In Portland. Dave had me over for supper (take out Thai... yum!) and then we played 5 games. He's prepping for Worlds, so I played Collins for the second time in my life (first being a couple of games against Blip in 2002). He creamed me 4-1 +quiteabit. I learned a lesson about fishing to ACEIRS (similar to AEINRS) in any book.

What a blast! Fun times. Great to see Chris and the kids and always fun to play Dave.

Thanks a bunch for dinner and the games, Dave! Next time is on me!

Dear Contestants at the California Open:
All of my best wishes to you all for a
very competitive and challenging few days of Scrabble!
Everyone must be getting excited to play tomorrow morning.

When you awake in beautiful San Francisco,
I hope the sun is shining and the traffic is
easily overcome, given the Bay Bridge debacle.
Getting up bright and early is one of the
annoying things about tournaments, but
nobody expects perfection in the those first few rounds.
Don't know who's going to win, but I at least have an idea.

Check out this Cinderella story.

So in every tourney you win, you've got to get a couple of pretty lucky breaks. In round 18, Dean was a couple of games back with 4 to play, and he gets to play me once in this game, and then would repeat in the last KOTH if we were close, so those 2 games are not that hard to make up. In fact, he has a really good chance if he beats me here and then beats me again in the last KOTH. Meanwhile I'd have a couple more games against dL and George and Eric, non of them gimmes!

So I'm losing by 90...

Jason: Turn 10
   A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O   -> Jason                    AEINRS?   208 
   ------------------------------     Dean Saldanha            xxxxxxx  298 
 1|=     '       G       '     =| --Tracking-----------------------------------
 2|  Z A I R E   A   "       -  | UNDOECIHAAEFORT  15
 3|    R       Q I '       R    |
 4|V O i D     U N   B O L E   '|
 5|    E   P L I S K Y -   M    |
 6|  " T     " X     "   M I "  |
 7|    T O     O   '     A N    |
 8|=   A G O U T I     P U T   =|
 9|    S E L   E   '   A N '    |
10|  "   E D H       " C     "  |
11|        Y O         E        |
12|'     J   W   F I N D -     '|
13|  W A I V E R   '       -    |
14|  -   G   "       "       -  |
15|B L E S T     =       '     =|
   ------------------------------

I played VINEgARS for 80, to be down by 10 points with him to play, leaving one in the bag. He replied with 13j FA for 20.

( Jason goes to the ball in a pumpkin below the cut... )

hebdomad mentioned he likes to see missed bingos, and tranonehalf just listed his missed bingos--so here they are from 21 rounds of Calgary.

I missed a couple of bingos where they were the best play:

1) DIOSW?? through an A for a 2x2, which I mentioned before. Found WOODSIAS and WOODSIA but they were worse plays than keeping S?? and 28 points. However the 90-point 2x2s were definitely best.

2) EEPUV?? : I had to hook to RUM (and of course look through other stuff). I found UPHEAVE and PREVUED, but I totally missed the ARUM hook (blah) and chickened out on PREVUED, thinking PREVUE was a noun. I was up by 130 with 2 blanks still in hand against Avrin. It was still a pretty big mistake.

Besides those, there were some other opportunities to bingo:

The next turn in same game:

 
Jason: Turn 14
   A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O   -> Jason                    AELUU??   351 
   ------------------------------     Paul Avrin               xxxxxxx   220 
 1|=     '       =       '     =| --Tracking-----------------------------------
 2|  -       "       "       -  | RNDRCEEINNO  11
 3|D   T       '   ' P E R V    |
 4|A   W E N T   '       U     '|
 5|R   I   A A       B U M F    |
 6|I " G     B O O T Y     L "  |
 7|O P '       '   I       A    |
 8|L A N E S   J I N     ' G   =|
 9|E D ' M O Z O   Y O     '    |
10|S " H     "       E       "  |
11|    A   A I R I E S T        |
12|'   V I G     X       -     '|
13|  F E     Q A T '   T   -    |
14|H E       "   L   " I     -  |
15|O D   '   W R E C K S '     =|
   ------------------------------

I didn't find (or really look hard for) roULEAU in either spot here; but I played 7k LU(A)U 4 which sets up an unblockable outbingo on the triple lane, which sims about 30 points better.

There was also one time that I deliberately didn't look for bingos with EHMNOT? because I'd found 50 points keeping the ?. Seemed prudent and pragmatic to save time, and it turns out that the bingos that played were indeed worse than taking 50 and keeping the blank.

I definitely have trouble with 2 blanks though.

I also played a few bingos which weren't the best:

a) missed the other AILRTTY? starting from a T when I played TILTYARd (scored 8 points less). I had recently played TILTYARD against George a few weeks ago, it came up again in study in the car on the way down, and I fell in love with playing it early. I also hoped for a challenge, but only got a hold. A shame :)

b) played (O)uTPOWER at b1 for 90 with EOPRTW?. Only problem with this move was there was a C at a1! I must confess I just slapped it down without looking hard at the C. This could have cost me the game, since it was 14 points worse plus loads worse defensively.

c) played INNArDS instead of SANDINg for 8 more points. At the time I thought the board shape would have been a sure loss with an Sxxxxxx bingo, but probably should have done it, because things got all jammed up after INNARDS anyway.


Another embarrassing thing was my R(A)T(I)ONALS was a 2x2 starting at L4... and we scored it 70! Didn't even know it was a 2x2. Good grief.

I got 42 bingos in 21 games. This isn't a particularly telling stat--in fact, the Div3 winner got 46! Whenever I'm playing well, or in the zone, I just make high scoring/equity plays and the bingos come anyhow, as a side effect.

Averaged 433.2 over 21 games. Highest game was only 500, but had only 4 games under 400, two of which I won. Opponents averaged 359.4, it would seem.

I counted just for fun--drew 20 blanks, which is about normal. The last day I drew 2/10, so 3-2 against Siri/Dean/Eric/dL/dL was just fine with me. I was pleased to have won 4 games where I got double blanked, and didn't lose any where I drew both. That's the difference between 13-8 and 17-4. Blanks aren't everything, but they sure do help.

Dunno how many bingos I missed... at least one, where with DIOSW?? I missed a 2x2 thru an A-- saw WOODSIAS which wasn't 2x2, but missed the other two ones which would have actually scored 90, in favor of a W-D 29 point play keeping S??. I definitely would have played the 2x2s if I'd found them. Was running low on time, and wasn't sure there was anything there, so just decided to make a pragmatic play. (Actually, I was pretty pleased with how I dealt with my perfectionism by being a little more pragmatic and making plays instead of grinding out really tough racks for 7 minutes.)

( Bingos below the cut... no one reads these anyway :) )

I'm (still) the Western Canadian Champion! :)

17-4, +16xx. Gibsonized in the last round -- and dL duly mopped me in the last round 500-405.

Should only take another year before my confidence drops to a massive low again ;-)

Thanks for all the good wishes during the tourney! We have a long drive ahead, and tomorrow I can talk a bit more. I was pretty nervous the whole time, but everything seemed to work out. Felt a lot like last year--I was scoring lots and there weren't many brutally bad games. I'll do some stats tomorrow....

Well, that was about as good a day of Scrabble as you can have without the initials DW.

Was a very happy birthday--out for supper, then to bed. I'm exhausted.

I am a bit disturbed by the fact that if I'd gone 1-7 I'd probably not have thought it was a great birthday--which is lame, since just playing should be enough. Something to work on.

Anyway--gotta enjoy it when everything is going perfectly because we all know it can be a drag when things are going poorly.

Off for an AYCE chinese buffet...

Wow, this was unexpected. Well, things get harder now-- Dean, George, Dielle back-to-back-to-back. Will be difficult games I'm sure, quite possible to lose them all. Regardless, I thought 4-4 would be a good/reasonable score for today so if it is so, it is so.

Beat Tran in the last game by 20, but he seems to be the real deal! He got no bingos to my 3 (including my 2 blank bingos) and just scored. I'm quite impressed.

4 more to go and then a dinner. Woulda been nice to be with the family to turn 35, but we'll hopefully have a nice time when I get back on Monday.

Closer to 70 than birth now!

Nice to get off to a good start again. Lots of games left to play still.

7-1, +949. Eric Tran lost his last game and so is tied with 7 wins, but has a smaller spread (+700ish?)

I face a higher rated chunk of the field tomorrow, so it will be a testing day. Didn't play anything too special this afternoon. I'm only playing 2 bingos a game, but keeping lots of plays in the 30s and 40s. Feels a lot like last year, just score.

Time to sack out in front of the TV and veg.

Well, a good start, mostly bag related. Was lucky and nervous... lots of mistakes didn't cost me, not getting megablanked. Played TILTYARD again :) with ALNORST played R(A)T(I)ONALS against Krueger... he challenged, and since I knew he wouldn't mind me bugging him, I told him he could look up ANTISOLAR while he was at it. (Wouldn't do that with anyone other than Krueger I don't think... he laughed.)

Playing just OK, tons of nerves for some reason.

Off to lunch....

Off to Calgary tomorrow for the main event! 21 rounds. Only losing 40 rating points would be a good result given 2009 so far :)

Should be internet available there, and I am treating myself to rooming alone--expensive, but hopefully more relaxing.

Will try to play my best and probably can't do much more than that. Will try to maximize resistance in every game even if doing poorly. Perhaps that will turn a game or two around!

Lesson of 2007: Knowing lots more words than your opponents is good and lets you move up the ladder.
Lesson of 2008: Knowing words and drawing well is good and lets you have good results.
Lesson of 2009: Knowing lots of words is good, but you don't know them as well as you could, and not drawing like a fiend exposes your at-times-poor play.

Pretourney projection: 11-10, +220, 1692 final rating.

Clearly Anna looks better in a dress than Nigel or Dave would.




It's the richest prize in history for US Women's chess... but the winner has about a 1700 scrabble rating equivalent, with the rest solidly in the 1500-1600 zone (that is, bing would be expected to win about 8/10 against 1500-1600 opp; Anand or Topalov would likely score 8.5/10 against her. Maybe even 9 or 9.5). Prize fund was $64K.

Some of the more egregious problems in my game. Your comments or suggestions for improvements, or simply "you also have problems with..." are welcome.

( weaknesses below the cut. )

qaqaq's post meme is a good idea and I'd like to complete it soon, but here probably rather than on his journal. I noticed Trip mentioned not being too concerned that people would take advantage of this sort of info. Another user on a different matter suggested that he'd prefer not to tell people where he's weak. From my perspective, I'll lay out the book on me, and expect my opponents to take advantage of whatever benefit it may give them. Hopefully it will force me to work on these weaknesses. After all, if you know you have weaknesses, then you are halfway there to fixing them. This will just be motivation to fix them sooner, and might make me stronger in the long run. (Although the main reason I think most people, myself included, know about weaknesses they have and don't fix them is that the work needed is generally harder or less enjoyable than they want to do right now.)

Not sure if it was too easy, too hard, or just plain boring, or got bumped off the "radar" which in LiveJournal world is about 8 posts on the Friends page, but no bites on the puzzle position from yesterday.

The puzzle and the solution I've now posted in the comments to that page: http://synodalhaj.livejournal.com/42969.html .

I went to club tonight, riding the wave of enthusiasm :)

Lost my traditional game to George at the club, then played a game against Terry--I would have been in trouble with a blank, but a gross rack after fighting thru

EGIOOPU (B)OUGIE
EEEOOP? EPEE

down by 40 I had: BEGOOU?

I found the 6+2 unistem in BEGOOU?? and in fact, it was through a blank!

That turned the tide and I was able to pull it out. That definitely was the critical moment of that game. I'm trying to get better at recognizing those critical moments and spending a little extra time on them.


Then I played a game against Bill where everything went very well and was still fun. I had AHQSTU? and looked for AS, settling on QUASH for 60. Later I was up by 180 after playing n1 CLEAVAG(E), when he played STUNTeR*. I challenged, then spent a few minutes with MORIBUD trying to block iNSTRU(C)T for 140!

Now a puzzle!

In the endgame this position arose:

Jason: Turn 13
   A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O   -> Jason                    DEGHIOU   502 
   ------------------------------     Bill                     INOOPRS   288 
 1|=     '       =       '   C =| --Tracking-----------------------------------
 2|  -       "       "   D   L  | INOOPRS  7
 3|    -       '   '     R E E K|
 4|'     -       '   D   U   A '|
 5|      B I O       E L M   V  |
 6|S Q U A S H     A X E     A  |
 7|T   '     M O P Y   A   ' G  |
 8|E     U     F I E   L A V E R|
 9|A   ' T W I T   '       '   O|
10|r "     A "       "       W O|
11|I     E N T E R I N G     I F|
12|C     - D     '       -   T '|
13|    -   S T E R N a L   J A R|
14|  -       "       Y O N   N  |
15|=     '     B I Z E   '     =|
   ------------------------------

Rarely do I try too hard in blowout endgames, but was pleased to have spent the couple minutes finding the optimal sequence here. It's a bit of a fun puzzle.

Scrabble is still fun!

The major VIP presentation has been moved! I'm happy to do the presentation, but the timing was just unlucky. Now with it postponed, I can go play the main event in Calgary with a ton of pressure off my shoulders and actually have some fun and try to play well.

I'm also still going to Reno MLK!

:) Scrabble is fun!

Inspired by Joey to post stats for the year in a similar "Regular faceoff in a small Scrabble state/province" competition, I have tabulated my stats against George MacAulay for nearly the same season Joey used.

( Cut set mercifully high for most... )

Does such a thing exist? I'm not looking for anyone to be "outed" if they choose to be anonymous, but I was wondering if there was a list of folk on JumbleTime somewhere that I didn't know about.

Some are obvious ("Robin"), some are the same as ISC, but not all.

Is there somewhere to look?

In that I drew more than half the blanks (5/8 to be precise) against George for the first time this year! Perhaps he turns over more than I do, or exchanges more. We've split 4-4 on blanks a number of times, and I've drawn 1, 2, or 3 in an evening several times, but it took until September (88 games) to get >50% of the slippery little suckers in a 4 game session!

This is not a particularly big complaint or anything--just one of those little statistics that you raise an eyebrow about. The short run is so short over 100 games that virtually nothing would surprise me. You need quite a few sigmas (or whatever they are for a Poisson distribution as opposed to a normal distribution) to get into truly mindblowing. Same as last week, I was totally relaxed, listened to all complaining stoically and silently, and carried on. It was wonderful Zen stuff. Much easier not to get annoyed at tiles if you are concentrating on ignoring all complaints and not feeding into them.

I won the 3 out of 4 where the tiles were cooperative. The game that I lost: I bet I could have had a considerably better chance of winning with a little placement trick. Hopefully I'll learn from it:

Jason: Turn 2
   A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O      George                   xxxxxxx   140 
   ------------------------------  -> Jason                    AAEILTY   22  
 1|=     '       =       '     =| --Tracking-----------------------------------
 2|  -       "       "       -  | AABCCDDDEEEEEEFGGIIIKLLMMNNNNOOOOOOPQRRRRSSS
 3|    -       '   '       -    | STTTTUUVVWWZAGILDFNRINUEOAHIPUXY  76
 4|'     -       '       -     '|
 5|        J           -        |
 6|  "     I "       "       "  |
 7|    '   A   '   '       '    |
 8|=     B O T H I E s   '     =|
 9|    '       E   '       '    |
10|  "       " t     "       "  |
11|        -   A       -        |
12|'     -     E '       -     '|
13|    -       R   '       -    |
14|  -       " A     "       -  |
15|=     '     E =       '     =|
   ------------------------------

I played AY for 28... and got hammered with o12 HEWN for 63. Of course, YA would have scored the same and not allowed that. The sim says only a few points difference but of course it's obvious how big those points are, in that whenever opp can hammer you next turn, your game is close to lost. This was effectively 3 bingos in a row for him and I played catchup for the rest of the game, losing relatively big. A good lesson! I didn't consider the other placement.

Not a lot of bingos on Saturday:

Moi:
EREPSIN
TILTyA(R)d 2x2
TWILLeD
ALUNITES
lIGNITE
(I)NTErMIT 2x2


er... Soi?:
AUSTERE
SULlIED
BOTHIEs
(H)EtAERAE
LINTERS

Take a relatively deep plate or bowl and place it with its concave side facing upwards. Find a nonempty box of Honey-Nut Cheerios and open it. Pour Honey-Nut Cheerios into the bowl until the bowl is approximately 80% full (if you don't have Honey-Nut Cheerios, you could substitute regular Cheerios with sugar, or those generic "honey nut 'O'" cereals). Find some milk. I used 1%, but you could use skim, 2%, or homogenized. Pour in the milk until some of the Cheerios are floating and you can't see the bottom of the bowl. Using a stand-mixer or hand blender, whip some whipping cream, icing sugar and vanilla until cream holds peaks. Add generous dollops of whipped cream to bowl of cereal.