Donkey Kong Forum

General Donkey Kong Discussion => The Kong Off => Topic started by: MJMeerman on August 02, 2015, 02:20:38 pm

Title: Congratulations to Hank Chien on winning The Kong Off 4!
Post by: MJMeerman on August 02, 2015, 02:20:38 pm

Hank took it in the finals over Robbie Lakeman 662100-629500. Both players were on L15, but Hank had two lives left to work with and was already ahead in points when Robbie lost his last man.

Congrats Hank!

Full results:

1st: Hank Chien
2nd: Robbie Lakeman
3rd: Jeff Willms
4th: Dean Saglio
T5th: Wes Copeland
T5th: Ethan Daniels
T5th: Mike Groesbeck
T5th: Vincent Lemay

Full bracket: http://challonge.com/kongoff4 (http://challonge.com/kongoff4)

Title: Re: Congratulations to Hank Chien on winning The Kong Off 4!
Post by: Adam_Mon on August 02, 2015, 02:41:28 pm

Outstanding event!

Huge congrats to Hank on another Kong Off victory  8)

and Robbie for taking second, as well as all teh competitors <3

Also Willms on winning the High Score event.

commentary for brackets was great

Also HUGE thank you to Richie, Dan, Mike G and JC for doing the best they could with the streaming situation.
I was delighted that we got to see some fri/sat action on the high scores!

Highlight was definitely last quarter drop and of course Dean going massive on that potential WR game, that game was a total master class in top level DK.

Thanks Richie for putting another great event together, Hopefully we will get a number 5 in the future!

<Billy> <Wiebe> <Walter>  <Tim>

Title: Re: Congratulations to Hank Chien on winning The Kong Off 4!
Post by: wolfman24 on August 02, 2015, 02:49:00 pm

congrats hank and everyone

Title: Re: Congratulations to Hank Chien on winning The Kong Off 4!
Post by: DadsGlasses on August 02, 2015, 04:12:03 pm

Congrats to Hank and all of the other competitors!

Title: Re: Congratulations to Hank Chien on winning The Kong Off 4!
Post by: f_symbols on August 02, 2015, 05:13:00 pm

Hank wins lit  <Allen>

Ko5 was announced to return to replay fx next year  Kreygasm

Title: Re: Congratulations to Hank Chien on winning The Kong Off 4!
Post by: Hawkins on August 02, 2015, 06:35:38 pm

Would love to watch any of these 1-on-1 <Allen> games, if only they can be uploaded somewhere...

Big congrats, Hank :)

Title: Re: Congratulations to Hank Chien on winning The Kong Off 4!
Post by: JCHarrist on August 02, 2015, 07:14:59 pm

Congrats Hank!



(http://i.imgur.com/tTmm51B.jpg)

Title: Re: Congratulations to Hank Chien on winning The Kong Off 4!
Post by: homerwannabee on August 02, 2015, 07:55:15 pm

Kong Off was definitely a very good event, and was cool to see Robbie, and Hank battle it out for the championship.  It was a very close match until the end.

Title: Re: Congratulations to Hank Chien on winning The Kong Off 4!
Post by: tudose on August 02, 2015, 07:57:02 pm

congrats, hank! very well done <Billy>

huge congrats to jeff willms as well for winning the high score portion of the event for the third consecutive time...just incredible <3

Title: Re: Congratulations to Hank Chien on winning The Kong Off 4!
Post by: marinomitch13 on August 02, 2015, 08:43:57 pm

Kongrats to Hank and all my mates on their superb DK play this weekend. It was great to also see you all again!  Kreygasm

Title: Re: Congratulations to Hank Chien on winning The Kong Off 4!
Post by: Jonesy on August 03, 2015, 01:06:26 am

Congrats Hank, I thought Mr Willms was on his way to winning again!

Well done fellas, you really can't beat the KO's!!

Title: Re: Congratulations to Hank Chien on winning The Kong Off 4!
Post by: Barra on August 03, 2015, 04:54:59 am

Congrats to Jeff and Hank on their respective wins!

Awesome to hear it will be back next year too!

 <popcorn>

Title: Re: Congratulations to Hank Chien on winning The Kong Off 4!
Post by: timhett on August 03, 2015, 04:55:08 am

 <Billy> <Walter> <Wiebe>
Congrats Hank!   Kreygasm Kreygasm
Well done and great to see you in action again!
 <Tim>

Title: Re: Congratulations to Hank Chien on winning The Kong Off 4!
Post by: hchien on August 03, 2015, 06:25:47 am

Thanks guys.   

I came in fairly unprepared as I'm busy with work these days and have lots of things going on in my personal life.  However, after 2 days of playing DK in the high score seeding portion, I was in reasonable shape.  I still felt like the underdog.  Heck, I barely qualified for the top 8 bracket.  I shared a room with Robbie and kept telling him I was going to leave for NY as soon as I got eliminated lol.  That plan didn't work.

For the bracket, I faced Wes, Dean, then Robbie. 

My plan with Wes was to run boards and let him make the first move.  It seemed he was point pressing from L5.  He gradually lost lives and although I was behind him on pace I had a full rack of lives and knew I could catch up.  Ironically as soon as I started grabbing the bottom hammer, his game ended.  We finished ~6xxK.

I think my matchup with Dean was the luckiest.  I knew he could outpace me, so I was point pressing from L5.  I died twice early (neither related to point pressing-- one careless mistake and one wall jump over a potential xx_x followed by a wild barrel).  So Dean was ahead of me on lives and pace.  Then a miracle happened and Dean had back to back deaths on conveyer screwings.  Dean ended at 3xxK.  Unbelievable.

I wasn't sure how to play Robbie.  I think ordinarily we'd be pretty evenly matched, but I was totally out of shape so he definitely had the edge.  I just played it by ear.  Robbie in his first 2 matchups didn't lose a single life (I think both matches were played to about 6xxK).  1.2M point without losing a single life.  Talk about intimidation.  I had a really great non-point pressing start against Robbie thanks to some cooperative rivets.  ~114K.  So I could afford to take it easy most of the game and point pressed just enough to stay ahead of Robbie's pace.  I died first.  That's never a good feeling.  For most of the game I was ahead on pace and he was ahead on lives.  But before I knew it Robbie's game ended at 6xxK. 

Title: Re: Congratulations to Hank Chien on winning The Kong Off 4!
Post by: hooch66 on August 03, 2015, 08:39:13 am

Congratulations to Hank!

It's cool to have your strategery on this :)

Title: Re: Congratulations to Hank Chien on winning The Kong Off 4!
Post by: mikegmi2 on August 03, 2015, 08:39:47 am

Congrats to Hank, Jeff W., and to all the players, was a great event and a fun time.  Big thanks to Richie for putting this all together.  Glad a few were able to check out some of the streams, hopefully the quality was ok. Sound may have been annoying since there was so much noise, people talking, announcements, the live band playing nearby, etc. Forgot to look into whether or not you can save footage as I wanted to check out my Saturday stream...Periscope deletes everything within 24 hours (oops).

Until next time...

Title: Re: Congratulations to Hank Chien on winning The Kong Off 4!
Post by: Dk_madness on August 03, 2015, 02:03:34 pm

Kongrats Hank!!! Big Big Big!!! Also huge congrats goes out to all the players as well as Richie for putting this amazing event together.

Kreygasm  Kreygasm  Kreygasm  Kreygasm  Kreygasm  Kreygasm  Kreygasm

Title: Re: Congratulations to Hank Chien on winning The Kong Off 4!
Post by: BillyGaines on August 03, 2015, 10:11:44 pm

Kongrats Hank!  I will eat my plate of crow.  I didn't think you had a chance to beat Robbie do to his amazing play as of late and your busy schedule limiting your prep time.  I was wrong.  Anyone can go down with the format and quality of players at your level.  I am going to watch you guys Kong it out next year.  Kongrats to all the guys who played in this event as well as those who supported it in any way.  Just awesome!!!!! I'm proud to be a fellow Konger! 

The other  <Billy>

Title: Re: Congratulations to Hank Chien on winning The Kong Off 4!
Post by: lakeman421 on August 04, 2015, 01:37:52 am

Kongrats to Hank!  It was a fun and tough match until the end.  My approach to the KO4 was to play solid and limit my mistakes even if I lost some points.  I wanted to play a strategy that could translate from the high score format to the bracket format.  I took the fireball and Kong leaching on the early boards out of my game just so I wouldn't burn myself out mentally.  I was luckily able to sac three men on the 1.059 game, and then go for a higher score later in the event.  Towards the end of day 2 I saw Jeff had a game going and I decided to try and defend the first place score.  I ended late at 847k at 1.11 pace and it wore me out and it carried into the next day. 

In the bracket format I just wanted to get to level 5 without leeching and survive.  The bottom hammers were cautious and I steered barrels away.  I got out of some jams with a couple fireball jumps and even a vertical jump on a conveyor.  There were a couple barrel boards I survived being trolled by fireballs.  Those first two games I could have died multiple times, but got lucky.  I wanted to be slightly ahead in the game, with more points, and more lives.  I had that scenario in the first couple games and it worked in my favor.  Against Hank I was behind in points so I had to keep grabbing both hammers.  The fatigue really got to me in the game against Hank so I decided not to leech anything and avoid mistakes like spring deaths and kicking pies.  The first death I did a forward jump and when I went to back jump the single barrel the jump button didn't kick in and the barrel hit me.  I was really fatigued so maybe I hit it at the wrong time but it totally threw me off.  Even on the spring boards I had to close my eyes and focus extremely hard because the springs started to look blurry to me.

Going into the top 8 we all felt like it was anybody's game and we all had a pretty equal chance.  All the matches were exciting and the finals was a good back and forth battle.  In the end the randomness and my decisions didn't work out and Hank was able to stay on top.  My last 3 lives were lost on pies and rivets and Hank was able to get out of similar jams and thats what made this format interesting.

Title: Re: Congratulations to Hank Chien on winning The Kong Off 4!
Post by: lifereboot on August 04, 2015, 06:02:39 am

Grats Hank and all of the players that made it to KO4!  Grats to those that advanced to the bracket!  Big thanks to Richie for the event and thanks to Robbie, Wes, Richie, and Eric for letting me participate on a dedicated cabinet.  I'm really grateful to be part of this community.

Title: Re: Congratulations to Hank Chien on winning The Kong Off 4!
Post by: TeaJay on August 04, 2015, 09:20:47 am

Congrats Hank! I finally got signed up on the forums... I'll probably be a lurker for a while.

Title: Re: Congratulations to Hank Chien on winning The Kong Off 4!
Post by: KIG666 on August 04, 2015, 09:49:04 am

Big Kongrats  :)

Title: Re: Congratulations to Hank Chien on winning The Kong Off 4!
Post by: Jeffw on August 04, 2015, 10:06:53 am

Congrats to Hank for winning the KO this year! I still have mixed feelings about the format this time. On the one hand it was a nice change and I think it was entertaining to viewers to watch head-to-head matches. On the other hand, the result of the bracket format when you only get singe attempt is going to be based heavily on randomness. I was thinking of possible ways to improve the format. One idea is to make it only the top 2 or 3 from the high score competition advance to the finals rather than top 8. This serves several purposes. Firstly, it increases the importance of the high score competition and forces players to play for one of the tops spots rather than just securing a position in the top 8 early on and then spending the rest of competition ignoring the scoreboard and doing other things like going for the WR (like what Dean did). It also would allow the finals to involve multiple games in some way since there are fewer players, like making it best 3 out of 5 in head-to-head matches for example, which reduces the effect of randomness.

As far as my own games went, I am very happy that I was able to get the top score on my last quarter drop on Saturday. I had previously been going for the WR that day which hadn't been going to well so on my last attempt I decided to just go for the number one spot. In the bracket my strategy for the start was to grab no bottom hammers until L4 but still leach donkey kong on rivets and leach the fire on 2-2. In my first match I didn't have to play very far to win since Vincent unfortunately bombed out early. In the second match against Robbie, I died first from a wild barrel on 3-1 while going for the top hammer. I noticed around L6 or L7 that I was quite a bit ahead of Robbie in pace so being behind a man I decided to switch to a strategy of periodically grabbing the bottom hammer rather than grabbing it every time. The next two deaths were rivet screwings that I don't really feel I could have played any better. By that point I was feeling pretty discouraged since I knew I had almost no chance of winning with Robbie still on his first man, and that mindset was a definitely contributing factor in the poor bottom hammer decision I made that caused my last death.

Anyway, it was a very fun event and I'm glad I was able to make it!

Title: Re: Congratulations to Hank Chien on winning The Kong Off 4!
Post by: timhett on August 04, 2015, 10:15:44 am

Quote from: TeaJay on August 04, 2015, 09:20:47 am

Congrats Hank! I finally got signed up on the forums... I'll probably be a lurker for a while.

Welcome to DKF TeaJay!!!   I think I saw some pics on line from the KO4.  This is the place for all kinds of gaming conversations, even DK Kappa.
 <Tim>