This is not my blog.

Well, it was a pleasant day on Saturday when we had our most recent Scrabble club meeting of club #620. I showed up a little late with photos that I had just printed of Brad's tattooing process and with a touch of a migraine that got better as the session went on. I was pleased to see that Shelley, from our Huntington contingent, had made it to the meeting. I had first met her at the tournament as the first person that I played in the tourney in a very close game. She was eager for a rematch since I narrowly won my first game against her by challenging back-to-back phoney bingos in the endgame.

Alas, my first game this time was against club director, Brad. I said "oh shit" and Brad commented that I said the same thing the last time when I managed to beat him. I would have no such game this time as Brad thoroughly schooled me. In fact, I was so blown out of the water that I forgot to take a picture of the board ... so you can enjoy this one in it's place as I was certainly pwned. It started bad for me when he drew the Z, X, and a V on his first rack and laid out FEZ, ZAX, and VEX as his first three plays for a total of 73 pts. to my 26 pts. Then Brad went on to lay out 3 bingos (two of them back-to-back) with TAVERNS (79 pts.), BRIDLES (69 pts.) and REUPPING* (73 pts.) ... as in reupping his asskicking by playing a phoney bingo on top of the stuff he was already dishing out. By the time that he laid the third bingo the score stood 359 to 116. My best play was HAJ for 37 pts. though I had the bingo COWBOYS in my hand at one point but no place to play it. I managed to play MEANY near the end as my comment to Brad and he ended up winning 470 to 250. I was fortunate that I kept him from getting to 500 and blocked a lane where he was trying to work an elusive "triple triple" where you span two triple word scores for 9 times the score. Ugh.

I had received a phone call during my game with Brad from a lady who had been referred to me from the court psychologist who I work with every day in my day court. She wanted to ask me a lot of questions about how the mental health court works in WV and to get my perspective on it for a graduate paper that she was working on. I put her off and was going to get back with her after the club meeting when Raf showed up an hour late for our meeting making our members go from an even 6 to 7. I decided that I would sit out the second game so that Raf could rotate in and returned the call. I missed most of the Scrabble action except when Raf called me over to take a picture of the impossible board that he and Shelley had built during the course of their game. This is truly an ugly board and the result of defensive Scrabble playing to maximize points on small words rather than going for the bingo plays and opening up "bingo lanes" which is the usual method of play in our club. Ugh.

I finished my call and came in for the third round of games where I was matched up with Shelley. She is such a nice lady ... and English professor at Marshall which I found to be very impressive. She's a much better player than she wants to believe and I think that her self confidence is holding her back in her game. I told her so but I don't think that she believed me. She started the next game with RAH for 12 pts. and then said "oh shit" when I scooped up all of my tiles with both hands to lay out the bingo FLOATED for 69 pts. I had been staring at those tiles trying to figure out my plays. I had FELT, ALOFT, and a few others before I found the bingo. Shelley was amused that I was taking a picture ... till I laid the word down. The game went sporadically after that with Shelley playing shorter words and me playing longer words, many of which were not of high value but they seemed to have a psychological effect on Shelley each time that I scooped up a bunch of tiles and put them down (like BEEFY 27 pts., BIGGER 12 pts., PRUNE 8 pts., and PATIO 29 pts.). I referred to this as "Blitzkrieg Scrabble" where I just make big word plays and not worry about opening up triple word scores, though Shelley was good at taking them when I did, in order to open more play options later for bingos. Shelley was consistently scoring in the teens and 20's while I was all over the place but the final score ended up 280 to 340 with her going out first. Blitzkrieg Scrabble worked in this case but it is sort of hit and miss because I sacrifice making consistently good plays for the sake of opening the board (which sometimes benefits my opponent). Still, a fun time was had by all.

I stayed after my game with Shelley to play Raf who wanted to play me a game of Scrabble because he just enjoys beating me ... especially when I play bingos and he doesn't. That is exactly what happened in our game too. I got the bingo INVERTER (86 pts.) and Raf still managed to come back and win 365 to 304. Oh, he asked me to take a picture at one point in the game so here it is (he was wanting to see if he had some better plays available with his rack). This is an example of where Blitzkrieg Scrabble doesn't work. Raf is a very consistent player. Every game that I've played with him his score column has mostly 20's and 30's with a few killer 40's and 50's while mine usually varies from the teens to the 40's with the occasional bingo. So Raf makes up his points by playing every play very well which is frustrating because my ability to keep up with him on the big plays doesn't really work very well for me yet. It helps that Raf has a better word knowledge than I do for making some of those small but deadly plays as well. He made a killing with the play CROWS for 44 pts. and did the same with SPRAWL for 34 pts. and SHEAR 43pts. Meanwhile I had a near bingo with TAILSIDE* in an endgame desperation play (which didn't work) to pull ahead of Raf who was winning by40+ pts. (TAILSLIDE would have been good if I had the letters for it). On my last rack I had this awesome bingo with no place to play it too! Oh well, Raf beat me again.

Still, it was a fun day for some Scrabble play and a good time was had by all ... or at least so far as I could see. I wore my Trogdor shirt in response to Brad wearing his Strongbad shirt last time. I reveled in my geekery! :-) There was some talk at the end of club of Huntington getting their own Scrabble club which could give us more meeting dates and potential games so long as the Huntington people want that. It could be interesting to have that sort of co-club interaction. We'll have to see what happens from that.

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Labels: scrabble