The Lockisseum

What weakened your hand at that stage was your failure to follow through on the resonance plan. You then switched to the District Line with Upminster and the Northern with Angel, losing any chance of setting up a good resonance on any significant line. While Angel was an excellent flanking move on my position, you (strangely) said that it wasn't a "brilliantly-thought-out counter-thrust" - i.e. told me that you had no way of dealing with me at that stage. With spin neutral and me controlling the flanging direction there was nothing stopping me. I don't mind playing at another person's level but to ignore that slip would have been too patronising (to my mind).

My advice would be to keep playing ahead. Look at the moves that you've made in the past and work on building on your groundwork, and look at your opponents moves and spot what e's planning. If you see me strewing tokens around on one turn, changing the bridge state on the next, and causing a signal failure on the third, it means I'm building my groundwork for later moves - I can build those together into a later move and also use them as defences. Your choice of ruleset suits your play style - you are unafraid to take chances and try new things - and this means that you can build on your or your opponents moves at any point. When I play Burlison's Enigma, use it and shape it to your own ends rather than letting me control it.

As for my play, using the District's wild status was always going to be my keystone for this game. When faced with a ruleset that gives one a lot of variability - wild status being turned on and off in different zones, for example - I tend to keep my assets in my hand and keep moving. It's also very hard to argue with a winning move that's based on the ruleset in play. My feeling is that in these 'fluid' games it also helps to keep your opponent guessing about where you're headed by having one 'obvious' and one 'subtle' motivation to your play. The beauty of that (to me) is that I can switch from one to the other quickly, while my opponent has to commit emself to treating one as more serious than the other. But I'm still working on that one :-)

To tell the truth, given people's tendencies to go active and inactive at a moment's notice (Dr Lock shows up once or twice a year, asks for challengers to a game, then never re-posts, for example), I'm not sure the "ladder" format is entirely appropriate. Besides, it sort of presupposes that people are only playing one challenge match at a time. I could live with an Elo-type rating system of sorts, which might apply across all one-on-one matches (and do away with the "friendly / competitive / unfriendly" distinctions), with the stipulation that the Champion is the Champion, no matter whether they have the actual highest ranking or not: and that the title should, as far as possible, only pass from player to player in match play.

Of course, other stipulations would be needed as well, to ensure that the champion couldn't keep on refusing a match from a strong candidate in favour of weaker ones: and that the loser of a championship match should as far as possible not be considered when choosing the next challenger.

The good thing about a ratings system which is separate from the actual distinction of "who is the actual Champion", is that it allows for the idea of the champion himself playing other games at a "rated, but non-championship" level. A sudden loss of form in other rated games would see him slip down the rankings, and thus be lower down the pecking order for a re-challenge should he lose his title (although if he continues to win the important matches, he keeps it): alternatively if he maintains his form in other rated games, he might be up for a rematch as early as the next-but-one championship match (but NOT in the immediate next one).

In other news, I'm going to be away for the rest of the week. I'll be in (very good) internet coverage for the weekdays (Open Source Developers Conference 2009) so I'll try to look in once a day but can't guarantee anything.

I'm up for a game with somebody though... any takers? Straight HP2k / latest revision.