The episode you have been waiting for - we talk about how to get better at Pokemon.
The episode you have been waiting for - we talk about how to get better at Pokemon.
toward wrote an article like an article came out of towards today. Strongest grass deck. All right. Well, strongest grass deck still suck. Like you can build the strongest Grastek you want still going to be terrible. Okay.
Brent:Mary. Very cool. All right. Welcome to the trash lanch. I'm Brett Halliburton here as always with the Brut privates and Mike Bouschet attendance is 100%. You guys will be happy to know that we are now up to age five star reviews. It's all five stars all the time. And we got another review. Cam zero zero nine says five of five podcast. Love this podcast. I was hoping you guys could talk about what you guys do to improve as a player. Also, please pronounce alternatives correctly. It's driving me insane.
Mike:I think I pronounce it. Right. I think I pronounce it right. We started off not knowing, but I think, I think it's a turn to test and not after novice.
Brit:Yeah, I know I'm that's I am the one saying it incorrectly and I it's one of those things, or I I'm at least mostly aware that it's incorrect and instance, but that's a habit at this term. Like I know I'm just saying tornadoes essentially with an E on the front.
Mike:It's funny. Like I, there's a couple of Pokemon that, you know, Just forever, like growing up with my brothers, we would say it a certain way. And then many years later we found out that we were saying it wrong. And like, you look back at the spelling of, and you're like, obviously it's that, but so like, one of the examples is Cuyahoga. Like for some reason we just always had it as Kairos. And cause maybe like we just saw it, you know, the R and the G switched around. Maybe it was just easier to say that way. And like for years and years we were just calling it that, and then, eventually someone was like, what Pokemon are you talking about? Yeah.
Brent:It's like Tyra rogue with a K
Mike:Right. Exactly.
Brent:you know, I mean, look at bread, farm. I feel like in pop culture, there's spellings that are pronounced totally different than it could ever possibly be interpreted from their, spellings and Pokemon should be no different. But I think, I think cam makes an excellent point. Can we super appreciate both the review and the fantastic feedback because you're right. I don't know if it's bread's fault or if it's my fault, but, but somehow I definitely feel like every time I say it, it makes me cringe a little on the inside because I don't know what the heck is going on. Like I just somehow got off completely on the wrong foot when it came to, that Pokemon. what about what? Yes. What do you do to improve as a player? How would you guys answer that?
Mike:it's a lot of steps to it, I think. and I think we could probably like do a whole show on this, but the first thing that comes to mind to me is like, play the. Play the good decks. Like, I feel like it's a, it's an, when, when you start, you really want to like make your own stuff. And that's like the unexciting part, of, of the game, which is deck building. That's a really important part to, to work on at some point, but I don't think it's the most important thing early on. I think it's better to like get in games with the best ex and so I don't, it's hard to give one person good advice. Because you don't know where they are as a player. but I don't know that that's the first thing that comes to my mind is like play the good decks and watch other people play the good decks and then you'll understand why they're good. And then you can use those ideas to help you build your own unique decks.
Brit:I think for me, my, at least a lot of what I have to sort of recommend is I think I've hit it, talked about it a little bit. And a lot of it is just being honest with yourself. I think we have a very natural inclinations to shrug off most, a lot of losses, most of our losses as being, not our faults. And you know, sometimes they are not, they are out of our control, some bad randomness and all that can happen, but a lot of times too, We're just not, sort of critical enough about our own play and, you know, I, I failed to qualify for. The players cup. And I know that I should have been playing better. Like I know I have some bad luck to talk about too, but so does everyone who played 50 keys? It's a lot of variants in there. but then also too, I mean, some of this is going to be sort of hampered by our online only events, but just don't be afraid to ask. So again, in sense, like if you, you play a good player or something and you narrowly lose, you perhaps were in a. Or position where it looked like you were going to win and you don't understand what happened. You just talked to them like, Hey, did I make a mistake somewhere? You know, what, what about, what about this game was easy for you essentially, you know, to, and then kind of back to what we were saying to kind of, regardless of the format, the good players seem to always do well, And that's for good reason. And I think it's sort of a combination of all of these things, but like Mikey said too, there's, there's so much of it. So many sort of, building blocks that you need as your foundation before you can kind of work your way up to the harder Netta, more difficult stuff. But I think at the end of the day, as long as you're hungry for it, you want to improve. It'll come naturally, but.
Brent:So I have maybe three things that I'll, I'll say as, as by far the worst player here, I'm so much advice. so one thing that I think is interesting is like one of the things that I think is weird, that I've watched people publish all their spreadsheets about them playing out their keys and how the results went, that that I think is important. And I think Brett kind of got it is keeping track of your results and being real about like, Like, you know, writing off your losses as like re like I recognize there's definitely biased when you don't keep track of how a deck is actually performing to understand if it's a good deck or not. And if you're, if you're testing a deck to see if it's a good deck, you, you have to keep track of that stuff. And the thing that I think really surprised me when I see people's spreadsheets that I always take really seriously is I always track who went first and who went second, because I found for a lot of decks. It makes such a huge difference. you know, I, I haven't met him, you know, my son, when he got second to console originals, we played a Zuora rock and, you know, he played approximately 20 games on each side and he went 50 50 when he went second and he won every game, but one in the, but one when he went first, Because like, that's just how it be. Right. And you know, if you went second all the time, you would think that's a bad deck, but if you would, first of all, the time you would be like, this debt cannot be beat. Like you got to track that stuff. Cause you got to know what's really, really, really happening. the other, the other, the two other ideas I have are, are actual, like trying to get better to in game play. we play a lot of turns. Open-handed when we're practicing and I recognize it's harder in a time of pandemic, but I think the more you can have somebody kind of stare at, you know, kind of looking over your shoulder, like all the coaching that my kids have done with Britt and Mike, like there's a lot of. No, they're on PTC geo and they're playing a hand and Britt and Mike are looking at their hand and they're talking about how they should think about the turn. And I think the more input you get, the better off you're going to be. I mean, practice in every sport, they say like, practice, it has to be intentional and you have to be trying to get better at something. And if you have like a goal and you're getting input on that goal, I think it helps make that practice more productive. on a related note, the third thing I was going to say, it was like, when, you know, Mike, maybe you've gotten this all the time, but one of the things that I thought was really unique when we were testing with, Sam chin, we, my kids got the chance to play with him once. And once he was practicing, the way he practices is like at the start of the turn, he tells you what he's trying to do. And he looks at his hand and he tells, he tells you the probability that he's going to pull it off. Like, he's like, you know, I'm gonna. I, I need to hit these three cards. It looks at his deck. He looks at his hand, he says, I'm going to ultra ball for a day day. I'm going to date this whole hand away. you know, there's 20 cards left three-card combo. I know there's, there's three of each of those outs. I have a, you know, 60% chance of hitting it. And then he'll like play out his turn and see how right or wrong, or like, like what kind of randomness he gets. But, but the fact that he's that thoughtful when he practices about. Like how the term is going to play out. And, and obviously like when you calculate his probabilities, he's planning out the sequencing. you know, that's probably a really good exercise that, that we don't do enough on practice, but, you know, it, it seemed like when he was practicing, he was getting more value out of practicing than we were. I was like, man, he's already better. He doesn't need the value.
Mike:Okay. So, you both of you reminded me of some things. So one thing is, when I'm recording results and this is something that I've picked up specifically from Ross. Sam does it a little bit as well, but we'll record like. Not just, not just binary wins and losses. we'll sometimes we'll write it as like a 0.5 or 0.25. If we, you know, sometimes there's literally scenarios that come down to 50 fifties. but sometimes it's a little more complicated and we'll write those down as, we usually don't go further than 0.5 or 0.25, and like 0.7, five. but I think that can help a little bit, Show some of the nuance of match-ups and how close some games are. and the other thing, so getting specific on, what Brett was saying about essentially being reflective on your own gameplay. there's lots of times where I try to make a mental note in a game of this is a deciding point. That is a huge one. Like branching paths, where if I make this decision, I have to go on this game plan. And if I make this other decision, I have to go on a very different game plan. and I think it's especially important to note those as you're playing them. And then, you know, if you're practicing with a friend, you can actually play through both of those scenarios. Sometimes depending you can like roll the game back to that game state. But if you're playing online, You can still like play through one of those and if it works out or if it doesn't work out, go back to that situation and try to replay the game in your head. Like what would have happened if I did this? And sometimes you'll notice that, you know, at the time it seemed like, you know, Pat was a better decision, but maybe gaining some more information over the next couple of turns, you look back at it and you say, okay, maybe path B was a better line of play to go for it. and so I think like being specifically reflective about, game States, like that can be really helpful as well.
Brent:Yeah know, that's one of the nice things about the fact that like, obviously I have my kids at home. We can like physically play with cards. A lot of times we'll like, take a turn. And then if we don't like how it went, like rewind it back and I played a different way. Right. we, we can also say, we talked about this a lot, like, eh, it's funny how, when they're playing against me, I somehow don't have the card. I need to win in hand. And they're like, you know, they're trying to play to their outs. And you know, when, when they're playing against good players, players always have the card they need.
Mike:Yeah,
Brent:We're always trying to enforce, like, you got to assume that they have the stamp or they have the boss's order. Like, whatever it is that they need, like, you should play your hand. Like they've got that card and, you know, it's easier when you're playing somebody to know that when you're just like laddering and PTC Creo,
Mike:but that's, that's a really interesting point too, because, you have to recognize, I think. As you get better, you start recognizing, am I ahead in this game or am I behind? Because you have to play differently in different situations. If you're ahead, you want to essentially mitigate your risk. So you do assume that they have X card. but if you're behind, there's sometimes you need to make plays and be like, you know, I'm going to assume they don't have that card because if they have that card, I lose the game anyway. So let's just play. Like they don't have it and give my chances. Give myself a chance to win the game rather than, you know, if I play safe and I'm already in a losing position that I'm always gonna lose. Right. so, so like one of my favorite examples, there was a gang Gar. Okay. I dunno, legends weekend. Oh, that was like in 2008, 2009 format. And its ability wise, if you knocked it out, they flipped a coin. If heads they kill you back, And one of the common strategies was using, Oxy, which to knock it out to do 20, and then it would get shuffled back into your deck. And so you get, you would get around in their ability, but there was lots of situations where, you know, you're behind against this gang guard deck. Sometimes you just got to knock out the gate guard and hope they flip tails like that. Like that's, that's it like can't play around it. Sometimes. You just got to hope that you get there. Great. Why did you have that?
Brit:Oh, it was just sacrilege towards the Stormfront set. I can't believe you didn't remember that set. That set is so good. And gang guard is just one of several very, very awesome cards in that set.
Mike:yeah, that is one of the best,
Brit:Some heresy. That's all.
Mike:that is one of the best sets that bear.
Brent:All right. So cam Kim zeros are nine. Hopefully that, that satisfied your, two objectives in your view. We very, very much appreciate it. Keep the reviews and the questions coming. We will read every review on the pod. It is absolutely fantastic. All right, Mike, you want to talk about agro bike?
Mike:sure. So recently, Oh, actually one deck that we should talk a little bit about, is the XQ drill, chin Chino deck, the attacking one that's sander. From Europe, posted. But, so we'll talk about that in a little bit, but that kind of sparked this thought in my mind, he was playing judge whistle in the deck and it's really any mentions, I think, in his tweet that he would like to play acrobatic. Obviously Acrobat would be phenomenal in a deck like that, that wants to burn through your deck. But it just got me thinking about agro bike in general. I really, really miss it in this format. I really missed it at the beginning of this format. And then I kind of forgot about it. And now thinking about it, Morgan, I feel like Aqua bike is just a very balanced card. it's not too strong, you know, there's an inherent risk in playing it yet. Some decks can get a benefit. Like for example, Mallomar, if you played acrobatic, you have to, you hit an energy to discard. That's really great, but there are. You know, very inherent risks, even in a deck that has benefits, you know, your acrobatic in a tube Alamar's that sucks a lot. and it was a card that I think enabled you to play less to Denny and Crow bats, or Chrebet wasn't really out, but it allowed you to not have to play as much of the GX, you know, coming into play draw cards, which I think is. Somewhat of a contributing factor to, you know, how good ADP is in this format. like if, if of scores, for example, had access to acro bikes, I think it wouldn't, it might not have to play to do DNA and a probate. Right. Just have to play one of those cards because Acrobat plus Geraci I think was a really powerful engine, especially, and center score obviously has synergy. If you just got an energy, that'd be really good. Part of this was also, I was thinking about just different centers, Birch decks this week and how they just all feel so clunky. And I feel like if they could run for acrobatic, they would run much, much smoother. it's just, it's such a healthy card. Yeah. I would really enjoy seeing it reprinted, you know, they they've chosen to include. Juniper Sycamore research and every single format switching, basically every single format like Acrobatiq is a card that I wouldn't mind being in the format pretty much forever. it'd be like acrobatic, even ultra ball. algebra was a little bit, maybe a little bit too strong, but acrobatic, I feel like is not too strong and not too weak. That goes through phases of being good and bad as well. Like sometimes it's bad. So I don't know. You guys, The sacrifice as much as I do.
Brent:yeah. So your ultra ball is interesting, cause like, I feel like. There was that there was that brief window where there was no ultra ball, like right when netball came out or something like that, there was a window where they were like, no ball cards and format for like six weeks or something. And that was a weird format. I don't like how quick balls replaced ultra ball, because it's part of, it's just more and more of this, like March the big, basic specs, like, eh, you know, if quick balls, the bowl card of choice and ultra ball is out, like, why would you play a stage one back? It makes it that much worse. It's horrible. that, you know, the acrobatic things is interesting. when you guys look back on, the universe of cards, like I remember when we first started playing, we started playing during like plasma, like right as X Y was getting released. I mean, TDK with our first deck, we played bicycle. Are there other item-based draw cards throughout time that have been like really good or we're better or
Mike:is very unique. I mean, trainer's mouth. The only thing that even comes to mind.
Brit:There were, and it was only, there were typically only played in. One kind of deck, but, the like, Schupp it donk type Oxy doc type decks played a lot of items that were all pretty good. They just never quite found a home in, any of the other sort of metadata, but it was really good in that deck because he just wanted to. Burn through your deck in one turn. So you only have like one energy and plus powers and you just do 20 and go back into your deck. And, you know, you draw it at the end of draw it back at the end of every turn or at the start of your turn and just kind of loop with it. and then there was the poker radar, which was occasionally played in Beedrill. It was, it was kind of, I think I looked at the top seven and you could take any Pokemon you found, But yeah, those are the only ones I can think of from the time I play it and nothing in the world sticks from the IEX era. There's nothing really comes to mind. But yeah, bicycle for, for me was I think kind of a big deal when it got printed, people thought I was going to be really, really broken and of course it wasn't, but it is a pretty good card. and. I don't miss Sacra bike specifically, but I think I would like to see some different evergreen cards. Like I don't think professors research is a good one to have. For instance, I would like to see more stuff like ACRA bike, more stuff like, I'm not sure what even else would be. Just like the slower cards. I don't like the March to big basic sort of is hand in hand with just the drop through your deck. Carrot care to the wind with your resource resource management and whatnot. I just like the game when it's a little bit slower. I think so. I think Acker bike is good for even slow decks. So I think it would be a welcome sort of new addition to the cards that we never get rid of. No.
Brent:I feel like my introduction acro bike was, and I don't know if there was a version of agro bike prior to this, like with the night March set. And you had trainers males, and you had acrobatics and you had battle compressors and you would just burn through your entire deck, turn one. And it was great.
Mike:That'll compressor is not a card that should ever be reprinted.
Brent:you know, I think I want to say Brit, I think you were the person who was lobbying virtually from like day two, that they should errata that card to discard two cards.
Brit:I remember I was, I do think I was harping on it as being the problem card long before many people. I remember, I think there was a six presidents article I wrote. About it about just the interactions. I don't remember wanting to live in it, but I do. It was just, it was clearly the problem card. And then just time and time again, it kept being the problem card for all these control decks and things like that. But yeah, like with night, March and things like that, they sort of only have gotten better across time for the most part. But just the game itself was often decided on how many battle compressor you played on your first turn. And it was like, did you see three? Or maybe even four. It just doesn't matter what you're playing anymore. The games over and, you know, things like that. But I just think that, yeah, I definitely, definitely don't think that'll compress or did really anything healthy for the game. That's for sure. It was occasionally cute as like a one-off, but even still, it was just such a. Consistency boosts. Like it just worked too well with the supporters. When we had the S seeker engine still, it was just too good. And so with your flare rounds and your night March, just discarding any card in your deck practice gets you so many, anything you need and then even Sark just get your eggs, all sorts of things. Just not a
Brent:print it, printing it while bringing versus seeker back in the format seemed, a little too cute almost. But I remember Russell APAR. I remember him like the day they banned Lysander's Trump card. It was like, like the following week, there was a league cup ad that we went to, or I don't know, maybe it was a States back then or something, but he was ranting about how they had to ban battle depressor because he was like, they printed battle compressor at the, you know, in the same set, they printed Trump card because you need a Trump card to offset how incredibly stupid battle compressor is. And this is going to be the death of the format.
Mike:Yep.
Brent:And I, you know, I guess you're, if you're Russell, you said saying before, but it's dead. I was right.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. I that's what I was going to say too. Cause like they printed compressors counter and then they banned it and. They've obviously never tested battle compressor without Trump card.
Brent:No, I mean, having said that, I felt like it turned out, you know, a supporter with being the counter was not. A strong enough counter. Like people were still going. I mean, you would just put in all this item-based draw. And I mean, so many decks, like, I mean, we were playing the, you know, execute lock deck. Right, right. When they banned the Trump card and like, you would literally burn through your entire deck, turn one. And then Trump card at the end of the turn and you do it again. The next time it was easy.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The seismic load in the executive deck, both with just like alternate, plain Juniper and a Trump card. Every other turn is crazy.
Brit:Even sometimes too, the Trump cards weren't even enough to be the night March or the flaring on. Sometimes they would just, all right. Versus seeker disco, like they would just do it again. Their deck would be at that point, just nothing but Pokemon and still just enough ways to discard everything I read. Like it would be different when you could quake and punch in things too. But I remember playing decks where you would just kind of tech the Trump card because. Had general utility, but then in these match-ups like maybe it would be enough and it wasn't usually you had to have, you had to have something else behind it too, even just playing it on its own. Wouldn't stop the battle. Compressor decks.
Brent:Yeah. I feel like guys like rubble, where were you saying? You know, you had to figure out if they were playing Trump card and if they were, you just had to make sure you didn't play two of your battle compressors and then you'd wait for them to Trump, you, and then you just do the whole thing again. It was easy. As long as you, you know, it, it put pressure on the other side to manage their resources a little, but it wasn't like onerous guys.
Mike:Anyway, that brought us on a tangent. Yeah.
Brent:I feel like we're bad predictors because it, I think it ended up being so much worse than we expected.
Mike:Yeah, I was the closest, but I was still low ball in it. I think it ended up at Haiti nine 89 with bubbles, like some 80 nines. Won't make it. I think that's right. Let's see. Okay. I have it up. Yup. 89 is bubble.
Brent:Yeah. I mean like, I mean, if Britt didn't make it and I think we'll Jenkins, didn't make it. I mean, who are the, were the players that qualified? it was really tough. There's no question. I think this turned out to be much more difficult than I think people expect it.
Mike:yeah, at least for North America, I feel like Europe and Oceania was about as expected. I don't have all the points for all for those regions, but Europe was lowered, I think in the seventies, low seventies and Oceana was really low. but that was as expected Oceana, I think pretty much everyone expected if I try it all, I'll make it in Europe a little bit more involved. But yeah, I think the North American, I dunno. So you can see how many people have. Have played any of these tournaments and it's almost 3000 people played in these events, at least one at least. And something like 2000 of them got some amount of points.
Brent:Right. I was going to say I was number 3000. It was great. so you want to talk about some of the results. I know you've spent a little bit of time pouring through the list. Mike, you want to, you want to tell us what you're saying?
Mike:So, how do you think it's worth shouting out? Some of the people that maybe we recognize there might be people in here that are good players that are known, but I don't know them matched up with their usernames, but I met Ali from Georgia. He came in third, Azule ended up in six place, Ross finished 10th.
Brent:True story about a metal Lee. When I met him, I thought he was a folk at dad. And I was like, they're the Poconos, you're killing this tournament. He's like, I'm not a dad. I'm like your dad enough for me.
Mike:That's really funny. I feel like I know who shiny Idino is, but I can't remember right now. He's number 12 or she's number 12. Polka. Hawkeye is Andrew Hendrick. Who's really proved himself and online scene number 14. Jake Gearhart. Number 19 also proved himself in a downline circuit. Ended up finishing 16, as a brand new 22, Justin Lambert, 25. Once we got Andrew Mahoen 47 flying casual 49. I don't know if that's Tate or a bleed. Do you know Brit. TSP is 51. That's Johnny Rabis. what else? We got you PIP. 62. That's Alex Mansky, Danielle tibia, 66 chip Richie, 70 grant Manley, 82. I know who Terrana Tara is, but I don't remember is that, That Charles our lunch Taran, maybe
Brent:It might be.
Mike:that's right. So I just looked at the top hundred. Those are the people that I know. I was trying to look for pram. I don't know if he's on there. I know his name and, I don't know if he doesn't look like it. He a cram at 79 points. So he missed.
Brent:two, three weeks ago, I watched him just like completely implode his first, like seven or eight keys he played. And, and then like he was ready to tilt and throw his keyboard and stuff. It was pretty, he had the crazy bread hands. It was brutal.
Mike:So the other thing I wanted to talk about is I watched, obviously I finished my keys awhile ago, but so I was watching some of the streamers that were still, that still had their keys. Cause. I was surprised at how many good players posted on Twitter. Like, Oh, I just finished my cookies. You know, this was like last Friday, last Thursday on Saturday, Sunday, some of them like step on posted that he finished them last week. Robin said that you, I think we've talked about it last week that we were surprised so many people had, kind of put it off. And so I would watch him chip stream on Sunday, I think. And he still had like 10, 15 games left at that time. And. Those tournaments looked way harder than the average ones that I was playing. like there was like two or three tournaments in a row. He got paired against someone that he knew who they were, like one, so, so just, and all the games he was playing almost all metadata ex you know, throughout my 20 minutes. There was at least some not medics. And then there would often be like metadata, but they clearly weren't a great list. Or, you know, maybe the person made some obvious mistakes and it just didn't seem like that was happening while I was watching shift play. and so it just seems like the last couple of days were significantly harder than throughout the whole thing and the tournament's were filling up like super, super quick. so. That just goes to show that there was much, many more people playing as well, which inevitably leads to higher difficulty. So I do like my strategy of kind of spreading it out over time and not waiting until the end, because it does seem like the very beginning, like the first week and the last couple of days were the hardest times. So that's good to know. I think going forward.
Brent:so Kyle Renfield is, famous for playing Sylvia on decks all the time. got in with, I think a hundred a rep and basically played ADP the whole time. But so he did his differently than you did. And I think we've seen a couple of people do this, essentially. He set aside a weekend and he played all his keys over like two, eight hour days, because he wanted to recreate the tournament experience. He was like, I'm going to tournament zone mindset. And, and do that. Do you feel like, you feel like you were able to, like, did you play more keys on, on days you were feeling good or were there times when you tried to like dial it in versus like, ah, you know, I'm feeling a little mentally exhausted. I'm not going to play any keys today.
Mike:there's definitely some days that I skipped and I think the max number of tourists I played in one day was five. the one benefit of how I did it was if I. Lost a tournament and was frustrated. Sometimes you lose a tournament and you're not that frustrated. Like you lose a game and you're like, ah, whatever, you know, I did my best, but some games you do end up being frustrated. You're like, ah, you know, I had a 70% chance and I missed it and you just start to go on tilt. And in those scenarios, I can just be like, all right, done for the day. I don't want to play anymore. And I don't feel bad about that or anything where, you know, if I was. Doing a more marathon type of thing. I would have to, you know, maybe I'd take 15 minutes to cool myself down, but then I would kind of be forcing myself to play again. And I don't particularly like being in that frame of mind. So that was a
Brent:I wonder if I was all tilty, would I stop or would I say, Oh, I got to play another game like this. And sucked into video games where I'd be like, I can't end on that note. So I better play again. And then I wait and I'm like, Oh, I'm winded. I should keep going.
Mike:Yeah. Right. That's I forget, I remember I saw a tweet like a couple of months ago. That was basically that effect. It's like, you tell yourself like, well, I can't end on a lot. And then it's like, well, you win a game. You're like, well, I can't. And not just one win, it's gotta be a wind streak. but so I like, I really kind of that rule for myself though that if I B and I, and I tried to stick with it, if I got frustrated from a loss, I would stop playing. Generally, if I kept winning, I kept playing. and you know, there was only one or two times where, like I won so many times in a row that as I go, okay, but it's been four tournaments or something like that, you know, that that's just statistically not going to happen very often. You're going to lose more often than you, you know, you're gonna lose more. Tournament's maybe not more games than you win, but, So, I don't know. I can see the merits of bolt. Yeah. I can see the merits of both, wham bolt posted an article yesterday or this morning, maybe unlimitless. And he talked about his strategy, which was similar, not quite as intense as just the weekend, but he played the mall, during a week's time. And he said the main reason for that is so he didn't have to adjust for like a changing metagame, which I think also has, some validity to it. For sure as I was playing the second half of my keys, I was much more aware of peek around the, you know, a force in the format than the first half, because you know, that, that peak around hammers didn't come out until, I don't know, whatever three weeks ago, two, three weeks ago. so you do get to, you do get that benefit if you play in a small timeframe
Brent:Yeah, that was something that Kyle mentioned. He said he, a part of his reason he did that was he wanted to burn all his keys before Altera was legal. He was playing ADP. We should, we should not have to deal about theory X, next question.
Mike:So, so, That reminded me of it's a little, a little bit of a offshoot, a tangent, but, I have been talking a little bit about KDP list and running potentially to my wife. Where do I go down for the player's cup? Okay. That type of stuff. and I had mentioned that one of the marks against her out on was that I feel like it opens up the prize race. Maybe too much, you know, if you, if you open it again, some decks, then they can kill ADP. He killed the drought and then kill it to pressure. And I do think most of the time that's not relevant, but I was playing a game today and I had drought on my deck and it came up. So I want to let you know, Brit, I was playing against speaker, started Darale add-on and the way it goes to the guest speaker, I'm a lot at the time, if they go for the tag bolt, they ended up being very low on energy. If you're able to kill that beaker on. So that's what happened. Wait. So he took five price on the tag boat, but he had a Bolton and he had, you know, enough time and enough energy that he was able to do exactly one 30, but could never do one 60. And so I was like Darren, so, probably not enough reason to not play Darale add-on but it did come up.
Brent:let's do our sponsored moment with channel fireball guys. If you're signing up for channel fireball this week, use the, use the word trash when you sign up. And we will get a couple of shackles. It would be super fantastic because, you know, we're young and we needed the money, channel fireball, eh, any big news that you saw this week on, channel fireball, Brit.
Brit:No, nothing too interesting. Last week, I mentioned Isaiah Bradley's article on the welder box toolbox stack, which is what I've played the most in the past week or so, changed considerably. But I did base my list off his initially it was a good starting place, but. so it's, didn't, some of the counts were just a little wonky, I thought. but no beyond that, I would just say, pram, Michael Primo has an interesting article about Declan optimization, but otherwise I would say it was a little bit slower, in terms of content. but then again, there is the year big tournament this weekend, which I look forward to participating in. Scott. Lots of prizes, star credit, bounty rewards. If you beat any of the, channel Pokemon sponsored riders and content creators, I believe it's free entry still too. And again, I believe it's a single elimination too, so it'll be fast or maybe it's just double elimination, but it's not as Swiss tournament at the very least.
Brent:so do you know what you're gonna play?
Brit:probably just ADP. I keep, I've been pretty consistent about, playing in the open every Sunday for awhile now, but I just play my bad ideas, when a couple of games and then go to my chores or something. but since there's cash on the line, I'll probably take it. not which isn't to say it, I'm not taking it seriously with my dragon pole deck or the sun, or just list that I've played this past Sunday. but now I'd like to. Play the good ADP PLS. And we'll probably would like to be testing for my friends who have made the, the next round of the players cup. And so there I'll maybe try the second more while, or try this, Aurora energy welder box. I was just talking about, but definitely just trying to use it as a learning experience. Like I might not be able to compete. at least in the official ones, but just trying to learn and use my time to, to help some friends. If I can.
Brent:I bet you, Mike, you're going to do it. Could be the channel fireball tournament.
Mike:Not a hundred percent sure yet, but I am leaning towards doing it. Yeah. So I just double check it is single elimination. So it's kind of nice in the sense that, you know, you lose, you can just go about your day. but yeah, I mean it's free. It seems fun. It would be good practice for the player's cup, which is the weekend after yet. First round of players cup is November 7th. So if I do play upright, but I'm almost certainly going to play ADP for the players cup. So I'll probably just play ADP as well for this. If I play it.
Brit:I played some sports for, the Sunday opened this past week and it was sort of on a whim just based off something Mikey had said. he had mentioned. My drag Capote list that we talked about last week that wasn't playing club fable, but just played like Geraci and hammers and yoga pants. He just kind of, as an aside mentioned, like, why not try that incentive scorch? And so I did, and for whatever reason, I thought it made more sense to play in that one. there was certainly room to fit it all in. I liked playing the but I saw, cause essentially all I had to cut from Stefan's list was he plays like a. The Lieutenant surge, reset stamp, Jesse and James combo. I guess because you're just drawing so many cards, it was it's not that hard to dig through your deck to see it, but that's really kind of the only thing I had to cut. but it was, it was pretty good. I'm I went two and three before I dropped. I'm trying to remember what I played against. I lost, I lost to a decidual I obstacle soon. Which are not good enough because he doesn't play Volcani on anymore. so it was really close. but not quite good enough, you don't want shop them and they can. One shot you after one attack, once they start putting them on the bench. but yeah, it's slower. I really like Sonia, we've talked about that card a few times. I only started trying it because Mikey had mentioned it and I really liked the card. I think maybe that's just the old player and me, like, it reminds me of old times and Ryan save Roseanne's research, which was always the best supporter you could play. And this one's maybe even a little better and it's. Too slow, essentially most of the time, but I just like, I like to try it. I like the consistency of it. I haven't played enough of center scorch in general to be, I don't feel enough well enough making a claim, whether it's better or worse than the normal version. I just haven't played enough to say, But if it's, it felt a little slow at times to be sure, like you don't have the raw starting power of turn to Volcani and getting three energy on the board. Maybe even more if you played a welder that term too. you've got nothing but manual attachments and welder, so you're slower. You're much slower. You don't have quite. as explosive power, but maybe the consistency and disruption package that Stefan plays makes up for it at the end of the day. But I would probably have to guess that the Geraci build is a little better if perhaps more inconsistent, maybe.
Mike:that's a good segue into the other thing. I wanted to talk about and Brit brought it up as well. It's kind of like on the other end of the spectrum is the center's gorgeous place that Ahmad, am I saying that right from my. played in the players got and whatever he got, what did I say? He got third, I think. Yeah. In an a and it's like, it's so straightforward. It's the most straightforward set of skirts lists that I've seen so far for three center scores for vault Canyon to the DNA to grow up at two El Diggas. A crammer ant and a heat Tran. And then it's, the trainers are just for gear for, come for quick ball for switch for welder to boss, to stamps three hearts, 14 fire as the whole deck. It's just really straightforward. It looks really consistent. Looks like it does what it wants to do every time. and I feel like Senator scorch just kind of been in this weird. Like limbo. And so like the lists that Britt was kind of talking about, and I've thought about her a little bit more on, like, I wouldn't call them a control deck, but they're like a more controlled style of center scorch. And I feel like most of the drops she lists. And I've seen her kind of like in the middle where the, you know, they're running the scoop up package and they have this cure, Tina, and sometimes they run hammers and sometimes they don't. And I feel like that might detract away from both strategies a little bit. And clearly that list is quite good. It's done really well in these tournaments. I don't want to say it's not a good list, but perhaps, maybe going in one of these directions and really like going on the more extreme side. is better. I don't know. but I'm really interested to try this list. Cause I like the way it looks a lot, to LD gods is the thing that like really like made me go. Oh wow. That's really interesting. so, so we're going to give it a shot.
Brent:Good question. I know last week we talked about this. Is there any world where you cut one of these cards for a surge? So you can go surge, double welder.
Mike:if I was probably like magnet towners as well, I would definitely consider it. Right. You said that, Stefan, so lasso listed, run search. Yeah, I like that. but probably not in the more straightforward one, because you don't really want to be losing with that list.
Brent:Fair enough. Fair enough. All right. Should we talk about, AI in games, guys, the topic we've been threatening to talk about for weeks now?
Brit:just one. so I guess to start things off, we were, I think my key, just ask. The question last week that got us on this topic, asked whether or not, you know, can we program, could we program a computer to play Pokemon as well as toward her someone let's say? and I think the answer depends. It's going to depend. There's a lot of kind of technical definitions, to work out and how you think about them will affect your ability to answer it. So I'll try to. Set the stage properly and I'll do, I'll do my best to be a teacher in that I'm going to try to present both sides fairly and not, and not let you know what I actually think. so the big question, I guess, to, to give some kind of, set up. So DeepMind is, I think it's a Google organization. They're the ones kind of at the forefront of programming, an AI, various computers too. play games. And so they've done it with chess and they did it, I want to say recently, but I think it was really, probably about four, four or five, three, four years ago. They did go. and so they have a computer, their computer program play. I don't remember how it did in chess that I remember the guy a little more familiarly and it just stomped this Grandmaster. I believe that they won like maybe one of the seven games or so they played. and I think the next project they're working on is StarCraft, I believe, which will be a little bit different. And at that point there's some mechanical prowess that the player needs to have. which obviously in a game like chess, you don't have to be, Technically proficient in any way, you just have to know the game. but anyways, and I think too, also in, I don't know if you would remember this at all, Mikey, but, I know Hearthstone has bots play it. Occasionally. I remember, They only ever play they're really aggressive decks. And it's always pretty easy to tell. I don't know if they're really around anymore. but in the past you could kind of usually tell, but they could win games. Some of them could get pretty highly ranked. So, clearly we can program something, but obviously in this case they were there. They weren't good enough to get legend or anything. They could get pretty high sometimes with the right deck. But, yeah. So kind of two back to talk about AI, more specifically, there's two sort of distinctions, there's strong AI and weak AI. and so weak AI would be the, the idea that the computer program, can sort of just like emulate or replicate copy in a sense, sort of our humans, cognitive processes. and so in that case, It's kind of, it would be like a different kind of thinking. And I'll try to, I'll try to explain the two types of reasoning that go on in programming, AI, but, so it doesn't it at the very least, I don't think people. No, one's really arguing about week. I, everyone thinks it's possible. If, if not already all over the place, nor do they think there's any perhaps, dangerous consequences, some sort of potential danger to avoid. so strong AI is kind of the real conver the real conversation is in strong AI, is it wouldn't be a case of emulation or replication. It's doing identical. sort of a one-to-one correspondence, it's doing the exact same thing. I mean it's processing and reasoning. And so a lot of people actually, I don't know where the conversation is in 2020, but for a long time, people really resisted, strong AI that they didn't think it was possible. But I think the sort of paradigms are shifting and we're getting closer to being, More on board with that distinction. And so there's also one more thing too, and I'll try to give the sort of, thought experiment that goes along with all of this, but in programming, AI, there's this sort of distinction between, Like what, what it's measuring when it's thinking. And so AI's are really, really good at making predictions and things like that. Right. But that kind of reasoning is perhaps only one part of the reasoning we're doing. Cause you can make predictions just based on data and it's just kind of like correlated. Thinking, right. Like you're making a prediction. And so this stuff is really, really easy to program for the most part. Like we have AIS that do this stuff every single day, but what, where I think AI has stumped in terms of, its programming is like counterfactuals. They don't, they don't know. I don't think they quite understand how to prog program or process. You know, what if it had not been such that like, you know, which I think it's a little different, you can still do that in data, but in terms of like other kind of predicting capabilities or capacities, that just doesn't seem to be all quite there. okay. So that's a lot of information. So the last thing I think too is just to kind of tie it all back into the, this is kind of the main, thought experiment. That's kind of supposed to test our intuitions about. strong AI or weak AI or what it means to like know something. and so it's called that Chinese room from John Searle. It's pretty, pretty famous. You've probably heard of him. I'm sure you've maybe even know this whole thought experiment that, so we have. A we have this guy, it doesn't matter really who they are. They don't know any, Chinese though. They're, in this room alone by themselves and they're following an instruction manual or computer program, that helps them translate Chinese. And so what happens is someone slips a piece of paper under the door and it has a Chinese to it. And then he just has this perfect manual that he just kind of, Looks through identifies sort of correlates the characters to the letters and so on and so forth. And, he does it just in the same way a computer does and he gets it to process and it comes out the door comes out the other side of the room in Mandarin. then the question is, does the person who is, doing the, translating the transposing, do they understand Chinese? so in that case, it's kind of a question is, is it, is all there that there is to going on to something like language? Is it just correlated thinking or is there sort of another process too, and then also kind of to underlie that too. It's this bigger distinction between, syntax and semantics and so like AI can understand. syntax, like they can follow rules and processes and procedure, but do they really understand or can they understand, semantics, like the content of things, the idea that, you know, like I, I see someone and I know they're thinking something, it's not necessarily clear that that's, you know, a robot would be able to observe that and would know that instinctually or intuitively or something like that. So that was a whole lot, quite a bit more than I intended. so the question for you guys is, I guess if I did an okay job explaining things, is, do you think we can do strong AI? Do you think in the, the Chinese room example, does the person doing the translating? Do they know Chinese or are they just doing some kind of pattern matching?
Brent:Mike, I'll take a crack at it.
Mike:well, so I have studied the Chinese room thought experiment, argument, No, I wouldn't say it's substantially, but a fair amount. I took a philosophy of mind class when I was in college. So this was one of the things that we spent a good amount of time on. my. And then, you know, and then you get into lots of other stuff beyond that. But, my, just the straightforward answer to the question, I would say that the person in the room, my own personal opinion is that they personally, aren't just not literally understand Chinese. He's simply, I dunno, he's essentially a computer program that is translating, but like the process itself is not understanding it. that's my first take on it. And it's still kind of where I think it's what I thought initially. And it's still what I think. I know there's like other versions of it that, like led me think about it more, but maybe we don't want to get too deep into it.
Brit:Do you think that just to try to keep it simple, do you think that thing that's missing? Is that something that's programmable? Or are we just stuck with a weak computer, you know, w a bad program playing Pokemon. Let's say they're not quite as good as toward that's. Cause I think that's kind of, that's, that's a bigger question because whether he knows Chinese or not, I think is really more of a question about language. but kind of then the question is if you, if you kind of step aside from that, like, What would it take to program him so he can, he can correlate it and know it and understand it or something like that.
Brent:I'll, I'll give you, I'll give you two, remarks first. I'll give you a quick story. and you can, I'm sure you can somehow find a way to use this in the context of your classes and stuff, because here's some real contextual, duplication of your problem in the real world. So my wife's Asian, she's Chinese, but like my wife was born in Boston. Right. And, and, Her grandmother came to live with her at a very young age. Like when she was like one or 200 grand mother essentially raised her. Like she, she essentially grew up, like when she went to kindergarten, she basically spoke no English. Like she spoke Chinese in the house. Her grandmother never spoken English. And, but, but no surprise over time. No. I mean, today, she would say, if you dropped her in the middle of China, she could somehow escape, but like her Chinese is not good. And, and she's, she did spoken Chinese, but never written Chinese and, and no surprise much like English language, like writing. It's a whole different story. Like if you don't know about phonics and sounding out words and stuff, like you got nothing. So, when she went off to college, she would try to, she would want to send her mean. We're super old. So we didn't, she, you know, obviously her grandmother didn't have the email. She didn't really have email either. Like you would have to write a letter and send the person a letter. And she had a, a English to Chinese dictionary and she would sit down with the dictionary and she would write out a letter to her grandmother and, and send it and like, that's what you would do when she wanted to send her grandmother birthday card or something like that. And I think if you asked my wife, she would say, I absolutely do not know chance. Right. Executing this process was not like, you know, she was not learning Chinese. She was not writing, you know, like the fact that she wrote the characters did not mean that she felt like she had a mastery of the written language. So, I mean, you can take that for what it's worth, that real-world instance of the Chinese room right there. the, the other thing I would say is like, I don't know if it, I've always felt like the distinction between weak and strong AI are important philosophically, but in practice, they're not necessarily super important. Like if I just tell you, I can train this machine to beat toward in Pokemon, like even if it has absolutely no idea what it's doing. I mean, that's pretty good. We should do that. Like, if, if I can, you know, if I can, build a machine that grinds out the perfect 60 for any given Metta, like, doesn't matter if the machine has any idea what it's doing, you know, I don't know that that's like, you know, self-awareness is not really the goal. Right? a different
Brit:well, right, right. So that that's true, but so I think. Kind of regardless is, but do you think it's possible, you know, given infinite time and infinite resources or is it, is there just something that will never get down, on the strong side or maybe it doesn't exist? Maybe it, all humans are doing is really sort of on, on the weaker end anyways, so that the strong side is just sort of a fantasy.
Brent:Yeah. I mean, this is, this has been a philosophy. This is definitely a yard. Realm of more than it's mine, like, I mean obviously like my reaction is being all that I've ever seen software to do is what I tell it to do. Like if I tell it that, like how long a player takes between, plays should tell us something about the cards that they have in hand, then it'll be like aware that that's important and you know, like I could, I could tell it that, like, that might be something that it should start, like, you know, machine learning on. And seeing if it's important and like, it could figure it out. I don't mean looking for tells in poker, like how do you teach a computer do that? I don't know. I mean, you have to describe what a tell is, and maybe there's a world really far in the future where, you know, I mean, this is the idea of that like machine self-awareness where it like figures out it on its own, that this is an important factor that it should start machine learning on and like starts grinding on, things itself. But, that seems so hard.
Brit:This is like the most app I've asked. It was going to ask if you had seen it, but I remembered we, we talked about it, but the, the first season of Westworld is so good. And it's about this sort of question and it's basically perfect. And then it's just a big, hot, hot dumpster fire afterwards. But if you're interested in any of this, I think the first season is, will
Brent:Oh, the first, the first one was fantastic. First season. First season was great writing. I mean, they definitely had a thing they were trying to do. And the second season was just, yeah, everything after that was an absolute train wreck, horrible, horrible, but much like the game of Thrones guys. Once, once they got through the books and they had to start coming up with their own stories, you're like, Hmm, they're not very good writer.
Mike:Yep.
Brit:I know it's always so weird. I mean, not to get on a tangent about TV, but it's just like, like with Westworld, it's just like, we got to Nolan brother. He's writing it, he's writing it. And then after the, after the, after the first season, it's just like, no, he's just, he's a producer, which doesn't mean anything, his names. We're just slapping his name on it now. And that's just so common. I've noticed. I don't know.
Brent:Speaking of which I have. You guys see it. Have you guys seen Ted lasso? If you're looking for a TV show and the problem is it's on Apple TV. So it's like a little bit of a nightmare to try to actually get ahold of. But Ted lasso is a fantastic TV show. And Mike, if you and Kelly are looking for something fun, Ted lasso,
Mike:Okay.
Brent:it is, it is a about a, a woman that gets the, local soccer team in the divorce. And decides to sink it by bringing in American football coach over to coach the, the football team. And it turns out he's just the nicest guy in the world. And everyone he comes into contact with, wants to be their best selves. perfect, perfect antidote for the craziness of 2020.
Mike:thanks. the only thing that I like want to contribute, I guess, to the discussion and why I think about it, at least in the context of Pokemon a lot is to me, Pokemon seems like an X. I dunno, exponentially is there. It's probably not the Mo the most correct word, but you know what I mean? When I say exponentially more complex, Then even something like go now, I'm not saying that I would be a good go player. I think there's or even a chess player. I think there's like a crap ton to learn, but those games are very contained, within their own stuff. And, and Pokemon is not contained, you know, things are changing all the time. There's probability. Like the game is essentially all probability. but also probability of decks that you're going to play against. card inclusions that your opponents may have, or they may not have. I have. so there's just, I feel like there's so many more layers that go into it than, than something like, like Chester go. And so that's why I think about, you know, and the conversation is not independent of, the general AI discussion, but I think it's different than, and how it is for Chester. Go at least.
Brent:Yeah, and go is like chess and that there's no private information, right? I mean, if, if you're aware of the board state, you're aware of everything. Whereas I think the hardest part, in, in building a computer that's going to Pokemon is. Yeah. Like you have to make assumptions about what's in their hand, what's in their deck. Like they started Geraci what does this mean? you know, they, if they start resource management, Oranger Ooh, like you're going to play your turns differently.
Mike:Hmm.
Brent:You have to recognize when you're not trying to go fast. And like that's a concept that potentially you could articulate, but recognizing, you know, when, when you, you know, They, they start whale RDX and they draw and pass. You should also draw and pass, like,
Mike:right, right, right, right.
Brent:okay. But that's a weird thing that I think is, is difficult to articulate. You know, having said that I would absolutely love it if BCGO would make it so people could build, you know, Hearthstone replay for Pokemon, it'd be so great. And, and I think our stone replay is like, that's like the cornerstone of how you start that stuff. Right? Like you just, I mean, step one is you start feeding and game logs and necklace and you just start just like machine learning the heck out of it. Right.
Mike:Right. Exactly.
Brent:And I, you know, for all my complaining about big basics, we're kind of at a good time to have a robot that plays Pokemon and that like, if you give it ADP, it only has to learn how to play three turns.
Mike:Yeah, I don't think it would be super hard to make a no. A bot that played a certain deck, kind of like how Brett was talking about the very aggressive decks that were in Hearthstone. You could do the same thing. And like you said, in particular, ADP would be great right now, but then it could even like, like quote unquote learned it's matchup. I don't know. I guess I don't, I don't know enough technical stuff about where AI is right now.
Brent:Yeah. Well, I think what you do is you would say, okay, we're going to get, you know, we're going to get these, you know, a million games played with ABP and, you know, against these 10 different decks and you just like feed it all in. And then when it sees this starter, it says like, there's an X probability I'm playing against this deck. There's no, Y probably they're playing against this deck. Like these are the paths I go down as I play those decks and, you know, and then we go back to. My discussion about Xander's article last week, where you, like, you kind of say, okay, this is, this is the objective for this term, for this deck. And what are we trying to do here? Like, how do I get to a win? When I looked at those million games and ADP won 900,000 of them, you know, what, what, what were like, what were the things that distinguished the wins from the losses and how do I make my game look more like the games that resulted in wins? Something like that. I don't know.
Mike:Sounds right. Philosophy of the mind. I will say for it, it was the most besides logic, which I really enjoyed, but like of the more. Hard philosophy classes, or traditional philosophy classes. that was by far my favorite one. Just thinking about what is consciousness? I feel like, I mean, we get, spend a lot of time talking about that in general. but it did seem like there was a consensus, but in cognitive science, there's like a foundational theory. It's a called like crumb or something like that. I don't know, but it seems like basically all the AI researchers had to essentially have this, you know, foundational assumption that was, captured in this, which is essentially that, you know, the consciousness is not separate from. Our physical body. Right. And, you have to have that base assumption. And it always is very interesting to me. This is probably getting too far out there, but it's interesting to me that people can believe that, you know, AI strong AI even is possible and be religious in the sense that, you know, you're in one sense, you're believing that the mind and the body are the same thing. If you think we can recreate it, but then do you think there are two different things and I don't know.
Brent:Right, right. But you still don't have a soul.
Mike:right, right. Exactly.
Brit:well, I mean, I imagine this wasn't a point of talking, but there you can be. I think you can be a consistent theist and, have a reductive view about the mind. it'll take some, take some steps, but, I don't, I don't think it would be hard. I don't have the answer. I phosphate of mind is like my. Second specialty I do. early Chinese philosophy is, is my favorite and what I want to sort of really specialize in, but underlying that is philosophy of mind. but yeah, that's hard, but yeah, there's some more nuanced, scientific savvy theistic views out there, not to say that I'm endorsing them or anything necessarily, but I think that your, your concern can be resolved with relative ease depending on your presuppositions and whatnot.
Mike:Okay. thanks for listening. Once again, to a wonderful episode, hope you learned, something, a lot of different things financially this time. but that's what we're here for a little bit of Pokemon, a little bit of other stuff. So we appreciate any lessons that you give and we will see you next week. Hopefully Britain, I will have won some money in the channel fireball tournament. That's the goal.