’s a cool guy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So if you’re calculating the number of batons, it takes the clear and number of field cubes.

You got to count penalty cubes in there.

Oh, yeah.

So if you have three if you have three field clues, one of them being a penalty cube, you know, that still counts.

Yeah.

Yep.

Penalty cube is a field cube.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I’m going to have to I’m going to have to work on that.

I’ll see if I can spin up some some initial numbers as well.

A little a little more, you know, with my abacus.

You know, it wouldn’t be bad, actually, to by hand calculate that for one game.

And then then, you know, if the math is actually working.

Yeah.

We can actually see if this is as useful as we hypothesize.

Oh, no, I know.

I know it’s terribly useful.

I have no doubts in my mind about that.

Let’s let’s call it.

Let’s let’s I want to I want to do some preliminary work on these numbers.

All right.

Good.

Cool.

Hey, I’m a traffic recording.