Sunday, April 06, 2008
scrabble tourney second day overview
I believe it was the bard K. Rogers who said "You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, know when to run." That would probably describe my day two of the tournament as I lost 3 of my 4 games today which sort of tanked my division ranking and dropped my projected NSA national ranking by about 100 points (for day one click here). But you know what? Winning 6 out of my 12 games in my first first tournament when I wasn't even playing competitive Scrabble until exactly 2 months ago today makes me feel very good. A fellow Scrabbler told me that she thought she would kick ass in her first tournament and managed to only win 2 games while there were lots of other people who I talked to over the last two days who told me that they went to several tournaments before they won their first one. So I feel very fortunate indeed. More details will follow about how the day went. First I should mention that when I got to the tournament today cute little 11 year old Hannah was excitedly running around telling everyone about showing up on the front page of the Charleston Gazette today.
So today was going to be a very busy day for me. I had a band concert at 3pm that I had to rush off to after the last game which was scheduled to end at 1pm and didn't actually end till later than that since Brad was trying to manually pair people based upon the top ranked positions. Because I knew I wouldn't have a break I dressed up for my concert (and wore my tartan since today was Tartan Day) and posed for this picture with my new lucite tile rack and my OWL2 word list (going for the same sort of pose as that famous one of Oswald if you're wondering). Everyone asked me why I was dressed up and after describing the band concert a few times I started saying things like "I thought it would throw people off if I dressed like Mormon ... so may I tell you about the Latter-Day Saints brother" or I would simply say "Can I offer you a copy of The Watchtower" and then I would explain. :-) Maybe I was in for some retribution since I only won one of my games and then had to rush right out of my band concert to do some very difficult hearings at the hospitals with my brain fried.
At one point today I was 5th in my division today and then dropped to 6th for the last round at which point I was tied with about 6 other people who were all ranked 6-5. A win was very important to keep me in the top half of my division where I had been all weekend. I was paired with Lisa, from my club, and I groaned. Lisa had been looking over my word plays after my games this weekend and had been spotting all of my phoney words (what Scrabble people call a word that is not in the Official Word List ... or OWL ... and they do spell it that way for some reason and denote them with a *). In fact, Lisa had been having fun with me by telling folks that I don't actually play real words while I said that I just calculate the risks when it comes to the decision of playing a real looking phoney or going for a lower point real word ... like when I played the 10 pt. WEILD* yesterday to set myself up for a 50 pt. play of XI/OX that I made on my next turn. Also, Lisa was the first person that I ever played in Scrabble club and I recently beat her on a rematch. Further, Lisa had not done well the previous evening and was now coming at me 5/6 having won 2 of her 3 games today. Things went fine for me in our game as I was leading the whole time until she played back-to-back bingos on me with INQUIRED and LOGGERS for a combined 158 pts. which caught up with me and then left me in the dust about 2/3 of the way through our game. She won and went positive in her spread by picking up +74 and going 6/6 at the same time. Lisa played a great game and so I had to get a picture of her beaming after handing me my biggest defeat in the tournament (in terms of point spread).
So things went very well today ... all things considering. I'm anxious to see how our rankings come out since Lisa and I were both playing as unranked players Tina had one tournament on us and came in with a ranking in the 700's which is where I will probably end up. Brad was thinking I'd probably be around the 700 mark which I'm happy about. I am curious where Lisa will end up because after 8 games yesterday her projected rank was 500 (an entry level score that I'm told you can't start below) but with her wins today she jumped into a positive point spread and surely bumped up. A lot of factors go into rankings though and one that will help me is that I was playing harder players than Lisa because of my initial victories yesterday that kept me as high as 4th place in the division at one point. Of the 6 people who beat me 4 of them finished 1-4 in the division and were all fierce players and I played close games against them (losing to the number 1 after I played 2 bingos in the same game)! I'm hoping that Lisa will be in the high 600's if not better. She is a tough player and I delighted that I didn't play a single phoney against her and successfully challenged her play of UNO* (when you challenge a word if you win the opponent has to remove it and loses a turn, if you lose the challenge you lose your turn). My other stats from today are that I only played 1 bingo and had 4 played against me (both were twice in the same game). I played 10 phoneys and got caught on 4 of them while I had 7 played against me and I caught 4 of those. My high score today was my bingo of ENGINEER for 89 pts. (during which I made two phoneys in the process of laying it down but I still lost the game to the #4 ranked player when he played a second bingo against me). The highest score against me today was Lisa's second bingo of LOGGERS for 88 pts. (but the highest play against me all weekend was the bingo BANDIES for 95 pts.). I ended up with a positive point spread of +109 (meaning that the difference between my scores and my opponents across the 12 games) though it was +209 at one point today. Overall, the games that I lost weren't huge loses except for Lisa's game which cost me -74 pts. to my spread. I shall have vengeance ... the forms of Kanly have been obeyed! :-)
I'll leave you now with some photos that I took during the first round of the tournament yesterday in the parking lot and walking around. It would seem that most of the players are fairly liberal (based on the number of anti-Bush or pro-liberal stickers ... or hybrid cars) and have great senses of humor with their creative minds. I really felt like I was amongst my people. The tournament really was a cool thing and over the next several days I'll discuss some of my games like I do with my club matches ... but I'll do them a few at a time so as not to overload anybody.
Check out all of my Scrabble posts here or from my blog's sidebar.
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Thanks for the update. It sounds like fun.
I was wondering is playing phoneys considered a part of strategy and readily accepted gameplay or is it frowned upon.
In our casual home games it has been seen negatively, but it sounds like in competitive play it's deemed more acceptable. Just wondering.
Thanks!
I was wondering is playing phoneys considered a part of strategy and readily accepted gameplay or is it frowned upon.
In our casual home games it has been seen negatively, but it sounds like in competitive play it's deemed more acceptable. Just wondering.
Thanks!
Thanks for the awesome question. I was actually planning on doing a post to talk about that (and probably still will) because I've talked to a a LOT of people lately about Scrabble and they all want to talk about that very aspect of the game.
In competitive play there is nothing wrong with playing a phoney and managing to pull one off without getting caught is tricky the higher up in the rankings you go (and the higher command of the real words). When I read Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis I learned how phoneys work and how many competitive players consider it a badge of honor to be able to both catch them and get by with them. However, my wife (at the time) was not amused at my new strategy or my excuse for playing convincing fake words. She said that she felt it was not in the spirit of the game ... though I think that she was more mad that I pulled them off better than she did.
I've met people who go with the rule that you can only play words that you can use in a sentence (though I can usually make up a sentence for my phoneys as I love the game Balderdash). In club and tournament play you're not supposed to ask during the game if it is a phoney ... either you challenge or don't, though one woman that I played who was lower in my bracket wanted to ask after a few of my plays (which I found to be uncomfortable). One of the official rules of tournament play is that when you make a play you can't deliberately draw a challenge by saying that you're not sure of the word ... but whether you talk about your phoneys when asked is up to you I suppose (and I did eventually tell her). When I used to play with the ex we went with the rule that once a phoney is detected it stays on the board (unless challenged at the time) but that you can't play off of it ... like forbidden fruit.
Club and tournament play is different though. I've played some phoneys knowing that there was a chance that, even if detected, my opponent could keep it because it gave them a potential scoring opportunity (and I've kept some that way). Theoretically I could knowingly play a phoney and then could successfully challenge a subsequent play off of the phoney if I wanted to. In one of my games I played *TAJA off of TAJ (forgetting that it is RAJ that takes the "A" for RAJA). A few turns later my opponent played *TAJAS and I didn't catch it thinking that it was the same as RAJAS. He came to tell me this later (after beating me on a second bingo play late in the game). It was only fair since he was the one that I had played ENGINEER on while making *BETE and *HAN.
I found it interesting how some people in the tournament wanted to come tell me, almost apologetically, that a word that I or they had played was not an OWL word. Raf did this in our Scrabble club at his second club meeting as he had felt bad for playing a fake word, inadvertently, in our earlier game (which he won at the end). I told him that it was just part of the game. I find this sentiment of wanting to fess up to be touching as I could tell that those tournament folks who did this were people who pride themselves on not bluffing with phoneys. So I try my best to remember that phoneys are perfectly legal but to be careful where I use. One of my competitors (who finished 2nd in my division) actually praised me for my chutzpah for having the ability to play that way as a new competitive player. The risk with a phoney is losing my turn ... that that's the same risk that the challenger faces if they challenge an unfamiliar word and it happens to be real ... like when I played NOH, SHRINED, and ROOMIE during the tournament and won those challenges. Still, when I go with a phoney it is often because I don't have a decent play otherwise so losing my turn isn't all that bad ... it's just a calculated risk.
Does that make sense?
In competitive play there is nothing wrong with playing a phoney and managing to pull one off without getting caught is tricky the higher up in the rankings you go (and the higher command of the real words). When I read Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis I learned how phoneys work and how many competitive players consider it a badge of honor to be able to both catch them and get by with them. However, my wife (at the time) was not amused at my new strategy or my excuse for playing convincing fake words. She said that she felt it was not in the spirit of the game ... though I think that she was more mad that I pulled them off better than she did.
I've met people who go with the rule that you can only play words that you can use in a sentence (though I can usually make up a sentence for my phoneys as I love the game Balderdash). In club and tournament play you're not supposed to ask during the game if it is a phoney ... either you challenge or don't, though one woman that I played who was lower in my bracket wanted to ask after a few of my plays (which I found to be uncomfortable). One of the official rules of tournament play is that when you make a play you can't deliberately draw a challenge by saying that you're not sure of the word ... but whether you talk about your phoneys when asked is up to you I suppose (and I did eventually tell her). When I used to play with the ex we went with the rule that once a phoney is detected it stays on the board (unless challenged at the time) but that you can't play off of it ... like forbidden fruit.
Club and tournament play is different though. I've played some phoneys knowing that there was a chance that, even if detected, my opponent could keep it because it gave them a potential scoring opportunity (and I've kept some that way). Theoretically I could knowingly play a phoney and then could successfully challenge a subsequent play off of the phoney if I wanted to. In one of my games I played *TAJA off of TAJ (forgetting that it is RAJ that takes the "A" for RAJA). A few turns later my opponent played *TAJAS and I didn't catch it thinking that it was the same as RAJAS. He came to tell me this later (after beating me on a second bingo play late in the game). It was only fair since he was the one that I had played ENGINEER on while making *BETE and *HAN.
I found it interesting how some people in the tournament wanted to come tell me, almost apologetically, that a word that I or they had played was not an OWL word. Raf did this in our Scrabble club at his second club meeting as he had felt bad for playing a fake word, inadvertently, in our earlier game (which he won at the end). I told him that it was just part of the game. I find this sentiment of wanting to fess up to be touching as I could tell that those tournament folks who did this were people who pride themselves on not bluffing with phoneys. So I try my best to remember that phoneys are perfectly legal but to be careful where I use. One of my competitors (who finished 2nd in my division) actually praised me for my chutzpah for having the ability to play that way as a new competitive player. The risk with a phoney is losing my turn ... that that's the same risk that the challenger faces if they challenge an unfamiliar word and it happens to be real ... like when I played NOH, SHRINED, and ROOMIE during the tournament and won those challenges. Still, when I go with a phoney it is often because I don't have a decent play otherwise so losing my turn isn't all that bad ... it's just a calculated risk.
Does that make sense?
Two things:
1. Wonderful analysis on the issue of phony words in Scrabble.
2. I LOVE BALDERDASH! We have BEYOND BALDERDASH. The gang should convene at our house sometime to have a knock-down, drag-out. While your occupation may give you an advantage at bullshitting (I kid), I play a mean game of BALDERDASH.
1. Wonderful analysis on the issue of phony words in Scrabble.
2. I LOVE BALDERDASH! We have BEYOND BALDERDASH. The gang should convene at our house sometime to have a knock-down, drag-out. While your occupation may give you an advantage at bullshitting (I kid), I play a mean game of BALDERDASH.
Why thank you stranger. I love Balderdash and should have figured that a word freak like you would love it too! You're on! I have both versions of the game btw and can bring them (the original was all words).
Jedi: I hope you thought of me when you used engineer. Nah, your head was still spinning from the big score.
Actually I was thinking ... GIN, NINE, ENGINE ... wait ENGINEE now if I can only find an R ... hey there's one. Shit, it's in a bad spot. Well, let's see ... *BETE is the French word for savage and there is an outside chance it could be good and *HAN ... well, that sounds sort of like HUN. Maybe he hasn't memorized all of the three letter words like Brad has or maybe it will actually be a word ... it sure sounds like one. But wait, a play this big is sure to draw a challenge ... oh well ... I don't have anything better so let's give it a shot.
I laid the letters down and my opponent announced "hold" (meaning don't draw tiles while he thinks about challenging while his clock runs ... he gets a minute). I watched the clock as in fleeting glances so that I wouldn't look too nervous and then he released the hold and didn't challenge and I thought "woo hoo" till he played FRIENDS later and jumped way ahead of me ... he had already played OVERAGE just before my bingo.
But yes, I'm sure that somewhere in my head I thought of you at some point in the game. :-)
I laid the letters down and my opponent announced "hold" (meaning don't draw tiles while he thinks about challenging while his clock runs ... he gets a minute). I watched the clock as in fleeting glances so that I wouldn't look too nervous and then he released the hold and didn't challenge and I thought "woo hoo" till he played FRIENDS later and jumped way ahead of me ... he had already played OVERAGE just before my bingo.
But yes, I'm sure that somewhere in my head I thought of you at some point in the game. :-)
I always feel like an ass when I Hold and challenge someone's play--especially if I've challenged multiple plays against the same opponent in the same game (like this past weekend).
I say that because I realize that it is a strategic move, and that it's not necessarily because the person honestly thinks the word is a valid play. My biggest thing is learning that I can try to lay tricky-looking but valid plays in hopes of throwing the opponent off. I don't want to lay Siteing and then say 'well, there ARE a lot of alternate spellings'... rather, just lay something nondescript and maybe a trained-eye would 'catch' it, even though it was a valid play.
and good point in the actual club that we are frowned upon asking for a recitation of the word used. And also, I have thought about laying an invalid play down that someone might consider to be valid and then challenging them on consequent plays made on that invalid word!
- Salutations.
I say that because I realize that it is a strategic move, and that it's not necessarily because the person honestly thinks the word is a valid play. My biggest thing is learning that I can try to lay tricky-looking but valid plays in hopes of throwing the opponent off. I don't want to lay Siteing and then say 'well, there ARE a lot of alternate spellings'... rather, just lay something nondescript and maybe a trained-eye would 'catch' it, even though it was a valid play.
and good point in the actual club that we are frowned upon asking for a recitation of the word used. And also, I have thought about laying an invalid play down that someone might consider to be valid and then challenging them on consequent plays made on that invalid word!
- Salutations.
Now Raf ... when I said the thing about alternate spellings it was because you asked me what that was and tried to heckle me rather than challenge me. If I laid SITEING* and said "well ... I'm not sure about it ... you might want to challenge" then that would be a violation of tournament rules because what if I was baiting a challenge with a word like AALII which looks bogus but is not? When that kid called hold on ROOMIES in my second day of the tournament I had to really contain myself not to react with glee while waiting for the challenge (I was pretty sure it was good and I won the challenge).
Yes, playing odd words is part of the game and playing words that look probable, or otherwise, is also good. I recall challenging my ex one time on VANE and being surprised to see that it was good. She had no idea that it was a valid word but that was all she had to play for a triple word score. It was a calculated risk. Now I try to use that as a good "V" word and I hope that it draws a challenge. I even played it this weekend. :-)
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Yes, playing odd words is part of the game and playing words that look probable, or otherwise, is also good. I recall challenging my ex one time on VANE and being surprised to see that it was good. She had no idea that it was a valid word but that was all she had to play for a triple word score. It was a calculated risk. Now I try to use that as a good "V" word and I hope that it draws a challenge. I even played it this weekend. :-)
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