Has anyone out there done any work on optimal spoiler placement? It seems like the perfect place for some sort of web aplet.
I've crunched some quick numbers and the results are pleasantly surprising. Because of the exponential nature of the scoring, it's incredibly easy to crunch down a monster score to nothing with a well placed spoiler: i.e., if you place a spoiler in the middle of a row of 7, it turns into two rows of 3... 128 down to 16.
The nice thing about completing a row (besides the 256 points) is that you still end up with a long chain of 7 when your opponents break it. However, if you opponent thinks ahead and places two spoilers 180 degrees apart, your 256 drops down to 16.
The max score from all 18 ringers + 3 keepers from one team is (as far as I can tell) 596 points. 4 well placed spoilers drops this to 91, a loss of 504 points! (or 85%)... it's left as an exercise to the reader to think about which 4 I'm talking about
With all 4 spoilers in play and even a small number of enemy ringers it seems like it would be hard to break 100 points... which makes that 60 point bonus mighty tasty.