A Visit to The French Laundry

San Francisco Bay Area residents have a certain pride in our restaurants, in the level of culinary experience we and tourists can enjoy. Being able to eat well is part of the experience of living in and visiting San Francisco and the greater bay area. As cities go, we aren’t alone in taking pride in our restaurants. But I just checked Amazon and the Michelin Guide web site and didn’t find a red guide for Chicago, Los Angeles, or any other big American city. Earning a Michelin Guide seems to be quite an achievement in itself.

When the 2007 Michelin guide for the San Francisco Bay Area and Wine Country came out recently, I think more than a few people were surprised and disappointed to find that only one of our many respected restaurants earned the lofty Three-Star rating. If not for the Wine Country, we’d not have even that one. With four Two-Star restaurants and twenty-three One-Star restaurants, the Bay Area fared well overall compared to New York (with four and thirty-one, respectively), but the Big Apple boasts three Three-Star restaurants. Only The French Laundry earned this rating here at home. My dad just pointed out that on Restaurant Magazine's S. Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants list, The French Laundry is currently #4 and considered the best restaurant in America.

The French Laundry looms in the Bay Area like Oz, like Valhalla, like Heaven, perhaps: a mythical place of otherworldly experiences as hard to get into as it is expensive—no, perhaps harder to get into. You have to call exactly two months in advance of the day you want to go; you need to persevere to get through on the reservation line; and then you need to get lucky. Just having the money to afford the experience is not enough. The stars must align in your favor.

The Occasion and The Journey
As our tenth wedding anniversary approached, my wife tried yet again to get a reservation at The French Laundry, having failed on several previous attempts over the years and hoping that we’d get lucky for this special occasion. Once again, we did not. She added our name to the waiting list and we made reservations at the Two-Star Fifth Floor , planning to enjoy a very nice dinner there. But at the last moment she got a call from the French Laundry about a cancellation for lunch and snapped it up. We were finally going!

Yountville is about an hour north of Oakland, and we drove through the drizzle to the wine country, passing through Napa and many roadside vineyards on our way to an 11:30 reservation. Once on Washington St in Yountville, we drove right past the restaurant, so unassuming is its façade. The restaurant itself is small and wonderfully quiet, even when full. This says as much if not more about the people eating there as it does the restaurant itself, but the point is that if you find that overly noisy restaurants make enjoying your meal nearly impossible, The French Laundry is like heaven for atmosphere. Its interior is simple and comfortable, elegant but not pretentious. I liked that it doesn’t feel compelled to impress with decoration, but rather lets the food and service do the talking.


(above) The facade on Washington Street

The Menu
So what did we have? Here, in order, is what we ate. The items in all caps are taken directly from the menu. Everything else was not on the menu and not ordered; those items just came without being requested.

1. Gougères—two small pastries, still warm, very cheesy inside.
   
2. Yellow beet ‘ice cream cone’ wrapped in paper napkin. The chopped yellow beets were in a ball on top of the ice cream cone with something like béchamel inside.
   
3. “PORRIDGE” OF “AKITA KOMACHI” RICE: Quail Egg Yolk, “Perilla” and Mountain Caviar
   
4. “JARDINIÈRE DE LEGUMES D’HIVER”: Garden Herbs and Black Truffle “Bouillon”
   
5. WARM SALAD OF FIELD RHUBARB: Leaves and “Ribs” of Jacobsen’s Farm Swiss Chard with Mustard ‘Beignets” and Mustard Emulsion
   
6. CURRY-SCENTED “GRATIN” OF CELERY ROOT: Baby Celery, Toasted Almonds and Plumped Raisins
   
7. HERB-ROASTED HEN-OF-THE-WOODS MUSHROOMS: Glazed Tokyo Turnips and Grilled Scallion
   
8. “CONFITE” OF PEARL POTATOES: Yukon Gold Potato “Mille-Feuille,” Green Garlic, Marinated Sweet Peppers, Field Arugula and Castelvetrano Olives
   
9. ROGUE RIVER CREAMERY “OREGON BLUE”: Thompson Seedless Grapes, Toasted English Walnuts, “Frisée” Lettuce and Pedro Ximénez Reduction
   
10. HAWAIIAN BROWN SUGAR ICE CREAM: “Florentin” and Dark Chocolate Sheen
    
11. CARA CARA ORANGES “EN GELÉE DE PAMPLEMOUSSE”: Champagne “Granite” and Tynant Water “Foam”
    
12. Crème Brulée and Lemon Pot de Crème
    
13. Orange tuiles
    
14. “MIGNARDISES” (which consisted of several trays of various candies):
    
    
    
    1. Milk, White and Dark chocolate truffles
       
    2. Hand-made salt caramels
       
    3. Pistachio nougats
       
    4. Hand-rolled chocolate covered Macadamia nuts
       
    5. Produced in honor of our anniversary, a special tray of truffles in these flavors: caramel, hazelnut, mocha, all spice, peanut butter, banana, and I think a couple more I can’t recall
    
    
15. espresso
    
16. four bottles of Tynant sparkling water
    
17. five kinds of bread
    
18. Shortbread, wrapped as a parting gift
    
19. a bottle and a half of wine

The Wine
The French Laundry’s wine list is 96 pages long. It offers a wide variety of international wines, from Beaujolais to the finest Champagne, at a wide variety of prices, from the occasional bottle under $100 to many more bottles in the mid-four figures and above. Having purchased most of our daily and special wines directly from the French producers themselves, I’m pained when faced with paying double or triple the price for a wine I recognize in a restaurant. When I am eating at a place I particularly like and thus want to remain in business so I can continue to enjoy it, I more easily accept the wine markup, having heard that wine is where many restaurants make their profit. It’s a little harder to cling to this notion, though, when the prix fixe menu is already costing you $240. If you’re not independently wealthy and thus not thinking often about how many pairs of toddler shoes, doctor’s visits, and trips to the Wiggles concert $240 would buy, just going to a place this expensive in the first place brings you out of your financial comfort zone. But if you decide to go, the worst thing you can do is fret about how much it’s costing you. An experience like this demands your full attention, and if you can’t stop worrying about the money you just shouldn’t go to begin with.

That’s what I kept telling myself, anyway. I really like wine, and when eating a meal like this I flat out needed something nice in my wine glass. I picked a 2004 Meursault Les Chevalieres, a white Burgundy from Remi Jobard. It’s about a $70 wine, marked up to $180. Fortunately, it was excellent, which was a relief, since the last thing I wanted was to set a personal record for most spent on a bottle of wine only to have the wine itself be disappointing. The meal lasted almost three hours, though, and a single bottle does not last that long. So before the cheese course we decided to get a half bottle of red burgundy, and the sommelier recommended a 2001 Volnay, Clos des Ducs from Domain Marquis d’Angerville. That half-bottle was nearly as much as the Merusault 750ml, but it was also outstanding. The waiter brought to the table the largest wine glasses I’d ever used, saying that the wine was worth his fancy Burgundy stemware. The glasses were so large, it was sort of like having your own personal decanter, and I felt a little silly drinking from one. I’m not sure it added anything to the wine’s own gifts, but it made me feel that I was suddenly about 75% of my normal physical size. Maybe that’s what a really ‘large’ wine is supposed to do.

The Experience
So what was it like, eating this exquisite food and drinking two gorgeous wines? It was fantastic. That lunch had so little in common with most other meals I’ve eaten that it’s difficult to express just what it was like. Usually the things on the newest dish were completely foreign to our experience either because we’d never encountered them before, or because we’d never had them prepared in that fashion and with such skill and care. Only Le Bourdonnais in Paris came to mind on occasion as we moved from serving to serving at The French Laundry. For example, we’ve all had rice. But Akita Komachi rice, prepared as it was on Saturday, was like no other rice I’d ever had, and prompted the first of many times I said, “Wow, I’ve never had rice (or whatever) like this before.” In my experience really good restaurants do something in their kitchens that is simply on a different level from what we usually encounter in food preparation. I remember the first time I saw a pro golfer hit a ball at the Olympic Club during the US Open years ago. I’d never heard that sound, I’d never seen anyone swing that smoothly, I’d never seen anything like that in the years I’d been playing golf. It was golf, but it was golf done in such a way that it was vastly different from any golf I’d seen before. A really good restaurant does the same with food. They’re cooking back there, but they’re doing it on such a different level of competence and creativity that normal experience doesn’t prepare you for it. I’ve only enjoyed it a handful of times in my life, but each time it’s been like magic.

Each course was small and exquisitely presented, like a work of art that tasted delicious. I’m a fairly big eater, and after each dish I felt I could eat about another ten portions of what I’d just enjoyed. They give you just enough to appreciate what they’ve done, and then it’s gone so that you won’t fill up on one thing when they have so many wonders to share with you.

As exciting and delicious as the food was, the service was just as good. I kept thinking back to a meal we had several years a go at Chez Panisse, another world famous Bay Area restaurant. The waitress had an air of condescension so pronounced that it completely ruined our experience. The meal was expensive and terrible, in spite of the food being quite good. I was so disappointed and offended that I wrote to Alice Waters about how awful our experience had been. She did not reply to my letter, and we have not been back to Chez Panisse since. CP is still in business, though, so I assume that waitress is long gone. But maybe not.

Each person who assisted us with our meal at The French Laundry was modest but knowledgeable, helpful but unobtrusive, there when we wanted something and not there when we needed nothing but privacy in which to enjoy each new dish. We asked two of them where they went when they wanted a first class meal, thinking they’d be spoiled by eating the staff meals at the French Laundry on a regular basis. Both admitted that they had never eaten there as a customer. The staff meals, though very good, were nothing like the food we were being served.


(above) The dark blue door on the ground floor is the entrance

The Only Disappointment Was Its End
I brought my camera with me in case I saw something to shoot on the drive, and in a way I wish I’d been able to take a picture of each of the many dishes. But we have The French Laundry Cookbook to remind us of the amazing presentation. I did take a few shots before we left, and right after meeting the man himself, Thomas Keller. We’d parked behind the restaurant in a small lot with spaces for five or six cars, covered with tan gravel that was so smooth when we arrived they must have someone rake it each morning. As we entered the lot, a man in a chef’s white coat passed and thanked us for coming. I had just seen a picture of Thomas Keller, chef and restaurateur extraordinaire, the day before, and the man looked familiar. I asked if he was Thomas Keller, and he nodded, almost shyly. We shook hands and thanked him for a fabulous afternoon. If I hadn’t had so much to drink I might have asked him to pose with the wife for a photo!

After three hours, we were full but not uncomfortable. After drinking most of the wine, I was quite comfortable, in fact, since my darling wife had graciously offered to drive home. Such generosity and courtesy on her part are a bit of why the past ten years of marriage have gone so quickly (for me, at least). Perhaps ten years from now, we’ll be ready to visit the French Laundry again. I can hardly wait!

The Wal-Mart Bridge?

According to Wikipedia's article on the Bay Bridge replacement section, the original estimate to build a new eastern section of the bridge with a tower span was $2.6 billion. But due to the increasing costs of steel and concrete, which is due largely to the huge demand in China where new factories are blooming to build us more products that are a few dollars less than the same products made here in the US, the new estimate is $6.2 billion. It's still an estimate because the tower is nowhere to be seen. Who knows how much it will cost once it starts creeping up out of the bay?

Cheap manufacturing in China is saving us all a lot of money, right? So much so that I think the new bridge should be called The Wal-Mart Bridge when it's done.

Light Post 110

Made it!

Completed my first Hexic MMC last night and was amazed to see the score go from a little over a million to 1.84 billion in a matter of seconds (though after several hours of cautious work). It's remarkable how little time (relatively) went into this score compared to how long it took me to make 116 million the old way. If I were to end my game now I'd be sixth, I think, but my score would be visible. So I am starting another MMC of the same style to push me over the invisible barrier. I'm keeping track of how long it takes me to collect the pieces I need and assemble them...

Hexic is back...

After several months of being away from Hexic, I’m back and making a run at what on the xbox.com Hexic forum has been dubbed the Massive Multiplier Combo, or MMC.

Once upon a time we thought the way to score at Hexic was to make star after star on Level 7, racking up points a million or so at a time, and using this tedious method I managed to set a high score of 116 million. This was good enough to claim the #1 spot on the Hexic Marathon leader board and hold that spot for a couple of months. But recently someone posted a new top score with stats that indicated a much shorter game than could be achieved with the current scoring method. That guy was using complex arrangements of game pieces to earn huge bonuses when a large collapse of pieces was triggered. Once these MMCs emerged, they quickly became the new power in Hexic scoring. The current high score is almost 43 billion, set by YS23 Aoki sensei, the innovator and master of the MMC. Others have been going crazy with MMCs, setting scores so high the game can’t display them properly.

Is that enough geek speak? Probably more than enough. Basically Hexic is a game of geometric patterns, originally played on MSN and now also on the Xbox 360’s Live Arcade. Hexic was invented by Tetris’s creator, Alexey Pajitnov. The rules and free MSN version can be found here.

Hitting the #1 spot on a scoreboard was a mixed blessing. It was the first and probably last time I achieved such a thing and I was very pleased with the accomplishment. The down side was that at the top of that board I became a lightning rod for a sudden flood of Friend Requests from people I’d never met and messages over Live, many of which wanted only to point out what a loser I was for setting such a high score. Some of the messages I got were so hateful, so soaking with random and anonymous malice that I was very glad when a friend replaced my score and took over the top spot. I’m currently down somewhere in the top 20, and still get random friend requests occasionally, usually from people with low gamer scores who have just started playing Hexic. I expect everyone else near the top of the board gets FRs from the same people.

Though I was too late to apply for the Xbox Ambassador program, I try to be one anyway and generally accept these FRs. I then point the new Hexic players to the fantastic community at the Hexic forum on xbox.com. If you’re playing Hexic on MSN, you can still benefit from the free advice and help people such as Xraf, oldtaco, yojono, Stoffs, FlobberWorm and others offer to anyone interested in the game

I’ve been drawn back to Hexic due to my interest in attempting a large MMC. The above picture shows my game’s state as of 02-16-2007. If I can pull this MMC off, I should earn 1.9 billion points and a spot once again on the top ten. The good news is that due to a glitch in the game’s scoreboard programming, any score over 2.4 billion and change shows as a blank space. So with this large MMC and perhaps a smaller one, I should maintain some anonymity as far as the haters are concerned. But since my game time is so limited these days, there’s no telling how long it will take me to complete the design, if I’m even able to do so without making such a huge mistake that much of my previous work is wiped out. If that happens I doubt I’ll start again, so I’m going very carefully, walking a tightrope of dangerous moves that could ruin hours of hard work. But it’s much more fun attempting something like this than is was working on my 116 million point game, so I’m enjoying myself again. I hope to have a pic of the completed set-up posted here before too long.

In the mean time, Hexic is a nice thing to do when you’re trying to figure out why a character would do something you need him to do…

A weekend with the legendary 85MM f/1.2L

I am fortunate to live close to a camera shop that rents some pretty high-end equipment. This weekend I indulged a desire to spend some time with Canon’s $1,800 85mm f/1.2L lens. Until recently (the new 50mm f/1.2L has joined the 85mm at f/1.2) this was Canon’s fastest lens and a favorite among pro and rich amateur photographers. Being neither of the above, I consider myself lucky to be able to rent this lens for $30 and spend a weekend using it.

Since I mainly take pictures of kids, mine and whomever’s are visiting, 85mm turned out to be a bit long. I got way more close-ups than usual, and with two kids playing and running around, I missed a lot of shots I’d normally have no problem with. My main lens is a 24-70mm f/2.8L, which has a great zoom range for following kids in action. Switching to a fixed 85mm was quite a challenge, as I had to lean back often, if not get up and move away from my subject.

The 85, as I call it, also has a much slower auto-focus than I’m used to when you ask the lens to make a large adjustment in distance. Short changes are no problem, but if one moment you are taking a picture of something across the room, and the next you point at something right in front of you, the lens takes its time refocusing.

One of the advantages of this lens is its maximum aperture and the ability to shoot in low light. But when shooting side open at f/1.2, the depth of field is so shallow you can easily have one part of a person’s face in focus and another part going soft. You can see this effect in a few of the shots I posted on pbase. Even decreasing the aperture a few stops delivers a fairly tricky depth of field for an amateur who is accustomed to f/2.8. But the results are great when you pull it off, having your subject nice and sharp with a soft background.

I hope my local shop decides to add the new 50mm f/1.2L to their collection. 50mm would probably be just right for following kids around with a prime lens. And it’s cheaper: only $1,600 at B&H Photo!

Some thoughts on Xbox360 Achievements

Achievements are a hot topic lately on blogs, podcasts and in magazines, but I have yet to observe anyone express an opinion similar to one I feel very strongly about. The Achievements element of the Xbox360 experience is a stroke of genius, not because of ‘bragging rights’ which are often mentioned, but because achievements offer incremental goals and become a kind of game within the larger game, adding to one’s overall enjoyment each time you reach a new goal. For many of us, fun is what gaming is all about, and at their best, achievements simply make gaming more fun.

Since the Xbox360’s launch I have seen Achievements mature from a sometimes clever--sometimes misguided beginning to their current state. My Gamerscore bears the Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter blight of having earned achievements worth 2, 8, and in one case 36 points--not sure what Ubisoft was thinking there. But I traded in GRAW long ago, and since most other developers have wisely settled on point values divisible by 5, I will likely have a Gamerscore ending in 4 or 9 for some time to come.

Thinking about GRAW’s achievements reminds me that one pet peeve I have is when developers require a player to finish an easier difficulty mode to get achievements that should be given when a player completes a harder difficulty mode. I am a recreational gamer and don’t have time to burn; I need to get my gaming in when I can, but I’m not satisfied unless I have completed a game’s single player portion on the hardest difficulty. When I do so, I feel I’ve earned the points for any softer difficulty, too. Gears of War correctly rewards a player in this situation: when you skip Casual and finish a chapter on Hardcore you get two achievements. For GRAW, however, I played the single player only on Hard and was not awarded 275 points for the Normal difficulty. Oh, well. RS: Vegas did it right, so I hope Ubisoft will make sure GRAW 2 works the same way.

Another type of achievement that just plain sucks is one that requires luck rather than skill. Texas Hold ’Em and World Series of Poker: Tournament of Champions both give achievements for being dealt all hands through Royal Flush. The odds against drawing a royal flush in a seven-card game are almost 31,000 to 1, assuming your opponents don’t fold on you! Professional players go their entire careers without getting a royal flush, but people playing a video game that has an active life of a couple years at most are expected to get one? To the credit of 360 developers in general, this is the only achievement I can think of that can hurt your chances of getting other achievements. How many times (assuming you’ve played poker) have you called bets with a royal flush draw solely because this might be that 1 in 31,000 times that you get the fifth card you need? Sorry, but this is one of the stupidest achievements I’ve run into.

I’m not saying achievements shouldn’t be difficult: the more difficult they are the more satisfying when accomplished, as long as they are difficult but doable, and more important, doable via hard work and persistence. Who says playing video games can’t help us develop at least a few good qualities? Neither should the hardest achievements in any given game be too easy. Finishing Call of Duty 2 on Veteran was just right—difficult but doable, and it felt great to get that Veteran achievement.

I think the worst type of achievement is one that requires a player to reach #1 on a scoreboard, such as several achievements found in Chromehounds and GRAW. This type of achievement is simply out of reach for the vast majority of players; it takes more time and more skill than all but a very few of us have, and that large remainder of gamers is left knowing we will never get those achievements--not because we didn’t try hard enough, but because such accomplishments are simply beyond our abilities. No matter how much we play we’ll simply never be good enough to reach the #1 spot in a highly competitive game. The average gamer should be able to get most of a game’s achievements if he or she is willing to put the time in to develop the required skill. Perhaps the average gamer shouldn’t expect to be able to get all 1000 points in every game, but most if not all achievements should be possible if the gamer is willing to try hard enough.

On one occasion I was able to take the #1 spot on a leader board. It was on the Marathon board in Hexic, a feat that required more time than skill (which is why I was able to do it). Even though I only did it in Hexic, and my score has since been left far, far in the dust, at that time it was very rewarding to see my name on top and I didn’t need an Achievement Unlocked notice to feel good about it. In fact, I think one’s participation and position in any type of ranked mode should be the same: increasing your rank should be achievement enough, especially hitting #1.

I will go a bit further and deliver the main point of this post: Ranked Match achievements are not good for Xbox Live, and developers should not make them part of the 1000 point limit. My reason for this opinion is simple: when you make an achievement for ranked matches only, you force casual, recreational gamers to enter the realm of the MAGHUT (Maniacal, Antagonistic, Gay Hating, Under-supervised Teenager). Gears of War is currently my favorite online game, and I have a lot of fun playing it with my friends. I like Gears so much that I would like to get all the achievements as I have done with a few other games that I really, truly loved. But in order to do this I have to join ranked matches and am sometimes forced to spend my precious gaming time with maghuts who hate me and humanity for no obvious reason, and whom I in turn despise for their appalling behavior. (I’m not sure if the Live matchmaking scheme is even at work here, because as a recreational player with no negative feedback I get matched with some pretty disgusting characters.) This situation does not make my Live experience more enjoyable. And let’s face it: if Halo 3 has ranked match achievements it’ll be even worse.

I have friends who also wish to get all the Gears Achievements, and we are forced to contrive a ranked match where we can play together to earn credit toward those goals and simultaneously avoid being called offensive names as we witness first hand the dire state of today’s gaming youth. This sometimes feels a bit like cheating to me: we are playing ranked matches amongst ourselves to create a friendly environment, but this is contrary to the basic premise of the ranked match. Since I feel a bit guilty about contriving a ranked match, this further decreases my gaming fun, which makes it rare that I find myself playing ranked games, which means that in all likelihood I will not get any of the ranked achievements for Gears of War.

Well, maybe that’s just too bad for me. But I don’t think it is only me. I think many Gears players have had similar experiences and thus are unlikely to chase these achievements, even though they may desire to do so. Is Gears intended to be a game only for maghuts? I think Microsoft wants it and every other game to draw people into Live and Xbox360 gaming. Any time a Gold trial member is placed in the company of maghuts, Live’s future is harmed. I suspect those ranked achievements are contrary to growing the Live Gold membership.

So is this situation worth the benefits, whatever those may be, of including ranked match achievements in any game? I think most gamers who choose to play ranked matches would do so anyway, and for them the ranked-match-only achievements are just a bonus. They get gratification from moving up on the scoreboards, from achieving stats that boost their egos, and in many cases from pwning the poor noobs who stumble innocently into their clutches. But I think there are many more casual players who, while they avoid the shocking society often found in ranked matches, still enjoy Player Matches with friends and with strangers who are also seeking fun multiplayer gaming without all the name-calling and creepy t-bagging you have when two or more maghuts get together in the same match.

All, or at least most, of a game’s achievements should be offered in good faith to the widest selection of gamers. Rather than requiring us to play ranked matches for the Versus achievements, we should get credit for headshots in Player matches, too. That way, no matter what type of versus match you prefer, Ranked or Player, you care still able to get the achievements.

Some will say that this ruins the point of Ranked Match Achievements, which are supposed to be harder to get due to an increased level of competition in Ranked matches, and harder to contrive because in a ranked match you aren’t supposed to be able to get a bunch of fellow Gamerscore whores in there with you to take turns lining up for headshots. But let’s face it: the latter situation happens anyway. Those who want to boost achievements will find a way to do so. And as far as the increased level of competition, so what? Most of us play video games for pleasure, not to prove our manhood and claim the most fertile woman in the tribe or to train for professional gaming tournaments. What I value in a video game is more fun. I don’t go bravely into ranked matches and suffer the company of maghuts because of some Nietzsche-esque belief that spending time with them will make me stronger. I simply want to enjoy myself, and sadly I find that chasing the ranked match achievements in games like Gears is no fun at all.

I realize that some who read this won’t care whether average gamers are having fun or not playing Gears of War and might advise us to go play Viva Pinata. (Which was a lot of fun, in spite of an Achievement for playing 50 hours, which I will never get.) But by definition most of the people found on Live are of average ability, and I think most of them play for fun. Thus, everyone should care what kind of experience these people are having because this is the group that keeps Live humming. You may be one among the small group of elite players who have a legitimate chance of claiming #1 on the GRAW scoreboards, but if the majority of Live gamers aren’t enjoying themselves, there won’t be any scoreboards for you to conquer or noobs for you to pwn. You’re better off being content with the admiration of other players of your high ability who will notice your rank on scoreboards because they are competing with you for a high spot themselves. These are the only people besides you who care what your rank is anyway: the rest of us couldn’t care less.

In conclusion I point out that for many of us, achievements have become a goal in themselves. I have one guy on my friends list who chases achievement points for their own sake, and I say more power to him. He has found a way to add enjoyment to his gaming, which is what it’s all about. He enjoys not only the game itself, but the constant increase in his Gamerscore, a few points at a time. However, even this accomplished gamer with over 45,000 achievement points won’t play ranked matches unless it’s a contrived friends-only event. Hardcore gamers may scoff at our sensitivity to offensive behavior and our desire to have a playing-for-fun-only shot at all the achievements. If the maghuts don’t get you down, then you’re either tougher than we are, or you need professional help. And if you suffer their company because stats are everything to you, then good luck in life, babe. Good game stats only impress the guy one spot below you. If you really want to impress me, let’s see you get a royal flush.