Michigan Madness recap
Michigan Madness was a lot of fun and was my first two day tourney outside of Chicago.  I slept horribly Friday night and made a lot of mistakes on Saturday.  Luckily, I was able to get by on my strategy of outdrawing my opponents.  I had 100+ point leads in over half my games and need to get better at managing the board with an early lead.  I tried to close things up early, but I'm not sure if this was always the best strategy.  Going into the final game I needed to beat aibretty by 132 finish with an identical record and spread.  Since I would have beaten him twice, I'm assuming I'd win the tie-breaker and the tourney.  Alas, after going up around 150 with a late bingo he phonies for 38 to only lose by 120 and hold on to the win.  The sad thing is I knew RISED* wasn't good but for some reason didn't say hold fast enough because I was confirming how much it scored.  There wasn't much to do but laugh at how appropriate it was that he'd edge me out with a phony.  However, for those scoring at home, I'm 4-0 +220 against him in tournaments.  This is now the second tourney in a row where I lost out on first based on spread and dropped a place by around 24 spread points.  At least I didn't choke away a win this time.

I'll try to post all my games in the next few days.  I'd appreciate hearing any advice people may have regarding opening/closing the board, especially when there are still lots of unplayed tiles.  Here are the first four games:

http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=1566
http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=1567
http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=1568
http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=1569