8 Bonus Game at Causeway

Here is a wonderful 8 bonus game from Nigel and Amit.

http://www.poslfit.com/games/causeway/2008/43A/000.html

Causeway Scrabble Annotated Games

Play has been going for a day and a half now.

Australia is leading. http://causewayscrabble.com/premier/premier.html

There are already about 30 annotated games. I am going to be up all night looking at these.

Blaxland Fund Raiser Bonuses

• slatted
• favoured
• rebraces
• otarine
• juncate
• otaries
• eastern
• affords
• retrain

Only 9 bonuses in 8 games...not my usual average but I did manage to have some strong in between plays and get to 5 wins for a 3 point rating gain.

Blaxland Fundraising Event

Yesterday was the Blaxland fund raising tournament to assist the Phillip and John Hamilton with their expenses to travel to Malaysia for the World Youth Scrabble Championships.

There were a number of very pleasing aspects to this tournament.

1. Phillip and John organised just about the entire event. I did offer to help and did help, but to be fair there was not that much for me to do. They had most things sorted. I might also add that it was a family affair and Shelley, Ruth Hamilton also were there the whole day and assisted greatly.
2. The venue - This was the library at Blaxland High School. There was where Tony Hunt and myself did an exhibition match for the school kids in the library about 5 years ago. I remember the day well. This was the day John Hamilton became hooked on Scrabble. I wrote up the event as an article. Ellen King, the librarian was around then and was there yesterday as well offering wonderful support to the kids. Ellen has asked if I would do another exhibition match there next year.
3. There were so many youth players here...great to see. I will not name them all, but I think the count was 6 of the 32 players.
4. Also of great excitement for me was to see three players that have attended my house to play Scrabble over the last year take the plunge and play in their first tournament.

I will give more details later of wins and bonuses etc.

Would you have the stamina - Causway Scrabble

Taken from the website....

The Causeway Scrabble Challenge was conceived in 2002 as a challenge between top 10 players from Singapore versus top 10 players from Malaysia. The name Causeway was chosen as the 2 countries were separated by a causeway. Over the years, Causeway Challenge has included its neighbouring and then regional countries. The 7th Causeway Scrabble Challenge will be truly global with 50 players from 10 teams competing over 45 games in 5 days. It will be longest and probably the toughest International scrabble tournament ever held.

This is a huge event....45 games...in 5 days against the toughest opposition.

There is an excellent site to watch the progress and there will be lots of annotated games here.

This will be very exciting to watch....go Aussies!!!

Trans Tasman Event

Australia is taking on New Zealand in the regular Trans Tasman event. It is structured in this way. The top 12 available players from each country play each other in a full round robin, twice!

It is the end of day two and Australia is leading comfortably.

There are 288 games in total played so the winner will need a majority to win which is 144. After day two Australia has 117 wins.

See the results here.

Central Coast Championships

On November 22 and 23 I played at Woy Woy. The Central Coast Championships. A tournament run by my mum, Denise Smith. It was a mixed event for me. I think I was third ranked in the event.

After running 2nd place all day I lost games 11, 12 and 13 to drop to fifth spot. A bit disappointing. However with just one round left I finally got it together against Sherie Brown for a big 200 point win to jolt me back to 2nd spot with 5 other players on 9 wins from 14. Alastair Richards played outstandingly by not dropping a single game to streak away and win by 5 games.

Here are my bonuses for the 14 games on the order I played them.

• latinos
• steering
• braised
• refuting
• oreades
• packets
• linters
• irisate
• indorse
• domaine
• ligates
• bearers
• wariest
• meatier
• telling
• shunned
• marrows
• trainer
• isatine
• deathly
• service
• rootled
• adiposes
• retires

WPC Photos

Phil Robertshaw, prominent player in the UK participated in the recent WPC event in Texas.

He has posted a wonderful library of Photos of each game that he played along with a photo of each player.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=63626&l=0faac&id=543987342

8 Bonus Game at the WPC

This game had 8 bonuses played. Wonderful!!

607 Game - 5 Bonuses

Nigel Richards plays a wonderful 607 point game with 5 bonuses.

View it here.

WPC - Play has started

Play has started and there in plenty of Scrabble info to keep you interested.

http://www.worldplayerschampionship.com/2008/build/index.html

There was a very high quality game in round 8 between Australia's own David Eldar and the current word champ, Nigel Richards. There are Quackle simulations for each move. Very interesting.

View the progress of all the Australians playing.

At the end of play on day one David and Nigel are both on 7 wins. Go David!

The Prince of Wales

This is supposed to look like Prince Charles. It does work a little if you squint when viewing it.

Would you pick up that tile I dropped please?

Scrabble has now been taken to new height with two players playing Scrabble whilst sky diving.

View the full article here.

World Players Championship

The World Players Championship starts in 2 days time.

http://www.worldplayerschampionship.com/2008/

I think the plan for this tourney is to run it every year the WSC is not on.

There are nine Australians playing in Texas.

I hope there will be annotated games.

Annotated Games - BEST Final

This was posted to the UK Scrabble list.

They have a tournament called BEST (British Elimination Scrabble Tournament). I think it is a giant knock-out competition and eventually the two finalists play a best of 21 games.

Well someone has annotated the games....all 17 of them.

http://www.centrestar.co.uk/best/2008/BESTFinalGames.html

This is a wonderful opportunity to watch top players and learn.

Campionato Italiano di Scrabble 2008 - Italian Scrabble Championships

This was posted by John Chew to the world Scrabble list.

As reported at

http://www.scrabbleitalia.com/

Campionato Italiano di Scrabble 2008 (the 2008 Italian Scrabble
Championship) took place this past weekend in Rome. 21 players
competed for the title, and the final game can be viewed at

http://www.poslfit.com/games/figs/cis/2008/2/

Note a few things that set Italian Scrabble apart from English:

1. Once per game, you are allowed to announce "cambio secco" and
trade all seven tiles before making a regular play.

2. When one player goes out, his opponent deducts the values of his
remaining tiles from his score, not doubled, and the player who
went out does not adjust his score.

3. There are 120 tiles, but no Js, Ks, Ws, Xs or Ys.

Not to mention words like CUOIAIE (played from a C, no less),
meaning women who work with or sell leather.

The risks of playing Scrabble with your family.

I have been reading this online comic for a couple of years.

At last some Scrabble content.

Warning: Marginal adult content.

http://xkcd.com/492/

Cardboxes and Zyzzyva

For the first time in a while I have actually being doing some word study. I usually spend about 2 hours each weekday travelling on the train to and from work with laptop in hand I am putting that time to good use.

I have been using Zyzzyva and the cardbox system.

After a little bit of research I found it is actually called the Leitner Cardbox system. Here is a good explaination of how it works.

Marathon Result and Bonuses Played

I love the marathon. At the end of the day I always feel full of adrenalin and feel like playing more games wondering where the day has gone. Then true reality sets in the next day when I do feel quite fatigued.

I finished 6th out of about 40 and went down 12 ratings points. There are always tales of what ifs but two of my twelve games I could have won had I used my time more at the end of the game.

Anyway here are the bonuses played both for and against.

Mine

• meteors
• teacart ( I had teacake very next turn but was unplayable)
• dugites
• beanies
• martins
• borates
• creation
• sideline
• teazling
• sipping
• annoyed
• society
• triples
• beggers
• toadies
• peroxid

Played against me

• located
• fission
• arsenal
• rustier
• learned
• reredos
• unfeared
• dreader
• sweetie
• moodier
• becrime
• roadings
• dackers
• twinges
• enamored
• eeliest

There you have it 16 bonuses for and 16 against.

Annual Spring Marathon

Off the the spring marathon this weekend. This tournament is not for the faint hearted. It is 12 games 20 minutes a side open event. According to the latest entry list I will be among the highest rated there so it may be a tough slog defending those ratings points.

On another note this may be the best value tournament in NSW per game.

12 games - Cost $25 = $2.08 approx per rated game....Great value!

Filtering Scrabble NSW Personal Stats

For some years now we have had the excellent resource set up on the Scrabble Australia site that gives detailed personal information about you performances in Australian sanctioned and rated tournaments.

http://www.scrabble.org.au/tournaments/index.html

You are in fact able to filter just for the year of choice.

In the URL below I have searched for myself and added some text to the URL that allows me to show just my 2008 stats. Using this method you can look at your year by year performances.

http://www.scrabble.org.au/tournaments/cgi-bin/stats.cgi?name1=Mark Smith&startyear=2008&endyear=2008&filter=true

Probably the easiest way is to click the link above and just change my name in the URL to your name.

NSW Scrabble AGM

Every year at the NSW champs the AGM is held. This year unlike other years was quite different.

I have attended the last 5 NSW champs in a row and have been asked before if I would stand for the committee and whilst interested I always said that I would wait until my kids were school aged and things would be a little easier at home etc.

Well guess what? This year I am ready to be on the committee and play my part in contributing to the Scrabble landscape but I was not needed. Debate at the meeting was vigourous and there were quite a few positions that were no just filled but they were contested.

New Positions are:

• Rex Shakespeare - Membership Officer
• Colleen Walker - Secretary
• La'Reine Lang - Publicity Officer
• Chris Ostrowski - Committee Member
• Ed Laginha - Committee Member
  

It is great to see so many are interested as this tells me that NSW Scrabble is in a strong place to move forward into the future.

Joan Rosenthal Shield - Part 2

As I mentioned in a previous post Michael McKenna was likely to win the shield....he did...with a massive gain of 764 points. This certainly places my 322 into perspective.

Well done Michael!

Pyramid Words

Anyone in NSW Scrabble will notice the activity that is present in the Youth Scrabble scene, largely due to Karen Richards. Karen holds youth Scrabble camps at her home most school holidays and Phillip Hamilton of the young players that plays at my house each week attends. I was asking him what kinds of activities occur and how is it structured and mentioned the phrased "Pyramid words".

I guess I knew in mind what a pyramid word is but just had not given a label to it. But they make so much sense to learn.

They are words that you can just keep adding letters to, or hooks, as us Scrabblers prefer to say.

Phillip game me on example:

• mo
• mod
• mode
• moder
• modern
• moderns

Bob Jackman, 2 time Australian champion beat me with a very sneaky Pyramid word on the weekend.

• ja
• jam
• jamb
• jambe
• jambee
• jambees ( the s was not added in our game, but it does take S)

If you have any more of there I would love to hear from you.

New South Wales (NSW) Championships

Phew!...got got up after a good nights sleep and am feeling much refreshed after just attending the NSW Championships. There is a lot I want to write about over coming days that occurred during the last three days but here are just a few facts and statistics to start with.

13.5 wins from 24 games

Rating gain of 4 points - Makes me 1626 - about 35 in the country

I played 27 bonuses in 24 games - about 1.125 average per game. This is down on my usual average of about 1.3 per game

Here are the bonuses I played:

• sealine
• taeniae
• soaring
• inertias
• blitzed
• rindiest
• student
• stinker
• jinglers
• erector
• triaged
• arsines
• lucites
• stealer
• elations
• dilates
• negates
• reloads
• alarming
• stunner
• canoeing
• against
• goosier
• slenter
• catering
• tearing
• involver

Wow just counted the bonuses against me - 37 - 10 more than I played. To me this tells me that for me to win more than half my games that my in between bonus plays are getting stronger.

Here are the opponent bonuses played:

• juiciest
• loricated
• inwards
• weakened
• meeters
• origanes
• ostiate
• retinae
• isatine
• hoarsen
• twiners
• ironweed
• tornade
• loaners
• guarder
• cistern
• anisole
• fireside
• gauntly
• meagrest
• redliner
• carageen
• snouted
• stoolie
• lanterns
• moonies
• starned
• serrati
• inciters
• blouses
• moneyed
• employs
• inserts
• sterile
• hoariest
• isleted
• juncate

That is all for now, more to come in following days.

Just one player at last night...

Just one player at last night Scrabble meeting at my house. It was a pleasant surprise to see Simone who usually only attends during the school holidays, which I should be aware of now as I now have school aged kids.

I got off to a flyer of a start with a 530 point game to win by over 280 (Sorry Simone for the gloat). The notable part was bonuses for me on moves 4, 5, 6 and 8 a nice little run.

The record should also record Simone and I played 3 games for a 2/1 result.

Racks were...

• deiilos
• aceortv....1 solution but i played onto a d
• bdiosu?
• adeinru

Photo of final board and solutions below.
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NSW Champs

The NSW championships are this weekend. I hope to perform well but have a horror week at work and will be quite tired I imagine by the end of the week. On the upside I have about 10 days off work after the champs so that will be cool.

I notice on the flyer that there are 8 games each day which I tend to like (the more the better per day I reckon) but all the games are 50 minutes, or 25 minutes a side. Correct me if I am wrong but I thought this was the NSW champs and in NSW we play 22 minutes a side. I suspect that this has been done to woo more interstate contenders for the title.

On another note I saw that Peter Kougi of Victoria won a tournament on the weekend and rose above 1900 for the first time. There seems to be a trend of players ratings rising, including mine. We now have several players rated over 2000 and one over 2100. This surely must be a result of the expectation of win rating curve being adjusted some time ago or is it just a result of the level of Scrabble player increasing over the last 18 months or so?

Joan Rosenthal Shield

It is that time of year again in NSW Scrabble where the person that has gained the most ratings points in the year wins the Joan Rosenthal Shield. Joan has been a prominent player in Australian Scrabble for many years.

The reason I mention this is that I was a former winner. Other former winners from memory are:

Wilma Vialle
Chris May
Tony Hunt
Tony Kalayzich
Colleen Walker
Apologies for anyone I missed....

When I won is was with a rating gain of 322 points. This year there seem to be two main contenters.

Michael McKenna and Kitty-Jean Laginha

Michael has moved from about 673 to a 1407 - A massive gain of over 700 points.

Kitty-Jean has moved from 760 - 1378 - Another massive gain of over 600 points.

This surely is the future of Australian Scrabble with many more junior about to attend another of Karen Richards youth Scrabble training camps this holidays.

Good luck to Michael and Kitty as they pay the final tournaments this weekend before the winner is decided.

I cannot wait to see who it will be next year.

Funplex

I was playing a game of Scrabble against Quackle this afternoon, as I usually do a few times a day. The great thing about Quackle is that you cannot dumb it down and play against a lesser player. So it is not that often that I win a game and therefore you learn or are at least exposed to lots of words.

On this board that follows Quackle played the wonderful "FUNPLEX" which got me to thinking what other types of plexes are there. Right after the FUNPLEX play Quackle then proceded to play ZOOCYTIA which I also did not know.

• APOPLEX
• CINEPLEX
• COMPLEX
• CONTRAPLEX
• DECOMPLEX
• DIPLEX
• DUPLEX
• FOURPLEX
• FUNPLEX
• GOOGOLPLEX
• HETERODUPLEX
• HYPERCOMPLEX
• IMMUNOCOMPLEX
• IMPLEX
• MEGAPLEX
• METROPLEX
• MULTIPLEX
• NONCOMPLEX
• OCTUPLEX
• OVERCOMPLEX
• PERPLEX
• PLEX
• QUADPLEX
• QUADRUPLEX
• SIMPLEX
• SUPLEX
• TRIPLEX
• UNPERPLEX

Welcome

Hello All

Welcome to my new blog. I am not really sure what I will be posting on this blog but as it evolves I image it will be a mixture of my thoughts and experiences in the wonderful world of Scrabble.

I would welcome any comments or thoughts that you have. Do not be shy speak up. One of the beauties of blogging is discovering websites and resources on the web that you may otherwise may not have been aware of because of other people posting etc.

I chose the name Clabbers for this blog as it is an anagram of Scrabble and was quite surprised that the Blogger site still had it available.

So for my first post, if you are not sure exactly what Clabbers is then read a definition.