Club night – Thurs. Feb. 15th, 2007

Unlike last week, this week seemed better. I was able to control my emotions better and play better. Hopefully I’ll keep up my good play in the upcoming tournaments.

Game #1 vs. Paul W
Paul and I usually have good competitive games. This game started slowly but ended in closely fought match. I had only one bingo rack AEKLRSS (a natural bingo of SLAKERS) and I was able to play through a T to make S(T)ALKERS for 94 points. After that play, I was stuck with most of the vowels. Paul played two bingos: TOAdIES and RELATEs. In the end, he got stuck with only consonants. I was able to eke out a victory.

Reviewing the game on Quackle, I noticed that both Paul and I missed an open 48 pt. play. Paul played JEEP on H10 previously. Neither of us knew that the word JEEP could be used as a verb. Quackle pointed out JEEPED several times. Oh well, you live and learn. FINAL SCORE: 402 – 390 (WIN).

Game #2 vs. Kevin T
My second game was against Kevin. For some reason, this game was pretty ugly as neither he nor I could get letters to score. Kevin played some exotic words like MIZEN, FARAD, CYTON, and AGOUTIE (this one is a phoney – AGOUTI is the correct spelling). After reviewing the game on Quackle, I missed two bingo opportunities (both 7 letter natural bingos). I didn’t know either of these words.

• BILORST: STROBIL or BRISTOL
• AEIOSS?: AbIOSES

The last one (AbIOSES) hurt because I could have finished the game with a bingo and gotten a win. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to catch-up after Kevin played CYTON. I had some really ugly tiles in this game. FINAL SCORE: 284 – 263 (LOSS).

Game #3 vs. Dave K
The past few times I’ve played Dave, I’ve won the majority of them. One thing I’ve noticed is that Dave takes a long time to make plays. The most suprising thing is that even after thinking for a few minutes, he only makes small 10 pt. plays. I missed both a 7 letter bingo with the ADEMNOS (DAEMONS, MASONED, or MONADES) and an available 8 letter bingo – (A)DENOMAS . Fortunately, I was able to play DEAFENS a few turns later. Dave had the Z and got a total of 103 points out of it (ZEST and later CHEZ). Later, I finished the game with a bingo AStRIDE (there are 44 possible 7 letter bingos). I didn’t look for an available 8 letter bingo starting with an H in the bottom right corner (HARDIESt, HAyRIDES, or HAgRIDES). I think I had some better tiles that Dave and I made good use of them. FINAL SCORE: 434 – 281 (WIN).

Final Thoughts
Based on the past few weeks, I think I’m noticing that my 4 and 5 letter word knowledge is pretty weak. I think I’m going to have to spend some time studying these words, especially the words containing a power tile (J, Q, X, K, Z). My strategy seems to be acceptable given that my word knowledge isn’t as good as it should be. I’m going to try and spend some more time studying the high probability bingos before the upcoming tournament in Oshawa.