Charity Challenge Week 1 - Night 4

We’ve arrived at night 4 of Week 1 and I’m one win away from taking the first week of the Charity Challenge – but the choice tonight is in Rachel’s hands so we’ll have to see what happens.

The Choice

For tonight’s game Rachel really doesn’t want to lose so she’s relying on the stats – she asked me to find the game that she has the highest win % across the highest # of plays. She’s picked a game that she has a 75%+ win percentage across 10+ plays.

On paper this is her best shot of closing the gap and getting week 1 tied up. Tonight we’re playing Uwe Rosenberg’s Second Chance.

The Game

Second Chance is a “flip and write” game where players have to draw tetris shapes that are revealed on cards. You need to efficiently puzzle the pieces on your board because whoever has the least blank spaces at the end of the game wins. The reason the game is called Second Chance is because you draw shapes until you cannot fit the shapes that are drawn onto your board. At that point you flip up one more shape, your second chance, and if you fit it on your board you keep playing, otherwise you’re eliminated.

To learn more about Second Chance checkout this video.

The Result

Tonight was a bit of a controversial night. Rachel did not know / I failed to remind her how ties worked. This becomes relevant quite quickly.

We decided to play best of 3 (as we do usually with shorter games in the competition) and the first game was extremely tight. I went out fairly early with 6 blocks left unfilled. Rachel kept trucking along but eventually failed her second chance. Her total count remaining? 6. Now. When you tie the player who goes out first wins. I believe the rationale is the person who goes out first ultimately is the most efficient in drawing their shapes, as they manage to fill up the spaces faster with less pieces. In this round I had gone out pretty early, which ended up winning the game.

Rachel was not happy, as I hadn’t mentioned this tie breaker since I taught her the game originally many months ago. The result was she adjusted her strategy to try and be more efficient and I think she was a bit rattled by the loss.

The result? I went on to win all 3 games we played, the third also ended in a tie. So very close, but I edged it. I had only ever won this game 3 times before tonight in many more plays, but dug deep and got a little lucky.

So I win week 1! I haven’t won week 1 in the competition since 2016 I’m excited to get this off to such a great start. Is this my year? Stay tuned!