Crushed by Eric

I got crushed in the mini-series against Eric. He won 4 out of the 5 games with an aggregate spread of nearly +400. Some explanation is required. In any Scrabble loss a combination of three factors are at work: 1) good play by your opponent, 2) poor play by you, 3) bad luck. There definitely was a lot of 1) in our series, and I think much, much more 3) than 2). The last three games I drew atrociously. I didn't get a single blank, I didn't have many good stem racks, and when I got point tiles I had them all in my rack at one time. One game I had Q,X and Z all in my rack. I was able to play them off separately each for a decent score (30-35), but between plays Eric drew the blanks successively and hit up two 70+ point bingos. Also, twice I had a good bingo stem with one extra letter that didn't fit (once it was an O, once an A) so I played off the single letter for a modest score (10-15), and both times I drew the exact same letter I just ditched. Obviously, that's the problem with fishing, but if you have a rack like AAEINTR, and the board is open I think playing off an A is usually the right move. The chances of having a bingo rack your next turn is too good to forgo.

Anyway, I am not complaining about my tiles (I'm a firm believer in the strong law of large numbers), I'm just trying to provide an honest assessment of why I think the series was so lopsided. After the first two games we had drawn pretty evenly and the tally was 1-1 with a +7 spread in Eric's favor. I like to think that's a more accurate depiction of where I'm at these days, but I'm not sure. Last night the playing field was too uneven to tell.

I did have one terrible, almost embarrassingly bad play. I had AEINORS in my rack. I should know this rack well. I have both the AINERS and the OINERS stems basically memorized. I didn't recall the bingo immediately, so instead of taking a few more seconds even minutes if necessary, (my clock was not a factor) to find it I played ARINOSE knowing it was invalid and knowing Eric would challenge. In retrospect I have no idea why I did this. I just botched it. And literally, the split second after I announced my score I saw the real bingo, ERASION. I had the exact same rack a few plays later, and I bingoed, but by that time the game was basically already out of hand. The point swing from that play was tremendous.

Anyway, turns out I was wrong and there is a Philly tourney this month. In fact it's next week. Eric and I are going. Hopefully I'll get a little more sleep before this one, and hopefully I'll draw decently. But, if I don't, so be it. I'm not going to get frustrated. I gotta keep that Joe Edley zen shit going on. Although, it really only helps my mental state with respect to the game. It really doesn't help my game that much. If I draw poorly I usually lose no matter how calm or uncalm I am.

Since my school workload has increased recently, I can set only some modest preperation goals before next weekend. Learn one more page of stems and another quiz worth of 4s.