Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
SCRABBLE: And All Of A Sudden . . .
And just like a game of SCRABBLE, LIFE is a game too. Some days you get every vowel in the bag. You get the ‘Old McDonald Rack’ of e-i-e-i-o; you always have 5 or more vowels on every rack. On days like those you had better know the ‘HEAVY WITH VOWELS LIST‘ and the ’5-Vowel-8s’ (words like ‘aboideau’).
Then there are the days when you think that the isn’t a single vowel in the bag. You experience racks like v-w-c-d-f-h-r. It makes one feel like screaming, “Why me?” On those days you have to know words like ‘tsktsks’ and ‘crwth’.
No, it is not something that happens just to you. All of us who have played long enough, know that we all experience both of those kinds of days.
The GOOD NEWS is that we also have many other days when every racks seems to fall into align a bingo, in the order that we draw the tiles out of the bag. There are days when we get racks like A-E-I-N-S-T-(?), containing 69 potential 7-Letter-Words and 247 8-Letter-Words through various open tiles through lanes that may exist on the board. Hmm, which bingo should you play?
And isn’t it the same in life too? We all have our challenges and struggles: health; finances; happiness. At times we may feel helpless and hopeless.
And then, sometimes miraculous occurs when one least expects it, the sun shines on our lives, even on the cloudiest day. Everything is different, and yet, everything is basically the same.
La Chaim
SCRABBLE: Begin At The Beginning
Did you know that more than a few people choose to read the last chapter of a book first and then go to the beginning? That seems pretty strange to me. When I know how things will end I lose interest in the beginning of the story.
Did you know that many sports enthusiasts who cannot be there to watch an event live, will tape the event and watch it later on at their convenience? I really screwed up more than once when the NBA Finals were being played at the same time as Club #350 held a session. When I announced the final score of the game a basketball fan at the club (who was taping the game, to watch later) almost threw his scrabble board at me. He no longer attends CLub #350 during the NBA Finals.
I hate going into a movie late. I like to see everything from the beginning, including the previews. If I arrive late I’d just as soon go home and come back at some other time.
In the early 1990s I was producing scrabble tournaments in southern Michigan. I remember a very knowledgeable pharmacist from Chicago who played in a few of my events. Now and then he was able to wow me and others with a word from his pharmacy jargon. But other than that he struggled. Most pharmacological words are unfriendly to the game of scrabble: they are too long; they include letters that are of a low probability.
When it comes to being a good-to-great scrabble player, most of us have to begin at the beginning.” ~ Gary Moss
Beginning at the beginning means mastering the basics: 2-Letter Words; The Rules of the Game; Basic Strategy. (For starters)
Beginning at the beginning means admitting and understanding you don’t know what you don’t know.
Beginning at the beginning means being open to looking at things differently.
If you are one who frequently says, “but, I do it this way”, you are in deep trouble.
Playing competitive scrabble is an adventure with words. It is not for the timid. It can add so much more than merely vocabulary to a life.
Check out what every ‘newbie’ should know. CLICK HERE
SCRABBLE: Good Fortune vs Preparedness
Building on ‘good fortune’ is like building on ‘sand’. One minute you have a magnificent sand castle, the next minute a wave can wash it away.
Even novice scrabble players can get the tiles to play an impressive word or achieve an impressive win, but without a word arsenal and employing winning strategies, the novice will struggle to withstand the challenges provided by the players who know the 2s and 3s and high-probability-stems.
Ask ten different club scrabble players what to do to build your scrabble playing expertise and you will most likely get ten different answers.
Experience has taught me that just because a person is an ‘expert’ in their field, it doesn’t mean that they have the talent to teach others. Example: There is a high rated player (who shall remain nameless) who attends clubs where I have attended. This player means to be helpful. This player likely to glam onto newbies, hoping to recruit them to become regulars. BUT, the amount of information provided to the newbie in a single session is enough to make them feel inadequate and want to get up from the table and run away.
Experience has allowed me to witness other newbies walk into a club and gravitate to the weakest players. This type of newbie asks for advice from people who may not know the ‘best’ answers. It is sort of like asking a good cook how to solve a quadratic equation.
Like the guy on TV who sells Fram Oil Filters says, “Pay me now or pay me later.”
I am an educator by profession (M.A. and B.S. in Education ((Wayne State University)).
I am a scrabble director, sanctioned by NASPA (North American Scrabble Players Association).
I have directed more than 250 sanctioned tournaments and 2,500 club session (1989-present).
Take my online class SCRABBLE 101 and I will guide you from wherever you are to the greater success that lives within you. CLICK HERE! NOW!
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Like the 3rd Little Pig, I only build with bricks, providing the strongest foundation possible.
SCRABBLE: Opponents Can Swallow You Whole
If you are not paying attention to where you are playing your word, if you dare to underestimate your opponent’s ability, if you come to the table unprepared for competition . . . . . . you will ‘bear-ly’ last a minute.
I am not at all suggesting that you stay away from the competitive scrabble scene ‘until you are ready’. When people judge their own readiness to compete, they judge themselves harshly.
Whenever we begin a new activity we need to expect a learning curve, to get up to speed. Just because you have been winning at scrabble among your family and friends, don’t be naive; competitive club and tournament scrabble is a whole different animal.
THE GOOD NEWS IS that anyone can become a good-to-great competitive scrabble mavin with a little-to-a-lot of study and focus. Your biggest challenge will be to have thick enough skin to withstand the initial shock that for right now you are a small fish in the sea. The grizzly bear will initially eat you up. If you become a regular player and work at improving, I suggest that you get a long belt. You will soon learn the trick of winning and plant a notch on your belt for every mavin whom you defeat and leave in the dust, sobbing.
If you love competition, learning, and playing with words . . . . you’ll love this form of the game.
One great tool that I have created for novice competitive scrabble players is The Bookmark Series. Each laminated bookmark contains a stem and some of the words that will cross your path frequently. To score big and win often, you MUST know these words and the system that helps you identify them on your rack. CLICK HERE
SCRABBLE: Learn To Let Go
A little knowledge can be dangerous and self defeating, especially when playing scrabble Take the letters ‘I’, ‘N’, ‘G’, for instance. The average person, who has a 6th grade reading level, knows that there a lot of words that end with the suffix ‘ING’. Novice scrabble players will frequently identify those tiles on their rack and waste turn after turn, hoping to play that combination on a word.
Gary’s RULE #19: Do not fall in love with any of your tiles.
‘ING’ could be a great find, allowing you to extend a verb, already on the board, to a DWS or a TWS. But, do not sit with tiles for any extended period. They can tie you down.
What would you do if you had 3 esses on your rack at the same time?
Too much good stuff is BAD STUFF. (DO NOT exchange and put esses back into the tile bag. You don’t want your opponent to draw them. WASTE ONE OR TWO of them on a single play and hope to balance your rack when you replenish your tiles.)
The ‘Q’, ‘Z’, ‘X’, and ‘J’ have a special appeal to players because the hold the highest value among the tiles in the bag. Don’t waste several turns trying to achieve the perfect play. Take a good score and keep the game moving.
Some players waste way too much time trying to decide what to play where. Become a faster thinker. Don’t allow the game to slow on your turns. Remember: when your clock is running your opponent is enjoying ‘FREE’ thinking time.
Some players never look at a word list from one week to the next. The better and best players spend a few minute every day with some word list. Even as little as 5 minutes every day will make a difference in you word power.
Novice players are usually less apt to trade tiles when they have a bad rack, for fear of earning ‘zero points’ on a given turn. Better players know that winning the game is related to having balanced racks during the game.
When you trade tiles, what do you trade? There is a correct trade and an incorrect trade. Do you know how to determine the correct trade? That is one of 35 different lessons that I teach in my online scrabble class, SCRABBLE 101. CLICK HERE
SCRABBLE: It’s About Perception
Who do see? The young woman or old woman?
Ask some people, at random, if they ever heard about scrabble and many will think that it is nothing more that a children’s game, played with family at home on holidays or wiling away leisure time on vacation.
Those folks obviously don’t have a clue about my world of scrabble.
Scrabble is a bag of 100 tiles that can be aligned and realigned to form more than 155,000 different (legal) words; scrabble is a game that is every bit as challenging as chess and go and bridge. Every scrabble game is different; every opponent has a different skill set. Anyone can take up the game and move up in the ranks, if they apply themselves.
Many people look at the words played during a club scrabble session, and not knowing some of the words will say, “Those aren’t real words.” Those folks are the kind that believe that anything that they do not know is not real. How foolish! In the computer age, when we can search for endless information about the countless things that we do not know, how can so many people be so oppositional?
Some people, during their development and education, learned to see things from a particular perspective. Their learned behavior often inhibits those individuals from seeing outside their box. If you ‘BELIEVE’ that you are a ‘BAD SPELLER,’ you are a bad speller, as a result of your own belief. If you ‘BELIEVE’ that people of ‘YOUR RELIGION’ are superior to all others, you will treat others accordingly, as inferior. It is not good or bad; it just is that way.
I have met many people who could become great scrabble players. And I know that I cannot turn someone into a great and dedicated scrabble mavin. But, I can help any wannabe become better today than they were yesterday, and promise them that I can coach them to become even better tomorrow.
In spite of what we think and feel, we each have complete control over the way we perceive things. Even when we have teachers showing us ‘The Way’, we have the power to follow their teachings, or modify their messages, or we can tune them out completely. Why else did I flunk Biology I, at the hands of Mrs. Middleton, three times. I was more interested in running the show as a leader in the synagogue youth group; I let my public school studies slide. If Mrs. Middleton had captured my interest and turned my head to science, or if I chose science over socializing, who knows, I may have become the one to discover the cure for athlete’s foot or I might have mutated a gene to allow mankind to grow an additional prehensile digit, next to the thumb.
You can be and do almost anything you want to be or do.
SCRABBLE: Common Courtesy
‘Common Courtesy’ is a term that I’ve always linked to ‘good manners’. But as life has evolved here in the USA, in the circle where I travel most, I’ve noticed that the common courtesies that were instilled in me, from parents and teachers, have fallen on deaf ears of many of the people whom I encounter.
The act of ‘sighing deeply’ is a common occurrence when one is disappointed or nervous. It happens all the time during highly contested scrabble games. But why don’t the sighers turn their heads or sigh into a napkin? Instead, totally engrossed in their own little world, they sigh straight across the scrabble board, into the face of their opponent.
According to the PWCG (People Who Count Germs), the #3 place that germs are found after bathrooms and kitchen counter tops is scrabble tile bags. When is the last time you washed your tile bag and tiles? For most people, the answer is NEVER. I hesitate to share this diddy because it is gross. I have witness more than a few players sneeze into their hands and seconds later dip those hands into tile bags to replenish tiles on their racks. What were they thinking? Obviously, they were not thinking.
A few other common offenses:
• heavy perfume
• coughing straight ahead
• bringing drinks to the table and then spilling
• whining
• spraying others when you speak
• abusive language (when spoken; words on the board are okay)
• suggestive language (when spoken; words on the board are okay)
• celebrating obnoxiously after beating your opponent
• patronizing
• women wearing low cut tops to distract male opponents
• peeking in the bag when drawing tiles
SCRABBLE: and HOLDING
What is the first thing you should do when your opponent plays a word that looks suspicious to you?
What remedy do you have when your opponent plays so quickly that you feel that you don’t have enough time to focus on their play before they have replenished the tiles on their rack?
Say, “HOLD”.
Don’t hesitate and think about it! Shout HOLD!
When a players says HOLD, their opponent is being told to ‘FREEZE’ or ‘PAUSE’; do not proceed, do not pass go, do not collect $200. The clock of the person issuing the ‘HOLD’ is running during the entire holding period. The holding period giver the person time to consider challenging, without a commitment to challenge the play. Some people who say HOLD take a long time to make their ultimate decision. If the ‘holder’ takes more than a minute to make a decision, the other player (after a minute) may draw tiles but MUST KEEP THEM SEPARATED ON THE RACK, just incase there is a challenge and they need to be returned to the tile bag.
Once a player completes their turn, records their score, and draws even a single tile out of the tile bag, it is too late to say HOLD or CHALLENGE.
Some players have been accused of ‘FAST BAGGING’. That is when a player purposefully plays fast to confuse their opponent or slip a phoney onto the board.
If you simply say HOLD quickly. you can put a stop to these tactics.
In the OFFICIAL RULES, Page. 12 (Ending The Game), Section III, B it states:
When making a play to go out, you must neutralize the clock, NOT start your opponent’s clock.. . . . . . . . . Once you neutralize the clock, your opponent has five seconds to voice “hold” or “challenge.” If he/she does not, the game ends.
Always say HOLD quickly. Unfortunately, the director is usually not there watching your game. Whether or not five seconds has elapsed is an argumentative issue between the two players. Always say HOLD quickly, to protect your interests.
Do you want to become the best scrabble player on your block? The best in your circle of family and friends? The best in your club?
I can help you make it happen. Enroll in my online class, SCRABBLE 101. I show you the secrets of the experts.
SCRABBLE: Gnashing Of Teeth
You might consider acquiring a mouth-guard to put into your scrabble bag with all your other scrabble gear. No, you are unlikely to fall off the chair onto your face; no, you are unlikely to be punched by your scrabble opponent or be the victim of high sticking. But, it has been reported by the ADA that gnashing of teeth effects 11.2% of the most highly competitive scrabble players, leading to premature tooth loss and erosion.
For approximately 15 years, Mark Landsberg has owned the bragging rights for having played the highest sanctioned tournament game ever, a 770 point feat. In that game he wasn’t playing any slouch either. He did it against the honorable scrabble director, Alan Stern.
But now, at this week’s Reno Tournament, a new record has been established. Edward De Guzman scored 771 points in a sanctioned game. Records are made to be broken. The king is dead; long live the king.
Some competitions are more tense than others. One seldom know before hand, when they sign up to play in a tournament, where they will be ceded in their division. In my opinion, the toughest challenge is to be ceded #1. Being ceded #1 means that you have the highest rating among the players in your division. That also means that #1 is statistically expected to win a higher percentage of games than any other player in the division. One little slip up or ‘angry tile gods’ and a #1 ceded can lose hard earned rating points. That scenario makes me very tense.
The opposite scenario is being ceded as the bottom player in the division. Being ceded at the bottom usually means that you are not expected to win much at all. With a little good luck you can be a spoiler by beating one of the higher ranked players.
Every tournament provides an even playing field for any individual player to draw a luck combination of tile and play the High Word Score or the Highest Game Score.
I wish someone out there who has a little pull with Delta Dental Plan would petition their directors to establish a ‘Scrabble Players Special’.
SCRABBLE: Challenges
The harshest rule regarding scrabble challenges occurs right here in North America, in concert with the rules of NASPA. Once a word is challenged, in competitive play, there is no going back. One of the two players will lose a turn as a result. If the challenger wins, the person being challenged also loses the points for the attempted phoney. That hurts big time. Since each player takes only about 17 turns, in the average game, that means a lost opportunity for about 6% of their final score. (In England there is only a 5 point penalty; the Brits were always more genteel.)
Some other kinds of challenges throughout history have been much more costly: building The Great Wall of China and The Egyptian Pyramids; Hannibal crossing the Alps; the colonies severing their ties from England; being in the same room with an opened can of tuna fish; playing at a scrabble club for the very first time.
I’m about to take on a personal challenge named Adrienne Sheinwald (or maybe I have it reverse and I am her challenge). Right now, like most relationships, the starting out is all giddy and fluff and dreamy. Being a second marriage for each of us, the odds in Vegas aren’t as good as for a first marriage. But, we are both wiser for having lived a good chunk of life. Wish us well.
In honor of Adrienne and Love I again offer the HEARTS STEM. CLICK NOW.