Fri, 25 May 2012 22:46:51 -0600WeeblyMon, 09 Aug 2010 18:55:20 -0600http://www.tecmobowl-vs-rbi.com/2/post/2010/08/slowing-down-the-san-francisco-49ers.htmlGuest blogger Cam Allen delivers yet another detailed write up.  This time he focuses on slowing down the high powered Tecmo Bowl 49er's offense.  You can't stop Joe Montana, but you can do you part to give Jerry Rice a bad day on the stat sheet.  Cam does a great job breaking down the ins and outs of the 49er playbook and how to combat it.  Enjoy!  

You can't stop San Francisco, you can only hope to contain them.

In a capable player's hands San Francisco is the biggest nightmare in Tecmo Bowl.  Maybe the Giants are better but they are slow, methodical, and generally give you hope of catching the 1 break you need to topple them. Sure Chicago is loaded with star players and will just crush less talented teams but let's face it, Chicago stops themselves. But San Francisco...they are terrifying.

The standard defensive tactic used to try to stop SF is of course:

Call Pass 1. Again and again. And again and again.  Until San Fran is running almost exclusively Pass 2 or Pass 3 out of fear of being play picked on a Pass 1 call.  Why?

This takes Jerry Rice out of the game as he will be covered on all 3 pass plays. This along with being a topside defender wipes out Run 1 and Pass 1 for SF.  Against a normal team that's all you ever have to do to eventually stop them, take away 2 of their plays and you control what plays they run and you give yourself a great chance of a play-pick whenever you want to take a shot and try for one. But with SF, this plan leaves their Pass 3 Shotgun pass wide open to do serious damage.  It leaves a deep and shallow receiver open and you just get picked apart either 12 yards at a time or the deep pass hits for 30.

Now the real problem is that if you attempt to mix in some Pass 3 defensive calls Jerry Rice's fly route on Pass 2 is opened up and with receivers wide open at the top, it's a minimum 15 yard gain.

Still, this is the only viable plan against San Francisco. Let's go over the other options and the computer defense coverage they provide:

Run 1: Suicide. Provides 0 pass coverage.  Should only ever be called in short yardage situations where they might look to pick up 1-2 yards for a 1st down/touchdown.  Run 1 is effectively taken away by just controlling a topside defender, so calling the play is a very bad idea.  Against San Fran you should exclusively use a topside defender, UNLESS you are a team with a super duper star defender on the center/bottom (Chicago's Singletary the prime example) then you can occasionally use one of them as the offense should never be calling Run 1 to burn you with. Eventually your opponent will catch on and start mixing in some Run 1 to keep you honest. However, this is not an entirely bad thing. Do you see why?

Pass 2: Ineffective against Pass 1 (covering the TE, leaving the top and bottom receiver open) and opens the floodgates on Pass 3, where SF can do the most damage.  Ass Wilson will be covered by the top safety but this is essentially meaningless as SF will still have Rice on the deep route and 2 receivers open running short patterns.

Pass 3: Works fine against Pass 1 (bottom outside linebacker covers Rice, leaving only a very risky throw for Montana) but opens up Rice on Pass 2 and causes all kinds of problems. The bottom safety will cover the TE on pass 2 but with Rice open long and with Wilson and Craig open short it has no effect on the play for Montana.

There's all kinds of problems with each of these.  How about a random strategy you say?  Let's look at what a random strategy could do:

Assume both players ignore Run 1 (as they should, ignoring short yardage 1st downs and touchdown scenarios) and select their play 100% at random. That is 1/3 of the time Pass 1, 1/3 Pass 2, 1/3 Pass 3. The chances of 3 straight playpicks is 3.7%. The only other combination of play calls that prevents SF from getting a 1st down is Pass 2 vs Pass 1 defense and Pass 1 vs Pass 3 defense. There's a 11.1% chance (1/3*1/3) of either of those happening on any given play. So here's the scenarios on any given play:

33% playcall, 22.2% chance of a favourable combination, 44.8% 1st down.

Unfortunately for defenses SF gets to run (at least) 3 plays. So the chances of preventing a truly random SF offense with a truly random defense from picking up a 1st down is about 17%. 

And this ignores some complications like the fact that on Pass 2 vs. Pass 1 SF can easily pick up 3 yards. And oh yeah, THERE'S A 4TH DOWN.

If you win the field position battle and SF always starts at their own 20, they need 3 first downs (assuming approx 12 yards/1st down) to kick a FG.  The chances of SF getting into FG range before being stopped is 58%. Assume 6 1st downs to put it in the endzone and that's a 33% chance of a TD.   To recap, you will lose playing a truly random defensive strategy against SF.

The only way to play them is by playing a mixed strategy where your defensive play calling influences what mixed strategy of offensive calls SF makes. And looking at the coverage schemes the only favourable way to do this is by calling a heavy mix of pass 1 and using a topside defender to nullify Run 1.

Calling Pass 1 will at least slow SF down a little and force them to complete a few shotgun plays to get into FG range.  You'll have to mix in several Pass 2 or 3 calls in hopes of catching a playpick or 2 in order to stop them, but at least calling a lot of pass 1 gives you that opportunity

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]]>Wed, 07 Apr 2010 08:56:38 -0600http://www.tecmobowl-vs-rbi.com/2/post/2010/04/the-mega-powers-explode.htmlOur very own guest blogger Cam Allen delivers a solid insightful study on the advantage of being Player 1, which we refer to as the home team.  Cam and his group of Tecmo Bowl players have very similar facts, figures and findings as we do.  Below he details how the it all shakes out with the 1,000+ games they have data on.  Sit back and enjoy the detailed work below...

Diving into the 1116 game database, let's look at how the mega powers (NYG, SF, CHI) have fared against each other. Keeping in mind there will be some biases here as these are the stats for all players, all eras, all strategies etc. but it should be a good representative sample......

Home (Player 1)-Away (Player 2)

NYG-SF. 18-5 (.782), 102 PF, 74 PA. 6 OT games.

SF -NYG. 14-3 (.824), 124 PF, 44 PA. SF is on a 9 game winning streak at home against NYG. They posted 8 consecutive shutouts until the championship game at the 2009 WCOTB when the Giants managed an impressive 9 points. This was most points the Giants on the road had scored against SF in 16 games. 3 OT games.

NYG-CHI. 11-5 (.688), 81 PF, 45 PA. Giants currently have a 5 game winning streak against CHI at home. 4 OT games.

CHI-NYG. 2-3 (.400) 20 PF, 42 PA. Only 5 of this match-up somehow.

SF-CHI. 6-6 (.500) 64 PF, 109 PA.   24-0 and 21-0 wins for CHI ran up the PA

CHI-SF. 8-8 (.500) 117 PF, 110 PA. 2 OT games.

Totals, Record, PF, PA
NYG home: 29-10 (.744), 183, 119
SF home: 20-9 (.690), 188, 153
CHI home: 10-11 (.476), 137, 152
CHI road: 11-17 (.393), 154, 145
SF road: 11-24 (.314), 184, 219
NYG road: 6-16 (.272), 86, 144

Conclusions, SF's edge over NYG at home is bigger then the NYG's edge over SF at home. NYG holds over CHI, and all SF/CHI match-ups are about equal. Also the take home message should be the power of home field advantage. All 3 of these teams are fairly equal and check out the home records: 59-30 (.663), 508, 424.  When the mega powers explode the home team wins 2/3rds of the time!

]]>Wed, 24 Mar 2010 14:39:03 -0600http://www.tecmobowl-vs-rbi.com/2/post/2010/03/evolution-of-tecmo-bowl-whats-left-to-learn.htmlHouston, we have a problem.  We're 2 decades and some change into this, and our Tecmo Bowl schemes and strategies are still changing.  Game-plans are still being perfected.  Defenses are starting to play some serious catch-up against a couple offenses that are usually near the top of the league. 

This first became apparent to me when Denver and Miami began to lose steam in season 4.  Not just in the win column, but on the scoreboard as well.  The Broncos and Dolphins have been the standard middle tier squads I lead to a slug of wins, and do so by scoring lots of points.  As we have reached the mid point of season 4, I feel there's significant change on the horizon........   

Perhaps its an aberration.  Perhaps its just their time to not exceed expectations.  Perhaps its just the luck of the draft and the opponents they are facing.  Regardless of that speculation, the bend but do not break defense is getting closer and closer to winning the battle against Elway and Marino.  Those 2 teams no longer have their way with the opponents defense. 

Over a 4 year span, I exchanged emails with the creator of a Tecmo Bowl site in Canada.  Those emails eventually lead to the first ever International Tecmo Bowl Championship, which took place in May of 2008 in Indiana.  2 Americans and 2 Canadians.  We utilize slightly different rules in game-play, so a agreement was reached on international rules, which limits the amount of QB running during the International competition.  

This seemingly minor change really altered the game more than we could have expected.  Reducing the amount of QB running really showed us just how important the computer controlled defender coverage aspect is.  As Tecmo Bowl progressed on American soil the last couple years, game plans slowly moved further and further away from the "pick your opponents play" style.  The strategy has shifted gears to taking away the opponents big play potential and merely letting them nickle and dime you.  Patience is very necessary with this style.  With the odds in your favor, you make the opponent slowly drive the length of the field and merely need an occasional 3rd down stop to force a punt or a field goal attempt. 

As we have gotten more experienced over the years, the game of Tecmo Bowl has become much more cerebral.  Especially when a game is staged between two talented and knowledgeable players.  These latest defensive developments point towards this being a fact.  We're far removed from the days of the playbook guessing game and have become quite astute in gameplan study, yet still find some new wrinkles to throw into the fray.

Touch downs are not a thing of the past by any means.  Furthermore this seems to have opened the door for the more dominant teams to be take over for good in the standings.  The wildcard factor for Denver and Miami appears to be withering away.  We shall see what the test of wills holds for the future and these high flying offensive attacks, that could be grounded for good..

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