After playing a couple rounds of L4D on expert with you guys, I have a couple ideas and observations. They're not revolutionary, but I think we should consider them.

• Every time we got ganked without the Tank, we were separated. We should work on sticking together at all times. No one of us was to blame every time, I think we all did it at some point.
• Sometimes we had the slowest person taking up the rear in our formation. While it makes sense for the slowest person to be last, it's a bad idea. The slowest person should be first, to moderate the speed at which we progress through the map. The fastest person should be the last in line, so that if he falls behind, it's easy for him to catch up.
• This is probably just for me, but the lag sucked. I got fucked on many occasions because I was lagging. I'd be following you guys happily and then the lag died down and it turned out you were in totally different places from where I thought. I'm working on that, but it's probably going to keep being a factor until my dad stops being such an asshole about the internet.
• Communication! This is really the key I think. I've noticed that when we do well, it's when we communicate well. Conversely, we get fucked whenever we stop communicating well. This ranges from small things like picking a leader who knows where to find items (basically everyone except me) to actually listening to the leader. For the most part it seemed like we did a good job of sticking with our partners, which is great. Problems arise, however, when the pairs are separated at key times. There was a good example of this when a horde came and we were with our partners, but the pairs were separated. Even though we were only separated by a shelf or something, it was enough for one pair to go down and the other to be totally fine.
• Communication 2: there were quite a few times when one of us would wander off to do something small like go back 20 feet and grab ammo, or search a neighboring room, and then get fucked before the rest of the crew can save him. It's tedious to announce every little thing, but it makes a big difference in the outcome.
• Communication 3: we should stick to what we say, or revise it. There were a couple times when someone up front would say "let's go right" and then find heavy resistance and end up going left. Then when I got there and went right I got fucked because I was expecting to find backup, but it was left instead. That could be solved by saying "fuck right, too many zombies. let's go left instead." Or something to that effect.
• The tank! The tank is a bitch! I think we should come up with a new strategy for fighting the tank. We figured out a while ago that he runs faster on fire now. He also seems to have more HP (I haven't discussed that, so maybe you guys disagree or already knew). Sometimes it works to light him on fire and just run the fuck away. Other times, he catches up with us and rapes our faces. I don't really have any ideas, but I think we could do some brainstorming and experiment a little bit. For example, one time we were curious whether the saferoom door would still keep the tank out. We ran back into the saferoom, closed the door, and stood right next to it. The tank exploded the door and killed all of us. And now we know that we can't always rely on the door to hold. However, we've also seen it hold the tank outside on multiple occasions.
• Communcation 4: after action discussion. I think we could greatly improve our game by talking about what happened. Discussing what went well and what failed. The main thing here is that we could very easily turn it into a blame-fest, and that wouldn't help anyone.

Well, that's just what came to mind when I started typing. It's not really in any kind of order. I think the communication is the most important thing, and also the hardest to work on. I'll see some of you guys on L4D later, so we can talk about our ideas.