The Great Fete Flogging

A week or so ago I ran the second hand book stall at the school fete. For those of you who don't know what a school fete is, I have included a photo. The lady seated on the right is selling jewellery - for some reason she ended up squatting in my tent. Anyway, it's a fund raiser for the school, and I have cunningly determined that the best way to find the good books at the second hand book stall is to run it myself, so I have been doing that for three years now.

Anyway, I knew Cyberkev was coming along to the fete, maybe on the off chance that there was a trash'n'treasure stall with a heap of secondhand Euros... dream on. So as to not disappoint Cyberkev, I took along a couple of games, and after he'd failed to find anyone who even knew what a Euro game was (except me and the kid, of course), he came back to the secondhand book stall and we had a game of Blokus Duo. First rule when playing against Cyberkev - pay attention and think about your moves. I had previously only played 2 player Blokus against the kid, and you don't need to think very hard to beat him. On the other hand, Cyberkev recognised my careless moves and made me pay, big time. I could tell from about half way through that I was going to lose, and lose big. It was then a matter of defence. The final score was 25 to 5 or something stupid.

OK, here's the tips. When you're really serious about Blokus, you have to think about the places you can play. An effective way of attacking your opponent is to play so that he can't place a piece on the few places where he would legally be allowed to place a piece. So when you place you want to think about blocking those places AND think about limiting his ability to come around some other way. And when you choose a piece, think whether that piece leaves you options to play a next piece.

Basic stuff, I know, but not what you're focused on when you're selling secondhand books. Next time I will take it a bit more seriously.