March 10, 2010: Chess and Lottso! Express

Chess Badge Challenge
Pwned! Badge
Capture 50 pieces this week! (Players will not receive challenge progress if a player resigns)
Win this badge plus 2000 Tokens!

Unless you have a friend to play with (and who can purposefully lose to you), I recommend playing against computers since this is always a faster, easier route. And of course like me, you'll be using Play Buddy's awesome auto Chess Buddy.

I began by letting the Buddy autoplay on its own. However, it was so efficient at winning that I stopped it and used "play hint" to get more pieces. I'd use the hints until towards the end of the game at which point I'd capture stray pieces when the opportunity presented itself, whereas if I had let the Buddy continue, it would have gone straight for the kill. In other words, its goal was to win ASAP but since our goal is to get as many pieces as possible in one game, I chose to nab pieces whenever I saw the chance to do so. Again, I recommend doing this towards the end of the game where it's easier to see what pieces to nab without losing the game. Then again, you can just let it autoplay... would probably only take a little while longer but the badge would still be won. :-)

So when it was all said and done, it took us 19 minutes to acquire the badge and an extra 1,207 tokens. Not too shabby!

Lottso! Express Badge Challenge
Refill Badge
Complete 200 bingos this week!
Win this badge plus 3000 Tokens!

I remember a Lottso Express challenge from not too long ago. The blog I wrote on it here has some good overall play tips if you'd like to revisit it.

Unfortunately still no auto from Play Buddy. So I earned my extra 2,646 tokens over the 1 hour 6 minutes it took to complete the challenge. HOWEVER you'll be able to do it much quicker - a lot of my time was spent experimenting. :-) That said, here's what I found to be the most efficient and FASTEST way to get this badge:

If you fill up the entire board, that guarantees 14 bingos. However, this can become tricky to do towards the end when all you need is a 3 and a 1 and they're not coming up and you run out of balls. So the next best thing I found was to do that initially and then do a rotation thereafter so that one side is filled, and one side is free. This enables you to get almost as many bingos in the same time and in a tad easier fashion.

Here's what to do:

1. Begin by filling up ALL the cards. You want to fill up every space until the entire board is filled for your initial "million" bingos.
2. Now scratch the scratch tickets of ONLY ONE SIDE of the board and then refill
3. Now continue to fill up the empty side and collect your bingos. When only a space or two is left and it's time to refill, scratch the FULL side FIRST then refill.
4. Remember to finish filling up your "almost full" side.
5. Repeat 2-4. :-)

Some extra FYI and tips:

• You have to complete the game to see and get credit for your bingos. This means playing all the way to the end 'til you see the play again screen or badge window pop up (even if you get your 200th bingo on the first ball of Goal 1!)


• Look for lines where you can put multiple balls. For example, you have a 2, 2, 8. You could put those anywhere the numbers appear, but if all 3 of those numbers can be put on the same line, you're that much closer to a bingo.


• If you have extra balls that won't fit anywhere on the cards, remember to look to the side bets of the scratch cards before refilling.