Scrabble Year in Review

[lotting]

I feel like I learned a million new words this year but made very little progress, rating-wise. So I am really working on my strategy, studying expert games online and asking myself why they made the moves they did. I love playing but I love learning words and studying games online even more

Comments

[badqoph]

We need more people like you in the game. Eager to learn and fun to be around. You'll get 1700 by 2013 if you keep it up. You're on that plateau, just ready to get to the next curve. Hang in there. :)

How is your tracking? How is your procedure? What's helped me a lot is asking myself questions of my opponent on every turn and responding accordingly. Being aware of how many tiles are left in the back and when there's <20, getting a count and keeping track manually. And getting into a technique where I don't mistrack, where I write the rest of the pool out in big letters and try to envision them on my rack. Those things, I think, brought me from 1700 to 1800, and it's stupid self-sabotage, mostly, that made me slip in a few bad tourneys.

[lotting]

My tracking is pretty accurate now. I know I could make better use of it in the pre-endgame by envisioning the ways my opponent could kill me instead of just going through the motions of crossing off letters. It really frustrates me when I have made a lot of beautiful plays throughout the game, using words my opponent never heard of with my junky tiles, and then he plays QAT for 50 at the end and beats me. Also I have been fixated on the dynamics of board opening and closing. Sometimes I have big leads that go right down the drain because I have failed to close the board in time. Or I don't keep it open enough, early enough. These are the things I currently struggle with. But I never give up. Thanks for your encouragement!