Another charity tournament in the books, and it was a successful tournament aside from Sunday's tank job.  4-1 in the EB, good enough for 2nd place and my money back, plus crept the TWL rating back over 1800, only to lose it right back by Sunday (I seem to be really good at doing this), with a 9-7, +1079 (+979 officially) 3rd place finish.  3-5 on ( Read more... )

It's that time of year, for the summary of 2012, the year that was in Scrabble ( Read more... )

Well we cobbled together a Collins division in North Carolina, so I can't really complain.  I wish I had done better than 6-6. +631.  The story of my tournament is pretty much that I won blowouts and lost the close games:  I went 1-4 in games decided by less than 60 points, and 5-2 otherwise.  That seems to be a pattern with me, I need to get ( Read more... )

Well, the last 3 games of my first Nationals are now available for perusal on cross-tables.  I decided I had had enough of drawing badly, and I was going to go 3-0 on the last day, and sure enough I accomplished that, salvaging my record and finishing in 13th place.  Not where I was hoping to be after the end of Day 3, but all in all it was a ( Read more... )

Day 4 annotated games are now up on cross-tables, http://www.cross-tables.com/anno.php?p=20072

Well, it sucked going through those games again.  During the 7 game losing streak, I had a shot to win 3 of them.  The Bowman game, I missed an opening bingo, a 4v7 that's Collins only.  That's probably the difference there.  Theolaughgame, I made a ( Read more... )

Day 3 games are now up on cross-tables.com.  Kind of wish I had kept up with this enough so I could release Day 4 on Halloween, since that was the real horror show, but c'est la vie.  Besides the two Polatnick games, which were just straight baggings that I couldn't do much about, the rest of them were pretty taut affairs that are worth looking ( Read more... )

My games from Day 2 of NSC 2012 are up on cross-tables, you can find them here: http://www.cross-tables.com/anno.php?p=20072, along with all of my other games that are tagged.  Played pretty well up until the last game, where I putzed around too long in the beginning, then screwed up my tracking, causing me to open up a lane that he bingoed down.  ( Read more... )

As promised, I've uploaded the first day of games from Nationals, 2 months late.  I got to play at Table 1 in the afternoon, and managed 2nd place at the conclusion of the day.  Not bad at all, considering the adventures of just getting to the venue and condo the night before meant I didn't fall asleep until 1:30 AM, with a wake-up call at 6:45 AM ( Read more... )

Robb Griffith was gracious enough to host 24 Scrabblers in his home for a 1-day tournament a couple weeks ago.  Even though it was a tight squeeze, it was a really great atmosphere.  I just wish my Scrabble play and results hadn't been so mediocre, but that's bound to happen.  I had taken a bit of a sabbatical from live play since Nationals, and I ( Read more... )

The whole lexicon debate has reared its ugly head again, and the nastiness has come along for the ride.  I think the pro-Collins side has been the calmer of the two sides this time around, though I don't really care for the "let's add the Collins 2's and 3's" proposal as it just seems silly to me.  If we're going to add FY# and MAK#, why wouldn't ( Read more... )