Another night at the club…April 12th, 2007 April 13, 2007
Posted by Hans in Club Results.add a comment
Another night at the club. There are 24 players currently in Division B (1500–1000) and I’m sitting at 16th place and I’m slowly moving up ranks. My rating was 1203 before last night’s games. I feel that I’m making progress, so now it’s just a matter of putting everything together.
Game #1 vs. Sophia (view full game)
This game went downhill very, very quickly. Sophia played OUTWORN on her first turn and I challenged it and lost – ouch! On turn #3, sh played LIMPEST to make the score 197–52 for her. Sub-optimal plays and only so-so tiles lead to a smack-down. I missed her phoney play of VIBED – when she played it, I thought about challenging it, but Sophia doesn’t play phoneys and I was behind so much that I thought against it. Toward the end of the game, I had to take some chances and try and open up the board so I could play some bingos. Unfortunately, she kept closing the board. I was able to close the gap just a bit with two bingos (RESISTER and TAXIING), but I still got spanked. I’ve lost every game against Sophia. She’s just makes solid plays.
FINAL SCORE: 483 – 328 (LOSS – ouch!)
Game #2 vs. Shauna (view full game)
Early in the game I made a gamble by playing OOZIEST as I wasn’t sure if it was good. Luckily for me, Shauna challenged the play and lost. I was able to keep my lead and extend it with RELISHES a few turns later. The story of this game was that I got a bit over-confident. Instead of trying to focus on making the best play, I started phishing a bit. I can’t believe that I missed the phoney play, STINGED. Like I said, I think I need to be cognizant that while I am getting better, I still need to remain focused on making good plays.
FINAL SCORE: 384 – 332 (WIN)
Game #3 vs. John H (view full game)
I wasn’t really looking forward to playing John because of his penchant for playing short words and closing up the board. But, I was also confident that I could win. I started off with some good tiles and used them to my advantage to open up the board. I played a few words to try and bait John into gobbling up the TWS spots. On cue, he played short words and used up the spots. My only bingo this game was BARFLIES. John made a spelling mistake and played TETSINGS. At first I thought he was trying to trick me with some obscure word, but I challenged it. I think he meant to play TESTINGS, but that word isn’t good either, but should have played SETTINGS. I just focused on making good plays and once I got a sizeable lead and noticed he had some really good tiles (ENST?), I started closing off bingo lanes to see if he would try and open up the board to try and score. He didn’t – which wasn’t too much of a surprise.
FINAL SCORE: 376 – 273 (WIN)
I think I need to focus on staying humble, making good plays, and playing consistently. Just because I feel confident from one good performance at a tournament doesn’t mean I’m any better, especially since I’m sure to face a higher level of competition.
A closer look at Scrabble ratings April 8, 2007
Posted by Hans in Analysis, Statistics, Tips & Advice.2 comments
I’ve often wondered how I can improve my Scrabble rating (both at the club and my “official” NSA tournament rating). Apart from “study words” or “do well at tournaments”, there really isn’t much else to say. I’ve asked a few expert players at my club and they all seem to advocate an “open style” (i.e., keep the board open). Our club director often reminds us lower rated players to “not play scared” and to keep the board open (aside from specific situations). When I first started playing Scrabble at the club, my first instinct was to try and play as many overlapping plays as possible, making use of the two and three letter words. What inevitably happens is a “step-ladder” pattern where neither play can score as the board gets very closed. Now that I’m improving, I’m finding that I really dislike closed boards. I wondered if this change in attitude was a result of my improved play. I’ll be honest – when I first started playing a more open style, I was very nervous of getting beaten by huge margins. In any case, I decided to do some analysis and explore why expert players suggest a more open style.
Each week our club director circulates a listing of each player’s statistics: club rating, rating change, games won/lost (total for season), winning %, average points scored, average points against, high-3 game total, high game, and # of times 3–0. I took this information and did some analysis (see bottom for details on the methods used for this analysis).
After plotting the data points, a straight line can be added to suggest a trend – as the club rating increases, so does the average points scored (Figure 1). Many of the data points are clustered close to the trend line with a few points far away. You can see that the R2 statistic for this trend line (points scored vs. club rating) is 0.7529, indicating a very good “fit” of the data. R2 is a statistical measure of how well a particular line “fits” the data. Therefore a value of 1.0 means perfect fit (i.e., all the data points are on the line), a value of 0 random fit (i.e., any horizontal line will fit the data). For more information regarding R2 , you can read the wikipedia.org entry titled “Coefficient of Determination”. Let’s take a look at points scored against (i.e., opponent scoring).
Figure 1: Average points scored vs. club rating
(click on image to view full-size)
In this case, you can also see a straight line fits the data (Figure 2), unlike with points scored (Figure 1). Unfortunately, more of the data points fall far from the trend line. The R2 statistic for average points against vs. club rating is 0.3474 (a weak value), suggesting there is more variability in this data.
Figure 2: Average points against vs. club rating
(click on image to view full-size)
What does all of this information mean?
Well, from the two graphs, we can see that there seems to be a strong positive correlation between club rating and the average points scored. The higher your rating, the higher you are likely to score in any particular game. When we examine the points scored against, there is a weak positive correlation with considerable variability in the data. Points scored seems to be a pretty good predictor of one’s rating (based on this data).
I was a bit surprised that the points against wasn’t as good a fit as points scored. If we assume club/tournament directors try to match players of equal skill together, then I would expect that games be closely contested. Based on my personal experience, I’m finding that actual scores of games can vary greatly based on tile distributions, so maybe my original expectation wasn’t correct.
I think that the reason higher-rated players want to play a more open style of Scrabble is because they can take advantage of their opportunities better and score more. A closed board leaves fewer opportunities to make high scoring words/plays and leaves more of the score to the chance (i.e., whoever gets better tiles at specific moments). Given the same tiles, I suspect a higher rated player can generate more points per turn than a lower rated player. This makes sense because higher rated players, due to their better word knowledge and also improved strategic play, make fewer sub-optimal plays (i.e., exchanges, passes, or poor plays). Also, when higher rated players/experts do get good tiles, they can maximize their score, whereas a lower rated player is less likely to do so.
To use a sports analogy, we often hear in hockey and in soccer that “better teams” (i.e., more talented and skilled) tend to play a more attacking and open style of game. Less talented/skilled teams tend to play more defensively and try to limit scoring opportunities. The theory is that the more skilled/talented teams don’t mind allowing an opponent to score because they feel confident that they can out-score an opponent or capitalize more given the same number of opportunities. Because the less talented teams can’t score as easily, they rely more on limiting their opponents from scoring. In Scrabble, the expert players know they can make plays with tiles like U, V, J, X, Q, and so forth, wherease the lower rated players struggle to play words with those tiles (or can’t generate as many points). I would bet that this is a result of word knowledge rather than skill (the expert players know more words).
So, getting back to my original point, when experts suggest playing a more open style, they do so because an open game plays to their advantage because they can score more. That’s why they can get scores in the high 400s, 500s, and even 600s while lower rated players struggle to reach 400. To get better, the best way would be to improve your ability to score rather than trying to limit your opponent from scoring.
Assumptions & Limitations
This analysis is all fine and dandy, but we need to be aware of some assumptions and limitations:
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I assumed the club rating is a reasonable measure of a player’s Scrabble ability. Of course for newer players, this rating may not be a good indicator because there may not be enough “data” (i.e., games played) to get a reliable measure.
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I’m not sure if this analysis can be generalized to NSA tournament ratings as I don’t have the specific data to test if there are similar or different correlations.
- I used only a limited data set (41 points) from a convenience sample based on one club. If we expanded this analysis to include other clubs and players over a longer period of time, we may find different results.
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This analysis only suggests that a relationship between rating and scoring exists and thus I report only correlations between points scored/against versus ratings. While tempting, you cannot infer a causal relationship until we test this out. A good test would to examine results of duplicate Scrabble games, where the only variable is a player’s ability since everyone plays the exact same tiles/game. Could be interesting to test out. Future analysis may want to investigate scoring differentials (i.e., points scored minus points against) compared with ratings. Personally, I’m not sure that point differentials would provide better results.
Methods/Details
For those interested, I took the weekly player statistics (club rating, rating change, games won/lost (total for season), winning %, average points scored, average points against, high-3 game total, high game, and # of times 3–0) and visually scanned the data to identify a few variables of interest. Just to clarify, “weekly player statistics” is probably a bit of a misnomer as the statistics reflect performance since the beginning of the Mississauga Scrabble Club season (September 2006) until the end of March 2007. I could have used a full season’s data, but this data was handy.
In total, there are 41 players who have played between 15 and 78 games each. After examining the statistics, I identified points scored and points against as interesting. Players are grouped by division (A, B, and C) according to ability. Divisions are grouped as <1000 (Division C), 1000–1500 (Division B), and >1500 (Division A). For reporting purposes, the weekly player statistics file is presented in this order: Division A, Division C, and Division B.
I manually entered club rating, points scored, and points against into Microsoft Excel 2002 and created graphs (see Figure 1 & Figure 2). Next, I used the “add trend line” feature to add a straight line to the data (i.e., linear regression) and report the R2 statistic.
Club night: Two steps forward, one step back… April 6, 2007
Posted by Hans in Club Results.2 comments
Prior to attending our regular club night, I met up with Craig Rowland (the club director) to play a few games of Scrabble and to get some expert advice and tips. We played two friendly games. In the first game, I asked Craig for his advice on a few plays (e.g., comparing the merits of different options, board analysis, etc) and managed to win the game thanks to some favourable tiles at the end (414–370). Our second game was more like a real game. Craig managed to find a great final play and get the win (386–384). I was surprised that I was even able to keep the game close. We did some post game analysis and Craig pointed out a few things that I could do to improve my play. One example was where I let Craig play QADI for 72 points – instead of taking that juicy spot, I played elsewhere.
At the club, I felt like I was playing better, as I started to see words and possible plays. Unfortunately, I messed up and lost two of my games. After reviewing the games on Quackle, I noticed that even with some poor plays in the middle of those games, I still had opportunities at the end to win.
Game #1 vs. Valeria K (view full game)
Early in the game, I had AAAAAIY. Traded that crap away and picked up AEILRV? but screwed up the play and got my VIALERS challenged off. The worst part was that I saw RIVAL(L)ED but wasn’t sure about the spelling and chickend out – that sucks because it was good. At one point I was down by over 100 points, but I played the only two bingos in this game to catch-up and make it close: EXCITEs (98 points) AND REMINTEd (80 points). I think I could have won this game if I played a bit smarter at the end.
FINAL SCORE: 370–372 (LOSS)
Game #2 vs. Shauna P (view full game)
On my opening turn, I had SWEATY? with KERNEL on the board. I chickened out of bE(L)TWAYS because I wasn’t sure if that was a word (it’s good). SWEATY? has JETWAYS, TAWNEYS, and WASTERY. I was a bit upset to learn there was a J7 in there – should have seen that one. I missed a phoney play by Shauna, OUTIE, and made one of my own, FAW. I also made a stupid play by forgetting what my own blank was! Earlier, I played SOOThEd. Later when I went to play through the blank, I thought the blank was a T – the word I made was BUH and was quickly challenged off. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
FINAL SCORE: 366–33 (WIN)
Game #3 vs. Gene T (view full game)
I had a beautiful opening rack of IIIKOOU and quickly traded it. The beginning of this game was pretty tight. I managed to get an early lead with InSPIRE and then Gene tried to hook that word with UNWADS. I challenged that off. I made a few strategic errors and then a stupid mistake (NAWS instead of SAWN). The worst part was that I missed Gene’s phoney of GIAN. I held the play but decided to let it go, much to my detriment. He then hooked with a T to play EXTeNDS for 102 points – ouch. At the end of the game, I missed a block that cost me the game. Gene had TTZ and there was only one spot to play his Z. Unfortunately, I didn’t take my time and missed his one spot to play. I incorrectly thought he had no play. Again, dumb, dumb, dumb. The next time I play Gene I’m going to be more careful about his phoney plays.
FINAL SCORE: 325–333 (LOSS)
Going up? April 4, 2007
Posted by Hans in Tournament Results.add a comment
Well, the official cross-table of the Cambridge tournament was released today. I now have a rating of 905 – yay! The interesting thing is that my performance rating for the tournament was 1487 – something which doesn’t make much sense to me.
The only problem with having a higher rating is that I will be facing stronger players. I may also be seeded higher in my division. Oh well, no need to worry about things I can’t control. Just keep plugging away, making the best play(s) possible.
Some recognition for fellow Mississauga Club members who did well at the tournament (in no particular order):
- Vimalan Raviraj – he won three games and is slowly moving up. With a bit of studying and more experience, he’ll do well.
- Ann Hayes – she came in fourth in my division and is now up to 796.
- Mark Hamilton, Brenda Solomon, and Allan Brown – finished 1st, 2nd, and 4th in division 4
- MR. Kevin Turner – rising up the rankings with a 3rd place finish (division 2). He’s now at 1308.
- Yvonne Lobo – a solid 4th place finish in division 1 (I’m still shocked that I beat her at the club)
Cambridge Tournament (March 31, 2007): Movin’ On Up … April 2, 2007
Posted by Hans in Analysis, Statistics, Tournament Results.add a comment
Well, I had a very good outing at the Cambridge Scrabble Tournament. I finished first in my division with a record of 7–0 +570 (division 5 of 6). My tentative rating has gone up to 904 from 807. I won’t go into too many details, but I’ll provide a quick recap of each game and highlight an interesting play or two.
Game #1 vs. Laurinda Lyn (view full game)
I was looking forward to make-up for my recent losses to Laurinda at the Oshawa tournament. I had some good tiles early and took a big lead. She played two phonies that I challenged off (CORNEST and KOIL) and I missed DAGA and DAGAS. I made a mistake and played RANIER. I played one bingo ENGRAVED (using up both blanks) and missed ARRAYING. Actually, I saw ARRAYING, but didn’t think it was good and didn’t play it – looking back, maybe I should have played it since I was up by over 150 points.
FINAL SCORE: 423–277 (WIN)
Game #2 vs. Ann Hayes (view full game)
This game was probably the most nerve racking of the tournament for me. Early on, Ann had some good tiles and kept making 20–30 point plays while I was working to try and balance my vowel heavy rack. I was able to keep the game close until she played her only bingo, SLUGGED. At one point, she had a 90 point lead, but I was able to get back in with SNARERS. Going into my second last turn, she was winning 334–275 and there was one tile left. I made a bit of a gamble and played off the last U for 4 points and was left with AELNOT? with an empty bag (score: 342–279 for her and it’s my turn). In a previous play, I played off an F to leave myself a show at a TWS bingo (I had the only tiles that could hook EF). I had about 8 minutes left and I spent nearly my entire clock to make sure I found a good play and work through different scoring possibilities. My final play of ELATION (77 points) gave me a 1 point lead and then I picked up an additional 20 for her remaining tiles. Talk about stressful!
FINAL SCORE: 376–355 (WIN)
Game #3 vs. Jean Horohoe (view full game)
For some reason, I really get a kick when my opponent looks at a play and gets all confused and suspicious and wonders if the word is phoney. I started slowly, but on turn #4, I broke the game open with my bingo OUTDOES. Jean questioned OUTDOES and said that she didn’t think it was good, but let the play go. She then said that I was no longer on her “Christmas card list” (heh heh). A few turns later, I played RETAXES which drew a challenge. Two blunders here: 1) I mis-calculated the score of the play as 91 instead of 101 as pointed out by Quackle. I could have won the highest-scoring play in Division 5 had I added correctly (the winning play was 98 points); 2) on my next turn, I played JETTER which was challenged off. Doh! Even after studying the J letter words the past few weeks, I make a stupid mistake. I also let two phoney words go that I should have challenged, VON and MILI.
FINAL SCORE: 426–305 (WIN)
Game #4 vs. Henry De Young (view full game)
In a “rematch” from the Oshawa tournament, I played Henry the first game after the lunch break. At about the 4 minute mark, I was in trouble because I had to go the washroom! Unfortunately, I was stuck in a fairly close game. I played COLONIAL to create an 80 point lead, but Henry caught back-up a turn later with LUSTIER. We were essentially tied until he tried to use the TWS at O1 by hooking his past bingo LUSTIER to make BLUSTIER. I held him on the play and challenged it. The word came off and Henry seemed to lose a bit of confidence. The rest of the game, I slowly closed off the board as I noticed I was getting some poor tiles. At one point I had ADEILOS (ISOLEAD) but nowhere to play it. Since I had the lead, I played conservatively and forced Henry to open up the board, especially since I knew he had some great tiles remaining (7 of the following 10 tiles AEEGINTRRS – very bingo prone). On his 15th turn, he took a few minutes shuffling his tiles, sighing, and just looking agitated. Then, much to my surprise, he passed. He passed! I then said, “I guess you want me to open up the board”. Unfortunately for him, I didn’t and he had to play off his good tiles. Later, he told me that he had INTEGER but couldn’t play it. Luckily I was able to finish the game and make a mad dash out to visit the washroom once the game was over. Note for future games – don’t drink too much fluids during the lunch break.
FINAL SCORE: 384–338 (WIN)
Game #5 vs. Maggie Poulter (view full game)
I played a reasonable game against Maggie. I think my reasons for winning were Maggie’s 5 plays for less than 10 points during the middle of the game, combined with a trade and a challenged phoney. I only played one bingo (RESEEDS) which Maggie responded with CRINGES on her very next turn. I challenged off REFORCED but missed LEED. I was winning by 80 points and had an out play so I just let LEED go to finish the game.
FINAL SCORE: 385–264 (WIN)
Game #6 vs. Christine Westcott (view full game)
This game was close as we basically were tiled for most of the game. I got a small lead with XI for 50 points. Christine played ROISTER. I had ENEMIES on my rack but didn’t see any obvious space to play it. After a bit of searching, I found the perfect spot as I hooked both GAL and ROISTER. Christine was a bit shocked and held the play. She said that she couldn’t see anything to challenge and had to accept the play. Okay, now to the scary part. Late in the game, I had INVERSE on my rack, but no open spots. Being a bit impatient, I decided to open up the board a bit so that Christine would use her tiles so that I could score back. Unfortunately, I played REV at 3B, dangling the R. She then played TROOZ for 33 points, which completely shocked me. When I reviewed the game on Quackle, the play was actually 66 points! She forgot to count the DWS on the play and only counted the TLS for the Z! Fortunately for me, even with the scoring error, with the exact same plays, I would have still eked out a 5 point win instead of the 42 point victory. PHEW! Like my game against Ann (game #2), I was able to create a scoring opportunity. Christine said that she couldn’t block me from using the TWS once she saw my play (turn #14 when I played TIC at J12).
FINAL SCORE: 376–334 (WIN)
Game #7 vs. Maggie Poulter (view full game)
Maggie said that she didn’t want to play me again, but here we were for the final game. She was 5–1 +140–ish at the time and I was 6–0 +497. I knew that as long as I didn’t lose by 200 points, I should be okay. She started the game by putting a “hex” on the tiles. Initially, her hex seemed to work as I got stuck with a bunch of consonents and repeated tiles (DDDFKLT and ABORRRT). I wasn’t sure what Maggie was doing as she strung together 6 turns of sub 20 point plays. I decided to keep the board wide open and just played through as many tiles as I could, while trying to manage my tiles, score points, and create scoring opportunities. The game was close until I played my first bingo MADDEST (65 points), but she came back with NIX for 55 points, basically eliminating my bingo. Luckily, I took advantage of her play with FAKER for 47 points. After a trade, I demoralized Maggie with HELIXES (64 points) and played out the tiles. She was able to make up some ground with her last 4 turns of JUG (31 points), VAIN (24 points), QI (37 points), and BIO (24 points).
FINAL SCORE: 376–303 (WIN)
Post Tournament Analysis
Just some interesting facts and commentary on my play.
- In 7 games, I played 10 bingos compared with 5 bingos for my opponents.
- Overall, I averaged roughly 21–25 points per turn in my games, down significantly from my goal of 30 points per turn.
- I played two incorrect words (JETTER and RANIER), while my opponents played 8 phonies. Unfortunately, I only caught 5 of them.
After my poor performances in 2006, I decided to change my attitude regarding tournaments. Last year, I noticed that I put too much pressure to win my games and got tense and frustrated. This year, I decided to just relax and play as best as I could, focusing on the plays rather than the outcomes of the games. I’m coming to the realization that I can’t control what tiles I get or how my opponents play (i.e., closed, conservative, open, etc). I think that combined with my studying, this new attitude was the most important factor that allowed me to have a very successful tournament.
Some interesting observations from the tournament:
- I noticed that my opponents tended to be very pre-occupied with the TWS squares. Craig Rowland, the Mississauga Club director, told me that the TWS square is no different from other squares and that I shouldn’t destroy my rack trying to prevent my opponent from using it. I noticed that when I play practice games against Quackle, or when Quackle presents choices, the TWS often goes unplayed for several turns in a row. A perfect example is in game #2 vs. Ann. I played FOCI at C5. Ann played REI for 9 points to take the TWS square. I think she was worried that I would take it later.
- I noticed that my opponents made several low scoring plays using only one or two tiles a turn. At first I was worried that my opponent was fishing for tiles, but I decided to forget about that and just play my game. I think I played more tiles than my opponents – basically, I had higher tile-turnover. I didn’t count all of my plays, but I think by playing more tiles, I was able to get a good share of the “good” tiles (either bingo prone tiles or power-tiles).
Props to fellow Mississauga Club member Kevin Turner. He finished in third place (division 2) with a record of 5–2 and jumped up to ~1308 from 1225. Looks like his studying and hard work are paying off. I’m sure he’ll be with the big boys in the expert ratings (1600+) sooner rather than later. A few more good tournaments should do it for him.
My next tournament is the Ottawa tournament in April 2007 and the Buffalo tournament the very next week. I have a good month of studying ahead of me to help me against higher-rated players. Hopefully I’ll continue my string of good play and raise my NSA rating. I think that my actual rating should be somewhere in the 1000–1100 range. Judging from other players like Kevin and other Mississauga and Toronto club members, those in the 1200+ range know far more words than me.
