Blackjack on Royal Caribbean - Quantum of the Seas

First, the rules:

8 deck, 1~ deck pen

DAS allowed

No early surrender

Dealer hits on S17

Min $15 Max $150

Split aces only get 1 card, and no natural blackjack from that

Dealer doesn't deal his 2nd card until all players' hands are resolved (slight house edge; will affect certain strategy plays like whether to double player 11 against dealer 10)

It was my first time playing bj in a casino, and I had fun! I had memorized the basic strategy charts (with common deviations) and my counting was accurate within 0-2 over 6 decks in my home practice so I was fairly confident of not losing the count.

Some key points from my experience: 

1) I attracted no heat

It could be because I was using a super conservative bet spread (1 unit per true count up to 5) or I just wasn't winning big, but the casino staff didn't seem to care that I was blatantly counting. 

I deliberately took Seat #1 as much as possible, and often delayed the game as I was trying to estimate the current decks dealt, count the other players cards etc. Pit supervisors were staring at the games but never said anything. Players were also quite tolerant when I took my time.

2) There are all sorts of players

Over about 4-5h of play across 6 sessions, I saw:

- newbies playing bj for the first time (e.g. not hitting a 8 (??) 

- gamblers shouting 'picture!' hoping for dealer to bust

- semi counters who were saying things like 'the next card is going to be big, so I should hit' (I didn't think they were truly counting as they didn't make betting deviations)

- maniacs (there was a guy betting 2-300 per hand, gesticulating animatedly when he won/loss. He was highly entertaining to watch and there was a literal crowd of 10 ppl standing around watching him)

I don't think I saw another card counter, or at least someone who played perfect basic strategy (common giveaways are not hitting a 15/16 even on negative counts - most casual players will be afraid to hit those despite it being +EV to hit those in the long run)

3) There are all sorts of dealers

I'm not sure what system they had for rotating dealers - I've had dealers deal for a full 2 shoes; I've had midshoe changes. The 'worst' dealer I had was this PRC woman who was LIGHTNING FAST. I've never seen anyone deal so fast before. I was glad for her to switch out. 

Then there was this PRC man who was obviously newer, and dealt very slowly and deliberately. In one of the hands, he even made a payout error - the result was a push but he paid out this other player... I don't know if the player noticed, but I didn't say anything to not cause any problems haha.

4) Variance is a bitch

I remember two memorable hands. 

True count was +2 or 3, so I bet 2-3 betting units (can't rem)

• I was dealt AA against dealer 5. Split
• Each hand got a ten/picture card. The guy next to me was celebrating for me, saying 'good job' and stuff. I thought I had a double Blackjack.
• Dealer somehow made 21... and it was a push.
• ( I didn't know that splitting Aces meant u can't get a natural Blackjack, so I was happy for a second)

Count irrelevant, was betting min bet.

• I had 77 against dealer 5. Split.
• 77 7 (dealt a 7 on first hand). Split again.
• 77 7 7 (dealt a 7 again!). At this point I was already hesitating at putting so much money on the table, and I could hear several spectators gathering to watch as they noticed I had multiple hands in play.
• Split again.
• 7K 77 7 7 (first hand was a 17. 2nd hand GOT ANOTHER 7 what in the world. Couldn't split again as max number of splits was 3)
• 7K 774 7J 74(8) [I even hit an 11 on the last hand, so I agonisingly put in the double, and the small crowd (of 3-4 people) behind were watching with bated breath]
• My eventual hands were something like 7K 774 7J 748
• And. The. Dealer. Freaking. Gets. 20. There was an audible gasp and groan from the spectators it was almost comical, as they collectively empathized with me.
• This hand put me on tilt for a while, losing 5 betting units at once (thank goodness it wasn't at some high count, and I was still betting min bet). I had to skip a few hands as I was tilted bad

My overall stats:

Biggest winning session: $192

Biggest losing session: -$139

Total winning sessions: 3 sessions, for total of $259

Total losing sessions: 3 sessions, for total of $420

NET: -$161 loss

All in all it was a fun experience! I felt like I was fairly lucky in that I didn't have a long losing streak and I got a fairly accurate experience of about 50% edge - and I'd have to play more just to let the edge play out. Wouldn't mind going again! Next time, I'll try to spend more time :p

Review of Dream Cruise - World Dream Palace Suites

I just came back from my first ever cruise on Dream Cruise's World Dream with some friends, and thought I could give my take of the experience. We opted for their Palace Suites, which I will review below too. This is not meant to be a comprehensive review of the facilities as I did not take cool photos of everything.

[Formatting may be all weird as Blogger's formatting tools are wonky]

Palace Suites 

Dream Cruise markets this as the 'exclusive, attentive luxury experience that goes beyond expectations'. Does it really do so? Let me break down what you get and what our experience was.

The latest prices / offerings can be found here, and the latest screenshot is below.

In a gist, you pay a little more than a regular cabin, and you get access to many extras that the regular folks don't get, such as extra facilities, extra room space, and extra butler service. I'll just comment on the facilities and butler service.

Extra Facilities

There are certain areas on the ship that are marked out only for Palace guests, such as the Palace dining, Palace pool, etc. I don't know how the food compares against the 'regular' dining area as we didn't dine at the regular area, but I liked that there was a 'private' pool that was separate from the main pool that was more crowded and open. 

There were other areas like Palace spa (but you have to pay for everything and the massage prices are exorbitant) and Palace arcade (basically more fun games than the general open arcade, but about $3-4 per game), but they were nothing to crow about. There's a Palace Casino but that's more for high rollers - minimum bets started at $300!

Butler Service

The butler service seemed like a hit or miss experience. We went with two other couples, and basically one of their butlers seemed to be always around and helped them (and thankfully by extension, us too) settle everything; another butler seemed to never be around; our butler was somewhere in the middle. 

The annoying thing is that one key service butlers were supposed to provide was to be able to help you make bookings so you don't have to run all over to make them. However, many of the activities required in-person bookings as they used pen and paper registration (i.e. most of the sporting activities), so we still had to queue early and make our bookings that way for each activity we wanted. 

I can't imagine having to run around to book individual restaurants and shows by myself though, and the little perks (secret entrance and prime seats for shows) of the Palace Suites make me not want to go for the 'regular' experience, if I ever decided to return.

Food

The food was quite disappointing. Being my maiden voyage, one key selling point I hear from friends who had gone on cruises before was that you could eat to your heart's content, and the food was usually pretty decent. This was not the case. 

Part of the Palace Suites package was that we got to eat at all the specialty restaurants on board. Below is a short breakdown:

Steak and Grill @ Marks Best - The wife's steak came way undercooked (was pinkish red when she asked for medium); after sending it back, the outsides were burnt and insides were still pink. The meat was thin and dry. My cod was also pretty meh, and looked like it was in a plate of vomit - which was actually some sort of pasta. The pasta itself wasn't tooooo bad, but just wasn't appetising.

Fish in Vomit

Palace Restaurant  - This was the in-house dining that Palace Suites guests could have meals at all times of the day I believe, which includes breakfast, lunch, high-tea, happy hour, dinner, and supper.

First day hi-tea... not bad

The food was average, with some dishes being quite bad (breakfast had a 'mushrooms' side dish to the eggs, which were just plain boiled with no seasoning/sauce. Tasted horrible). The one time we had lunch there, I didn't quite like the duck either. For breakfast, orange juice tasted like diluted punch, and pastries/bread did not taste fresh. Even the coffee tasted too mild and light, didn't pack much of a kick.
My travel companions swear by the supper menu though, claiming that the char kway teow for supper was one of the best they ever had.

Hotpot - There's a ton of ingredients with the hotpot set(one full plate of vegetables and one full plate of meat), but it was really quantity over quality. Half the meat were those frozen processed kind (e.g. sausages, meatballs) and wasn't that great. I drowned the food in the free-flow goma sauce and laoganma to make the meal more appetising.

Silk Road - Chinese restaurant which was average at best - duck portion was really small (picture shows a portion for 2pax) and the sweet salmon was meh. 

Teppanyaki - This was hands down the best place we ate at.

The starter dish of live-cooked vegetables was tasty and well-seasoned. Fried rice was a little bland for my liking, could have been a little more salty, but it was still nice. The filet mignon was juicy, soft, and really good. Above all, the live chef (shoutout to Brian) cooking the food was really funny and entertaining. Out of all the food I ate, this was the only one I would actually willingly pay for outside.

Entertainment

Wi-Fi - The complimentary Wi-Fi was HORRENDOUS. I don't care about data speeds, but the connection was never consistent. This was a big problem because our group of 6 had to often rely on Whatsapp to communicate and coordinate (due to the COVID 2pax rule), and often we had awkward radio silence as the connection just kept dropping. There were long stretches on the third day where we just had no Wi-Fi at all. It was horrible.

Casino - I'm only interested in the physical table games, and not the slots machines / digital games, so I will only comment on those. The minimum bet was $50 for certain games (e.g. baccarat), and $100 for most, and it was kinda disappointing that they pegged it so high. I'm not sure if it's covid-related and they wanted to keep play sessions shorter, but I wish they had lower budget options. Kinda sad that they didn't have a poker table too. The games were largely blackjack variants and chinese gambling games (e.g. da xiao, pai gow), all capped at 2 pax per table, which does dampen the atmosphere a bit. 

VISION - This was a magic show by a French magician that was pretty good! I thought he made the most of the COVID restrictions where it's harder to have audience interactions, though I wish he had a greater variety of tricks - several of them were repeated in idea (i.e. forced choice). He was a good performer though, so he gave us an entertaining show (regardless of whether we could figure out the tricks)

FAITH - Shipwrecked buff dude, acrobats, pirates doing flips, ballet dancing, hot topless males, aerial ring/cloth tricks, cross-dressing 'witch' (who looked more like a clown) talking to an angel and a demon, trampoline stunts. 

If the above sentence sounded disjointed and confusing, that was exactly how this show felt. It felt like they had a talented crew of performers who could do certain things, and they just tried to string them together and slap on some storyline which didn't make sense. I never thought that an acrobatic /circus show needed coherence to be good (I'm probably spoilt as my previous experiences were Cirque du Soleil / Vegas shows) but I left this show scratching my head wondering what I just watched.

Ropes Obstacle Course - This was pretty fun - you are clipped into a safety harness and have to navigate a rope obstacle course that's a few metres up in the air. The obstacles weren't overly difficult to navigate, with the hardest being a rope wall at the end that requires you to clear a tricky gap sideways -  but being that high up and walking on shaky and/or small platforms IS quite thrilling and fun. The course climaxes in a zipline over the sea back to the starting point, which is a great adrenaline rush. 

Water slides - There are 5 adult water slides, and they are pretty good. Without spoiling anything, expect to twist and turn and zip down REALLY fast. I always ended up a little dizzy at the end of each slide and needed a moment or two to compose myself. 

Bingo - There were multiple games of bingo throughout the cruise, each 'escalating' in a their 'jackpot' prize ($28,888 to $68,888). We went for at least 3 out of 6 of them, and there were no winners of the jackpot prize in any of those sessions, which originally led us to suspect that the game may be rigged. 

Basically how it works is you pay $30 to get 3 cards with 24 random numbers each, and they will call out numbers from 1 - 75 'at random', one at a time. If a called number also appears on your card, you can mark it by punching it out (the numbers are perforated slightly). To win the jackpot, you need to hit all 24 numbers on a single card by the 40th call. 

In all 3 games I witnessed, no one came close - I think the earliest anyone took to hit all 24 numbers was around the 60th call? That person wins a consolation prize of about $300 - given their minimum participants of 10 and maximum of 40, and most games were full, they basically make $900 each bingo session, providing they don't pay out their jackpot. 

So assuming no one wins the jackpot prize, you are paying $30 to win $300 with a 1 in 40 chance of winning - negative EV! Not worth.

EV = Expected Value
2.5% chance to win $300 vs 97.5% chance to lose $30 
$7.50-$29.25 = -$21.75

I was curious so I dug deeper, and realised that it was probably not rigged, just that the chances of getting a 'complete cover' (i.e. all 24 numbers on your card is called) by the 40th ball is really infinitesimal... ridiculously small:

The probability of one of the cards being completely covered (all 24 numbers) by the 40th call is 0.000000244%

Other Activities - There were other free activities like origami and stretch classes that you had to book, but they were all limited to 10 pax (due to COVID I suppose) and so most ended up being fully booked. And nothing was really spectacular or sounded like a 'must-try'.

Overall Experience

Given I had the impression that food was the best thing on a cruise, I was severely let down when out of all the food I ate, I probably only really liked one of them (Teppanyaki). The rope course and water slides were fun, but I wish their booking infrastructure for activities would improve. Being more of a 'do-activities' person, I was somewhat bored by the 2nd day after trying almost everything. Maybe my expectations were too high and people usually just... chill and do nothing much on a cruise [then what's the point?]? I only know that this was not much of a dream cruise for me, and I will not be returning.

Why it makes sense to time the market for certain ETFs

 There are two popular adages in investing:

"Time in the market is better than timing the market"

and a related one:

"If you have a sum of money to invest now, investing a lump sum is better than dollar-cost averaging (DCA)"

In many articles you will find online, the second statement is usually backed by studies showing that lump sum outperforms DCA roughly two-thirds of the time, even by the well-reputed investment firm Vanguard. 

However, I am here to make a contrary statement - I have found that for certain ETFs, it actually makes more sense to time the market, and NOT DCA or lump sum!

Gasp! How can it be true?? Heresy! Lies! Yes, go ahead, quote me.

"It makes sense to time the market (Teo, 2021)"

I want to point out that 'time in the market is better than timing the market' is premised on a very important assumption - that markets go up over time. Hence, it makes sense to get your investment in early and get it to work, rather than trying to wait for the perfect opportunity to enter where you may miss the market upsurge.

However, there are markets which do not meet that criteria of going up over time. Some markets actually trade in a range. Here's an example of the SPDR Straits Times Index ETF (ES3) which trades on SGX:

You don't need to use any fancy indicators to see that the price generally ranges between roughly 2.5 and 3.5 (with some exceptions, but I'm trying to draw a best fit support/resistance line). Hence, my hypothesis is that it does NOT make sense to quickly put in your money into the market, but you NEED to time it so that you don't get in at a bad price.

I did some backtesting with market data from 2017 to 2020, comparing 3 different strategies:

Strategy 1 - Lump sum $12,000 at the start of each year. 

Strategy 2 - DCA $1,000 each month

Strategy 3 - "Timed DCA" : DCA $1,000 each month ONLY IF market price is below 60% of the price range that ES3 trades between (i.e. I'm using $3.132). If market price is above that price, to accumulate that amount till a month where market price falls below my threshold price. 

(e.g. In Jan if market is above that price, save that $1,000 to next month. If in Feb the market is below that price, then put in $2,000)

For all 3 strategies, I account for dividend payouts too.

Here are the results:

It's not even close - timed DCA blows the other two strategies out of the water, even after accounting for dividends that were foregone due to the delayed investment.

Interestingly, DCA also beats Lump Sum here - likely because ES3 does not go up over time at all and trades in a range, so getting your money in earlier does nothing; even after accounting for higher dividend payouts. Some other markets that also trade in a range that this should apply to are: EEM, VWO, VXUS.

It's worth noting that with this timed DCA strategy, you could be 'sitting out' of the market for a long time. For the 2017-2020 period, you would sit out for up to 19 months (Apr 17 - Oct 18), when ES3 is doing really well. In spite of this, my backtesting above shows that it is still profitable to just sit out and hold cash, rather than enter at a suboptimal price (i.e. the dividends gained from being in the market during that period does not surpass the amount you lose in mistiming your entry)

To sum up, before you dive into an investment, look at the price action history of the underlying before following any touted strategies. One major caveat is of course that past performance is no guarantee of future performance (who knows, maybe after today ES3 goes on a long-term upward trend), though in the stock market historical patterns often repeat themselves.

This is not financial advice not a recommendation to buy ES3 or any of the stocks mentioned. I have no positions in any of the stocks mentioned, though I intend to be long ES3 - when the price is right :)

Why I will never be a day trader – my experience with the Gamestop drama

For those out of the loop, January 2021 was an unprecedented time for the US stock market. In short, the price of Gamestop’s stock went from 20USD/share on 11 Jan to 300USD/share on 28 Jan because of Reddit (with more potential to increase). This is a 27x, or 2700% increase, which is INSANE. I’m not even sure if anything like that has ever happened in history. If you had bought USD$10,000 of Gamestop shares when it was 20USD/share, they would be worth USD$270,000 now.

 

There are many articles that sum up what happened a lot better than I ever will; this is one of the best:

https://www.theverge.com/22253363/wall-street-bets-verge-stories-gamestock-reddit-discord

 

If you want to read my TL:DR, you can read my blue text version, or skip down to the next part of this post, where I talk more about my personal experience in this drama.

1. On Reddit, there is a subreddit called r/wallstreetbets (“WSB”), where people (mostly Americans) with money post memes about stocks and blindly swing money at random stocks with reckless abandon, akin to degenerate gambling (this is not an insult; they openly call themselves so)
   
   
2. Since last year, one user had been regularly pumping money into Gamestop shares despite it not doing well, and consistently losing money, but this drew the attention of many Redditors and interest in the stock rose.
   
   
3. Towards end of last year / early 2021, some real life events involving the CEO of Gamestop and other famous investors triggered further interest and buying of Gamestop’s shares, which further drove up the price.
   
   
4. This momentum got into full swing and many people jumped on the hype train and bought Gamestop shares, driving up the price like crazy. Mainstream media picked up on it which added more hype.
   
   
5. This is bad news for those who shorted the stock (i.e. bet against the market, hoping it will go down), as their potential losses was unlimited. Regular investors who shorted the stock quickly bought back in to cover their losses, and this drove prices up.
   
   
6. Professional hedge funds who shorted the stock (every1 expected the hype to die down… eventually?) are now in serious trouble, as the stock has shot up exponentially. They will eventually have to exit their position (i.e. buy shares) which will FURTHER drive up the prices.
   
   
7. Several real life events led to it being painted as a ‘average investor’ versus ‘the top 1%’ battle now; the poor vs the rich; a David vs Goliath situation, and WSB was eager to hold and drive up prices further to ‘stick it to the man’.

 

I wanted to jump on the hype train for fun, and my experience with this made me realise I will never be a day trader. The emotional roller coaster is just too much!

 

The Stop Loss Mistake.

I decided on a small amount that I was willing to lose entirely, and bought some Gamestop shares for fun, @$81.50/share. 

Despite being a 'throwaway amount', there was of course still some pinch to it. Before I went to bed, I decided to set a stop loss at $70 (i.e. if the price falls below that, it will trigger a sale, limiting my losses) as I was scared to lose more… which turned out to be a big mistake. 

When I woke up the next morning, I realised the price swung down below $70 and triggered my sale for $69.50, but the share price closed at $89! 

I learned two things from this – first, I needed to be more aggressive with the stop loss - $70 was only 15% below my entry price, and a volatile stock would swing more. Second, I should have set some sort of profit goal, to be happy to cash out some time. The price actually swung up to $150 during the day of trading; it would have been a cool 80+% profit.

 

The Re-entry

Throughout the next 1-2 days, the share price actually continued rising, eventually reaching $200/share or so. I was monitoring Reddit closely, and based on general sentiment, it was going to keep going up. Remember, this is very bad for hedge funds who have to close their position soon to cut their losses, which will drive the price further up.

Despite this being speculation, I found the logic compelling, and wrestled with the decision for a while before thinking - heck it! When I started this I was prepared to lose this sum of money. So... I reinvested it at next market open @$213.50/share. 

There were some real life events that pushed the price up and down (you can probably read more in the article linked above). One of that was where one of the hedge funds that was in danger of going bankrupt over their massive short positions actually went on some news channel to say that they managed to exit their short positions. However the market data (based on # of short positions) didn’t indicate a large hedge fund exit, so many Redditors felt that they were lying to try to get people to sell off their shares. Not sure which is true, but Redditors were enraged and kept buying more and rallying people to buy and hold strong.

The price actually fluctuated up to $350 before I went to bed; this time I set a profit goal of $400 (auto sell if it reaches that level). I didn't set a stop loss this time. I didn’t sleep well at all, waking up once or twice thinking about it. I checked the prices once when I woke in the middle of the night, hoping that my sale was triggered so I could put my mind at ease... but it wasn't. Damn.

On hindsight, I'm not sure why I was so worried, given I was already prepared to lose the amount. But there is something dangerously addictive about checking the share price and watching it jump up and down, each upward spike a dose of dopamine and each downward spike triggering a shudder of unease. It was like a drug.

In the morning when I finally checked, I realised the peak it hit was $380, and market closed at $350… but post-market trading seemed to be moving the price down.

 

The Drama

As I was still lying in bed browsing WSB, two things happened – first, news came out that their Discord server got BANNED by Discord. What? Then next, the subreddit itself became inaccessible. Was it US govt intervention (as you can imagine, there could be allegations of market manipulation when people rally behind a stock on an online forum)? Could it be big hedge firms DDOSing or using money to silence the wallstreetbets movement?

Whatever it was, the price began falling, and it seemed like people were panic selling their stock in this momentary info blackout.

 

I must admit, I felt real panic as the price plummeted fast, from $300+ to $210, and my fingers hovered over the buttons to trigger a sell order, as my mind raced through quick mental sums as I evaluated how much of a loss I was willing to take. Was it an end to the fairytale?

 

But soon a temp WSB subreddit sprung up, and people were posting there to hold strong. Some speculated that the initial price dip was orchestrated by the hedge funds themselves, to try to drive panic selling – and was a well-coordinated effort which included banning them on Discord. Who knows. Nonetheless, the main subreddit opened up shortly after, and the price stabilised and went back up to the high 200s, ending post-market at $290/share.

 

Time to be a spectator

As much as this roller coaster ride was thrilling, I think it’s time for me to exit. This is highly addictive - constantly checking the news and subreddit, and wanting to check the stock price - and it's disruptive to my life.

If I was to be truly logical and shut out my emotions, I actually do believe the price will keep rising. At time of writing on Thursday, many are speculating that Friday will see the biggest surge in price as many options expire, and the exponential growth in price is only just beginning. 

I don't even see how this could end; it's just a game of chicken between the everyday man at WSB vs the big boys at the hedge funds. With the constant rallying to 'hold strong' on Reddit, it would take something monumental to shift the momentum to get people to give up on their positions to eventually trigger the reverse movement back down. Or the share price just reaches an absolute amount that is hard to rally behind (e.g. above $1k/share) as compared to when it was in the 2-3 digits. I actually do think WSB will win, and the hedge funds will eventually give up on their positions, which will drive the price up further.

But I think it’s too much for me. I am stressed out checking my phone non-stop when market opens, checking Reddit to keep up to date with latest developments throughout the day, and I’m losing sleep over it. Sure, I could make a tidy profit at the end of the day, but at what cost? There is no clear end in sight, and it could come crashing down anytime like a house of cards.

 

When pre-market trading starts today, I will be waiting about 15 minutes to see how the price trends, and set a lowish profit goal from there, planning to exit before market opens.

I will sleep easy tonight, and watch this spectacle unfold from the sidelines. Good luck to those still in, and I won’t be surprised to see the price go nuts… but enough is enough for me. 

My First Marathon - Part 1 - Injuries

This is the first of a series of blogs I intend to write about my journey to my first marathon. 

In this first one, I talk about injuries.

Training for a marathon is not easy. It involves making detailed plans on how long you intend to run each week. It involves keeping to those plans and going out for runs when you don't feel like them. It involves going for long, hard runs that seem like they are taking forever. 

I can do all those easily. I look forward to my long runs. The thing I struggle the most with is injuries.

Running 30-50km a week is rough on your body, especially when you are not used to it. You get hungry more. You feel sore often. I rarely felt 'fresh' coming into a run and always had some minor niggle. But running is very high impact on your entire body, especially everything below the waist. 

Here is a list of injuries I've had since starting to run, just this year alone:

1) Sore calves

This was near the start of my running journey, when I was ramping up zero to 3 times a week of running, and eventually 4 times a week. I developed sore calves pretty often which really bothered me... until I picked up compression socks which seemed to alleviate the issue.

2) Feet arch pain

The arches of my feet would get really tight or sore during/after a run, which affected my ability to run in the subsequent session. This went away almost entirely when I got my Asics GT-2000, a shoe for moderate overpronators. I also massage my arches with a lacrosse ball often now.

3) Feet (tendon?) issues

The best way to describe this is pain or discomfort in the upper side of my foot, somewhere midfoot. This often set in somewhere between 8-11km of my long runs, and usually went away after a while or perhaps I just get numb to it.

I did have one episode where it got so bad that I had to stop at 8km of a 12km run, and bailed on the run (first time ever) , as I could barely walk without a sharp pain shooting through my foot. It got better after some rest, but I had to take a full week off running to recover.

Nowadays it bothers me on and off, but doesn't really flare up mid run.

4) Sciatic nerve / psaos issue?

There are two variations of this - one deep discomfort/twinge in my right glute, the other where my lower right back gets tight. I've no idea what they are till this day, and no amount of pigeon / figure 4 stretches will make them fully go away. They usually don't bother me on a run though, though I can feel a bit stiff because of it.

5) Achilles tendonitis / calf issue?

After my 24km run, which was the longest I had ever covered in my life, my calves were sore the next few days. Even when I resumed the following week's run, they continually felt tight and occasionally sore, and all runs my legs felt heavy and tired. In the next long run, which was planned for 25km, I only made it about 6+km when my Achilles tendon / ankle / calf area started to feel really sore and unnatural (not the usual discomfort I get) and did not go away even after slowing down for 1km. I decided to bail on the run at 8km and Grab home.

Tried to resume running 2 days later in a short 6km run, but only made it to 3km and decided to bail as the calf got very sore. The location is best described as the lowest end of the fleshy part of my calf, seems to be where it meets my tendon. I took that whole week off, and as I'm writing this I'm entering a 50% load week where I halved the distance of the week I missed. I'm not sure if I've recovered, but I've cleared 2 runs this week, 3km and 6.4km. Hoping to do a 4km tomorrow and then a 9.6km on the weekend. Pray my calf doesn't flare up.

Gotta do those eccentric heel drops which seem to help a little? No idea what's the science behind them.

6) ???

Will I have any further injuries? Who knows? 

I'm working consciously to reduce the risk of injury - many core and glute exercises on a regular basis, regular foam roll / stretching. If I successfully complete this marathon and decide on a future marathon, I'll definitely take the off season to do some weights training to strengthen my body more to be able to bear the load of marathon training. It is a tough sport, but there is something euphoric about being on the road for 2-4hours with nothing but your legs, a podcast, and you debating with yourself whether to stop.

Dice Throne Difficulty List

I love this game so much! I created a Difficulty List so it's easy to show friends whom I'm trying to teach the game and recommend them heroes.

Just to explain, these rankings were created with 2 main factors in mind:

• Core mechanics - how complex is it to understand all the mechanics the hero can utilise?
• Key decisions - how complex are the decisions to be made (if any), and how critical are they to your success? (e.g. Heroes with 4-typed dice naturally are ranked higher, as it is easier to whiff their dice rolls)

Do read the caveats at the top of the image to see what this Tier List is NOT. For a full-res PDF copy of this cheat sheet, you can get it here:

Difficulty: 1

Barbarian
Barbarian is a vanilla hero that cannot get any simpler. I wouldn't recommend him for a full length game with a new player, so that they don't get bored with not being able to do anything else besides attack and heal and they see you do all the fun stuff. I usually use him for a 25HP intro game.

Difficulty: 2 

Pyromancer, Moon Elf, Gunslinger, Samurai

All their mechanics are straightforward to learn and understand. Note that I'm not saying they are equally easy to MASTER. Just that at a fundamental level, it's easier to grasp what they do.

I rank Monk higher solely because out of all these heroes, you actually have to make a decision whether to use a Status offensively or defensively. This is opposed to all the other statuses here where it's either a 'inflict/gain this now' based on dice roll or Evasion.

Difficulty: 3

Monk

Read above.

Seraph

The mechanics are quite straightforward, though infused with a stronger element of luck than the other lower difficulty heroes. In my few games with Seraph I rarely got to see Holy Presence being activated so there's really only one main status that features the most, which is Flight. Ranked higher than the Difficulty : 2 heroes simply because it is easier to whiff dice rolls.

Difficulty: 4

Cursed Pirate

I initially thought the Cursed mechanic added some strategic depth in knowing when to 'push the button' and go for the kill, hence adding to the complexity in decision-making. However, with more games, I'm starting to feel that both sides of the board actually play perfectly fine, and Cursed just accelerates the game in 1v1 and creates some fun chaos with more players.

Thus, the complexity in the character comes from the numerous unique Pirate cards (since there are no upgrades) and knowing how to use them. The mechanics are pretty simple to understand and I am tempted to rank him lower at 3, but I suppose new players may get tied up with trying to manage their Cursed Doubloons and hence I'm placing him here.

Vampire Lord

She's different enough to be a tier above Difficulty 3, but I don't think I will rank her any higher.

New players may not know the best way to utilise Blood Power, but otherwise she is not too difficult to understand and use. I initially ranked her higher, but I feel that Blood Power doesn't really have the same decision complexity as Tactical Advantage, so it is easier to learn the hero. 

Her Ultimate is probably the least newbie friendly (how will they know what card to fish for?), but it's a rare occurrence anyway. 

Huntress

The Huntress has a simple mechanic that is difficult to know what to do - you either direct damage to  yourself or to Nyra - but when do you do it? A new player will not have a good sense of power curves and know how best to utilise Nyra, and perhaps struggle with this decision that they have to make every turn.

Paladin
Pretty easy to whiff on his dice rolls before you get upgrades . He has numerous statuses and new players may struggle to remember everything and know when is the opportune time to use them. I am tempted to rank him at 5, but I feel the decision complexity isn't quite the same as the Difficulties 5 and 6 heroes.

Difficulty: 5

Shadow Thief

There are so many things you can do as a ST that it will definitely be overwhelming for a new player. Do you ramp CP, cantrip, go for damage, or hide in the Shadows?? Very fun, but not very newbie friendly.

Artificer
Bots are of course really unique in the game of Dice Throne, but I wouldn't rank him higher than 5 as a unique mechanic doesn't make it a complex mechanic. The decisions to activate are usually straightforward (most of the time Yes if you have Synth), I suppose the tricky part is how quickly to rush the Advanced bot, though in my opinion it should be 'ASAP'.

I know many would rank him a 6, but given that bots play is actually fairly linear without any complicated or tricky decision-making, I think a newbie can pick it up just fine, he just might not know how best to play it.

Difficulty: 6
Tactician
His core mechanic, Tactical Advantage, is a layered status that needs you to understand the pros/cons of the various actions (and possible statuses to inflict) you can perform with it, which makes it quite daunting for a newbie.

Pandemic Legacy Season 1 - September Game One

This post contains spoilers for the September playthrough of Pandemic Legacy Season One.

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Oh wow. I am still reeling in shock.

I have won 100% of the games so far, and this was the first game I lost. And it was all because I found the damn Paranoid Soldier.

It was the worst case scenario - the Paramilitary Escort upgrade was on my most powerful character, the Quarantine Specialist. I had 4 Yellow cards on her, with the 5th one to be passed next turn for the insta-cure. Instead... well. Without going into details, she had to die.

With my QS dead, I had no way of containing the Faded outbreaks, and died to a chain outbreak shortly after in about 2-3 turn cycles.

I'm going to have to revisit my strategy now, given I've permanently lost the QS. Probably need to use some of the military characters to deal with Faded.

Well done Matt Leacock. I hate you. And respect you somewhat.

Pandemic Legacy Season One - August First Game

This post contains spoilers for the month of August.


Last month, I picked up the upgrade that let me remove faded when my character leaves that city which seemed pretty OP.

 This month introduced a self sacrifice Mechanic to take a scar to avoid an infect phase or something. I pretty much forgot about it because it seemed stupid unless I know for sure another Infect will do critical board damage.

There was a Virologist to Search for this game, but he is slightly harder to find than the Immunologist (did I get their roles wrong? Maybe it is Immun this game and Viro last game)

As I START the game with 6 military bases, there was no more need for an Operations Expert, so I ran with Researcher, QS, and Dispatcher.

This game was VERY strange. Had a very optimal opening sequence and card draw , found the Viro really quickly, and cured 2 diseases. Then I got stuck. I basically had 0 of the last color cards until the last 1/3 of the game, which meant I spent most of my middle game firefighting and removing Fallen figurines with my upgrade.

Thankfully, the final color did come out, and I swiftly cured it once I had 5 live cards of that color. Was in no real danger of losing despite having 4 epidemics! On to the next month...

Pandemic Legacy Season One - July First Game

This post contains spoilers for Pandemic Legacy July gameplay.
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July introduced a new ‘Search’ mechanic where you can discard cards when you’re in a research station IN a Fallen city to advance a search token to eventually ‘find’ an important person that will help with the CoDa virus.

I played with the (what I think is) optimal team combi of Researcher (I swear my games will be ten times harder without her), Quarantine Specialist (what else to deal with Fallen?), and Operations Specialist (need for those Mil Bases! Though now as I approach 6 permanent Mil Bases, I may See his use fall off though there isn’t really a better military-tagged character, pending my further evaluation)

I didn’t think I would bother with this objective, but it ended up being the first objective I completed due to nothing else better to do in the opening turns. My Epidemic #1 and #2 were  spaced so far apart that I actually completed 3 objectives before hitting the 2nd Epidemic, but not the mandatory cure 3 diseases one so I had to keep playing.

I ended up ekeing out a surprisingly narrow win - the last color virus was close to running out of cubes (2 left) due to a chain outbreak, and right before my winning turn, a 3 chain outbreak of Fallen pushed the Outbreak counter to 7. Whew.

That’s 7 wins out of 7 games now (with some asterisks on Feb/Mar wins due to a rules misinterpretation, but come on,,, I wasn’t going to lose those! Haha)... wonder when my first loss will come!

Plica Syndrome - Day 25 - Quad loading begins

Knee flexion has improved tremendously though it’s extremely tight and slightly painful to fully flex the knee. Almost full range of motion. I had been doing heel-wall slides to help with this, think it helps.

Still experiencing tightness/dull pain in my VMO+ scar tissue area, especially when walking/standing/going down stairs.

I shared these points with my physio Mark. For my physio session today, Mark did some manual therapy to loosen up my VMO + ITB, and it was straight to rehab work! Mark said it was time to start loading my quads as my left quad apparently has atrophied (shrunk) quite abit. We did some bike work, some light leg press, and some hip stability drills. Mark keeps emphasising ‘strong hips, strong knees. Not the other way round’.

We finished up the session with abit more manual therapy for my VMO as I was complaining of tightness, and he also applied sports tape on my knee which is supposed to help with the VMO tightness.

And it did!! The leg feels surprisingly better with just the tape and no knee sleeve (which I had been wearing before). Mark said he expected me to be jogging by Week 6... which seems unlikely at the moment lol, given how my knee feels still. I think I’ll get significantly better once the scar tissue (a tough little lump under my skin) decided to break up and disappear.

For home therapy, supposed to do some wall-assisted half squats, stand-sit from bed (not sure how to describe this lol. Resembles a half squat but the load is on hamstrings/glute), hip stability drills, calf raises. Hope I get better fast!

Pandemic Legacy Season One - June - First Game

This post contains spoilers for Pandemic Legacy Season One - June.

June's new thing was 'equipment' - you get to stick stickers on city cards, which make them dual-purpose and also an 'equipment'. The equipment abilities weren't that amazing, so I didn't really focus much on it apart from using the singular (and most op) one which allowed that card to be used as a 'wild card' for curing disease (essentially it is any colour).

I also learnt from my May game, and went for the easier objective of building 6 Military Bases. The funny thing was, approaching the end of my game, I realised I was closer to meeting the 'Quarantine 7 Fallen cities' objective rather than Eradicate (From Jan-June, I had always eradicated at least one virus each game), due to some unlucky Epidemics. I ended up winning that way, and didn't eradicate any virus for the first time.

The card draw was both good and bad - I didn't see black City cards till towards game-end - at one point I had met 2 objectives, but was still left with black virus to be cured. But the infection cards were generally quite favourable, until after the 3rd Epidemic, when I got 2-3 Fallen outbreaks, which resulted in
- One city reaching Rioting Level 3
- Two black cities becoming Fallen (my blue virus is the c0Da evolved virus)

It will be interesting to see how the spread of Fallen cities affects the difficulty in future games - on one hand it is quite damaging to have an irreversible virus spreading; on the other, it also makes eradicating the non-evolved virus easier since there will be fewer of that virus' cubes spawning.

Oh, I used Researcher, QS, and Operations Expert again, and took 2 permanent Military Bases as my upgrades. It seems pretty OP... just one more time and I will have 6 permanent Military Bases from the start of game, which basically insta-completes one objective. Looking forward to July!

Pandemic Legacy Season One - May Gameplay

This post contains spoilers for Pandemic Legacy Season One , May.

This game was the first time in Legacy I thought I would lose.

May forced you to complete 3 objectives, which meant I shouldn’t ignore the military bases Mechanic anymore.. but I still tried to. Against my better judgment, I aimed for the Quarantine 7 Fallen cities objective (along with eradicate, since that’s a joke now with my black virus  upgraded 3 times).

There was also a new complication where any Player cards you drew that were the colour of the mutated untreatable / uncurable virus WOULD ALSO place Fallen figurines on the board!! That’s crazy. This meant the mutated virus basically spreads twice as fast compared to everything else since you get it from 2 sources!

My luck was absolutely terrible too as I drew many Blue (my mutated virus) cards early, along with a  3 cube Blue in the opening infection draw. This meant I spent the whole game spamming Quarantines, trying to keep blue at bay and also meet my 7 Quarantine objective.

When I won, I was 1 outbreak away from losing, and down to 4 Player cards. This was the closest I came to losing in 5 games. 

I decided to play along with the Military Bases and took 2 upgrades to have 2 Military Bases on my board at the start, instead of upgrading my black Virus to tier 4, which I deemed not that critical given how my biggest issue was containing Fallen with their double spawn rate. Let’s see if I can beat June more comfortably!

Plica Syndrome - Day 11 - Stitches Removal

Knee extension is almost 100% (I can straighten my leg), but according to my physio I'm still walking with my leg slightly bent. This is because I feel this little bunch of muscle above my knee being very tight still, which subconsciously makes me bend the leg. Knee flexion is still bad, I can't go beyond 90 degrees much, something tight is pulling me back at the knee.

Physio work today involved riding a bike, some other stretches/exercises that Mark guided me through. More interesting and worth it than lying on a bed and letting TENS zap me. He gives me a glimpse of his 'roadmap' for me, which sounded interesting I suppose, being my first time working with a PT. Looking forward to recovery!!

After the physio session, I went to see Dr Lim to remove my stitches. It was fairly simple, just snip the knot at the end, and gently tug out the thread with a tweezer. I barely felt anything, not even a tugging sensation. Wounds seemed to have healed alright, but still some swelling there.

Recovery will be training the quads to prevent atrophy, getting range of motion back. Will post the next update probably in 2 weeks time (about Week 4) when I visit the physio again. Ciaoz

Pandemic Legacy Season One - April - First Gameplay

This post contains spoilers for Pandemic Legacy April.

One of the hallmarks of Pandemic is the sudden realisation that you messed up a particular rule. The first time I played Pandemic, I thought the Researcher’s ‘pass any card’ ability was also a ‘take any card’.

When playing April in Legacy, I suddenly realised I was playing Quarantine Specialist wrongly - I was using her Quarantine-from-anywhere ability more than once every turn, completely missing out the ‘Once every turn’ wording. That could have explained why March was so easy... luckily I found out pretty early in the game, so I would place an asterisk only on March, and maybe Feb.

Anyway, I quickly corrected myself and played it as it should be, which did make the game a bit harder.

April’s curveball was the introduction of ‘Fallen figurines’ replacing your mutated untreatable, uncurable disease. The major downsides of Fallen are:
- If you start your turn in a city with any Fallen, your character gains a scar
- If Fallen outbreaks to a neighbouring city of a different Color, that city becomes Fallen as well and will permanently spawn Fallen if infected.

The way I see it, this makes the QS even more of a necessity, and may warrant the use of Mil Bases eventually (I don’t quite see the need yet) if they have some proxy-Quarantine ability. It makes the whole Blue side basically out of bounds, and I’ll have to dart in and out if I want to Quarantine it, a whopping 3 turns just to do that. Will need to re-evaluate in May how best to deal with Fallen...

Anyway, April ended with a win, with 2 outbreaks and one city hitting Rioting level. I continue to snowball my disease mutation powers with one eradication. (Random thought - what if you spent a disease upgrade on the eventual cODa virus? That would suck). One third the way through to saving the world!

Pandemic Legacy Season One - March - Game One

This post contains spoilers for Pandemic Legacy. You should not read on if you do not want to be spoiled.

For my February gameplay, click here.
For my January gameplay, click here.

March introduced 2 new objectives, on top of the requirement to cure 3 diseases. I needed to either eradicate a disease or build a Military Base (a new structure) in each of the 6 major areas of the game (e.g. Asia, North America, South America, etc). It also introduced a new character, Operation Expert, who could build Military Bases for free, without discarding a card.

After evaluating, I figured the military base objective was way too troublesome, so I went with the same character setup (Op Expert would only be useful if I was doing the military base objective) of Researcher, Dispatcher, and Contingency Expert.

This game was quite underwhelming, but largely due to a very lucky card draw. My 1st and 2nd Epidemics were VERY far separated, and by then I was almost winning. I ended the game with zero outbreaks, and only 2 Epidemics drawn. I sieved through the Player Deck and realised the 3rd and 4th Epidemic were back to back (it's better right? Assuming you draw both in a single player turn, you avoid double-drawing a City card)

I find the Researcher is just too powerful, coupled with the Co-worker 'share anywhere' mechanic, I just use the Researcher as a card dumper, QS to control any potential outbreak with remote Quarantines (and also control the uncurable disease), and Dispatcher to maximise moves. This combo seems unstoppable, as shown by my easy win this game, without any funding to boot. 

I'm not sure why it was so easy... could also be because I recognised the snowball potential of Disease Mutations (upgrades) so I focused on them from January, and I already have 4 upgrades which makes Curing a lot easier.

Three for three so far, looking forward to April!

Pandemic Legacy Season One - February - Game One

This post contains spoilers for Pandemic Legacy. You should not read on if you do not want to be spoiled.

After a fairly easy but interesting January game, I approached February with high hopes... which were immediately met with another cool twist when I opened the Legacy deck which has my Mission briefing.

I thought the mutation of one virus such that it needed an extra action to treat was bad enough... now the game tells me this virus has mutated further to become IMMUNE  and I can’t even treat or cure it?! Wow. (Since Jan, the win condition changed to curing just 3 of the viruses)

Before I could rip apart the rest of the game in frustration, it introduced a new role and Mechanic, Quarantine+ Quarantine specialist! Quarantine is a new action any character can perform if they are in that city - you place a quarantine token on it, which basically means the next time you need to place a disease cube on it, you remove the token instead of placing the cube. So it’s like a shield!
The Specialist basically lets you quarantine any city without being there physically (and retains the token if your Specialist is in the city which just got a disease cube)

I figured the optimal strategy was to use this new character, and basically perma-Quarantine the immune virus. I dropped Medic, and ran with Quarantine Specialist, Dispatcher, and Researcher.
I added Co-worker and Family Member as my relationships.

The game went fairly smoothly at the start, but got very tense towards the end as I was left with one disease to cure but I wasn’t even drawing any of that colour, and a few cities were in danger of outbreak, even the untreatable disease. Thankfully, I emerged fairly unscathed with just one outbreak, and won with one eradication too.

Looking forward to what twists March brings... and how I will fair with ZERO funding! (Your level of funding basically indicates how many event cards you put in the deck. Each time you win, you reduce your funding by 2)

Pandemic Legacy Season One - January First Gameplay (Spoiler Free)

After a long time of deliberating whether to invest in this game, I finally took the leap! I decided to go solo, as it would be quite troublesome to assemble and keep a regular group going for 12 weeks (minimally) to complete the game. I've heard nothing but good reviews for this game, so... why not?

Right out of the box, there's intrigue - a set of dossiers labelled 'Top Secret', a rulebook, a big sticker sheet, and a set of instructions to immediately follow.

One of the first instructions was to stick a sticker on Packet 8, which is a sealed, perforated box: 'Open only if you lose 4 games in a row'. Ooooh mystery. I aim to never open this!!

Board looks similar to regular Pandemic, with some extra things.

Ok I'm going to talk abit about my experience, and I'll keep it spoiler free in the sense that I won't reveal anything that is only revealed later in the game. Meaning I'll only mention things outright described in the rulebook at the start.

One of the key new mechanics is panic level - everytime an outbreak occurs, that city's panic level goes up by 1 permanently. There were some really shitty permanent effects if the panic level got too high, so I tried my best in my first game to control all outbreaks - unfortunately I still got one. Oh well.

The first game went fairly ok - I decided to go with 3 characters, Medic, Dispatcher, and Researcher, which I deem to be the most powerful. I read online that 2 was too easy, and 4 felt abit clunky due to the card passing required and I thought I would more easily lose track and mess up given I was playing solo.
I won without too much difficulty (was never close to losing), and even managed to eradicate two diseases, which net me some cool upgrades for the future (you get 2 upgrades after every game which makes things easier for you in your next game).

But I did find myself spending A LOT more time thinking about each move, as I felt that each decision was many times more important than before, since things that happen are permanent and have lasting effects on the rest of your 12-24 games. I think playing this with friends may be slightly easier, as you can bounce ideas off each other, and weigh the pros/cons of certain decisions. After this first win, I even ran to my wife (who wasn't playing, but played Pandemic before) to ask for her inputs for an upgrade decision I had to make.

One of the new mechanics is a 'Legacy deck', which you are supposed to draw cards that have instructions on them that may change how the game is played; there is a preset order to draw them, and you will know exactly when to stop and draw. The first Legacy deck effect was mindblowing - it fundamentally changed how the game was played and I was just reeling from it. I wonder how it will affect future games?!? And if this was only the first thing, how else could the game be modified? I can imagine by the time I hit November/December, the gameplay would be REALLY REALLY different from the base game. I can't wait!!

First impressions - really good. I love the creative angle of the 'Legacy' style gameplay, which adds weight to every decision. From the first 'twist' of the Legacy Deck, I'm already super stoked to see what further twists the game makers have for me. The whole feel of the game just feels amazing and fresh, the components are well made; would have loved some better compartments for the cubes instead of ziplock but I guess I'll get a Plano box to resolve that myself.

Looking forward to February!

Plica Syndrome - Day 6 - Regrets?

Day 6 after the op (counting the day of the op as Day 0) I can start to walk without a crutch but with a big limp. There's some swelling on and off, which I realised seems to happen if I remove the light compression sleeve the doctor gave. I'll ice, elevate, and put the compression sleeve back on and the swelling subsides.


Sometimes I wonder if I should have had done the surgery. When I read online of other people who also had plica syndrome and hence went for arthroscopic surgery, their symptoms always sound a lot more severe than mine.

All I had was a persistent discomfort in the knee, the feeling that something is rubbing on the inside of the knee, and the joint gets warm and painful after I deadlift / hurts when I run. Other people have constant pain, clicking in the knee, pain when going up/down stairs. I can even play basketball/sports if I wear a knee wrap!

The problem was the discomfort didn't go away, and didn't seem to be improving after 9 months. I had 2 options:

Option A: Start seeing a new physio and try out another treatment plan (After 9 months of trying many plans) and hope it reduces and eliminates the problem eventually.

Option B: Do the surgery, then see that physio and rehab to 100%.

The problem with option A is that the recovery is not guaranteed and the problem plica is still there. Well not that option B is guaranteed recovery, but at least the problem is removed and I can actively rehab and feel progress.

My only fear now is that I don't actually return to 100%, and some lingering issue remains to haunt me. Then it will remind me of this $11+k plus 3 months of suffering (the estimated recovery timeline) wasted. oh well.

Clash Royale - Masters League!

Finally hit a new milestone today, obtaining Masters League after a pretty nailbiting final game

The deck used:

Average Elixir Cost: 3.0

The core cards I used were Hog Rider, Goblin, Zap, Musketeer - mainly because they were maxed out. I'm currently maxing out Fireball so I guess I'm stuck with that xD. Ice Wizard has saved me too much defensively, so the only 2 variations I played with were the Cannon/Ice Golem.

I've tried Inferno Tower but didn't like the lack of versatility it had - I wasn't facing Golem/LH all too often, and it usually isn't that great against Giant (due to the opponent's ability to stack other small things behind it). Cannon is all around more versatile and fits into my cyclish deck better.

The last card, Ice Golem, was a last moment of inspiration. For a long time, I was using a Level 9 Mini Pekka or a Level 6 Pekka - clearly suboptimal at the trophy levels I was playing at where most people have maxxed out cards. I thought I needed some sort of tank killer, and even considered my Level 2 Lumberjack.

Eventually I realised I needed a card that was level-neutral - i.e. performs just as well even when underlevelled. There are 3 cards that fit this bill - Ice Spirit, Skeletons (99% of the time you don't rely on their damage anyway) and Ice Golem. After a few playtests of Ice Golem, I loved how high skill cap this card was and how efficiently it trades up for things like Pekka, Prince, EBarbs, Valk, etc (basically just kite them into the opposite lane, and play a Ice Wiz/Musketeer in the middle to pick it off as it's being kited)

With the deck locked in, it was just a matter of dodging some of the deck's weaknesses - any Lava Hound deck would destroy me once they kill my Musketeer (e.g. with Lightning); Giant / Golem decks will be quite tough as I have no tank killer, and I have to rely on split pushing to win. True enough, as I advanced up, I lost most of my LH/Giant/Golem games, but thankfully I didn't face them too often in the final push.

And the one true test came in the final game just before Masters - I was 8 trophies away... and faced a Golem deck. Thankfully, my gambit-style play worked as we took each other's Princess Towers, and he couldn't really defend my quick Hog cycle pressure on his opposite lane as he tried to Golem deathball my King tower on one lane.

Yay!

Plica Syndrome - Part 3 - First Physiotherapy (Day 4)

Went for my follow-up visit with Dr Lim Mui Hong today when he replaced my bandages and checked on my wound - nothing amiss, except for the $100+ from my wallet. Will be going back one last time in a week's time to remove the stitches.

The highlight of my day was my first visit to my physiotherapist, Mark from The Physio Movement. It's my first time seeing him, and they are well-reviewed online. It's a bit too early for me to leave my review, so I'll save it for a few weeks time.

Mark is a friendly guy, trying to chat abit to break the ice. During the session, he did some manual therapy (basically some massage to release tight muscles), a 15 mins session of TENS, and he ended it off with some advice on walking with crutches (try to retain my normal walking gait, don't overcorrect with a limp), and prescribed some daily exercises to do at home.

He told me that:
- I should walk without crutches in 2 weeks
- After 5-6 weeks he may let me do some light jogging
- Back to normal activity after 3 months

I'm slightly disappointed with the recovery timeline, as my informal Google search showed some people who actually went back to normal activity in 2-4 weeks. Oh well, have to trust the process and just pray for speedy and FULL recovery!

The general progress so far is some slight improvements in knee extension over the past 3 days. Knee flexion entirely depends on how much swelling there is in the knee... today there suddenly seemed to be some swelling so my sub90 knee flexion became a very tight 90. Bearing weight on the knee is still quite uncomfortable, though I can generally survive on one crutch, even no crutch if I limp hard.