LJ Idol Exhibit A, Week 2: "Throw Back the Little Ones"
Decisions, Decisions
Pairings are up! The director quickly backs away from the wall to avoid the crush of players trying to figure out where to go.
I, however, already know. Table one, on the webcast, against Carl, for all the marbles.
We've played once already, a wild shootout where things just didn't break my way. If I can avenge that loss--and the couple of other times he's broken my heart at the end of a tournament--I'll finally have my first multi-day tournament win.
"I've gone first nine times," I tell Carl as he sits down. He does a quick count on his scoresheet. "Ten," he replies. So I get the head start this time around.
I take a few deep breaths, waiting for the room to quiet down a bit. After a minute or so, I bring the bag of tiles over my head. "Ready?" Carl nods.
I grab a small handful of tiles, set them face down on the table, then pluck out two more to bring the total to seven. "Start the clock," I say as I turn the first ones over.
I shuffle the tiles, putting them into alphabetical order. AERRTUU. It's a classic conundrum; all one-point tiles, but no way to convert them into 50 points by bingoing.
The only play I can find that gets rid of both of the problematic U's is AUTEUR, but scoring 14 points isn't nearly enough compensation for putting five different, useful tiles out there for Carl to use. RUE comes to mind as another possibility, given that I hold the T to hook on the front, but ARTU draws into far fewer bingos than AERT. Certainly not worth the six points.
So it comes down to AUTEUR versus exchanging the RUU. Giving up the first turn of the game hurts, but it's a price I'm willing to pay. I place my three worst tiles face down on the table. "Trade three," I announce, hitting my clock.
Drawing my replacements before throwing the others back in, the three one-point tiles are replaced by three of their brothers: another R, a second E, and a second T. I assemble them as before: AEERRTT. Well, at least there are bingos in that rack. Let's see how this plays out.
***
There's a lot of luck in Scrabble. The results of one individual game are, in effect, nearly meaningless. Whether a decision actually works out at the time often has no relation to whether or not it was the correct decision. One can make a play that gives them a theoretical 99% chance of winning, and still lose. Other times, a 1% chance comes in.
That's not to say there is no skill involved, of course; the players who consistently make the plays which give themselves the best chance to win will, in the long run, prevail. That's why tournaments are twenty games long--to give that skill a chance to show itself, to smooth out the variance. But the long run is a lot longer than most people believe it is. As one high-profile Scrabble player once put it, "Life is too short for the law of averages to catch up."
In my case, it took nearly twelve years of tournament play to finally get good enough--and lucky enough--to put it all together for twenty games and come out on top. Other players have won far sooner in their careers; does that make them better than me? Or just luckier?
Who knows? And, to be frank, who cares?
Nobody plays perfectly. Everyone--myself very much included--makes mistakes. Some mistakes don't matter, and aren't worth obsessing over. Just avoid the big, critical, game-losing mistakes. Though for every winner, there is a corresponding loser, many more games are lost by bad play than won by good play.
I simply managed, for one weekend, to avoid screwing things up. And that's good enough for me.
Pairings are up! The director quickly backs away from the wall to avoid the crush of players trying to figure out where to go.
I, however, already know. Table one, on the webcast, against Carl, for all the marbles.
We've played once already, a wild shootout where things just didn't break my way. If I can avenge that loss--and the couple of other times he's broken my heart at the end of a tournament--I'll finally have my first multi-day tournament win.
"I've gone first nine times," I tell Carl as he sits down. He does a quick count on his scoresheet. "Ten," he replies. So I get the head start this time around.
I take a few deep breaths, waiting for the room to quiet down a bit. After a minute or so, I bring the bag of tiles over my head. "Ready?" Carl nods.
I grab a small handful of tiles, set them face down on the table, then pluck out two more to bring the total to seven. "Start the clock," I say as I turn the first ones over.
I shuffle the tiles, putting them into alphabetical order. AERRTUU. It's a classic conundrum; all one-point tiles, but no way to convert them into 50 points by bingoing.
The only play I can find that gets rid of both of the problematic U's is AUTEUR, but scoring 14 points isn't nearly enough compensation for putting five different, useful tiles out there for Carl to use. RUE comes to mind as another possibility, given that I hold the T to hook on the front, but ARTU draws into far fewer bingos than AERT. Certainly not worth the six points.
So it comes down to AUTEUR versus exchanging the RUU. Giving up the first turn of the game hurts, but it's a price I'm willing to pay. I place my three worst tiles face down on the table. "Trade three," I announce, hitting my clock.
Drawing my replacements before throwing the others back in, the three one-point tiles are replaced by three of their brothers: another R, a second E, and a second T. I assemble them as before: AEERRTT. Well, at least there are bingos in that rack. Let's see how this plays out.
***
There's a lot of luck in Scrabble. The results of one individual game are, in effect, nearly meaningless. Whether a decision actually works out at the time often has no relation to whether or not it was the correct decision. One can make a play that gives them a theoretical 99% chance of winning, and still lose. Other times, a 1% chance comes in.
That's not to say there is no skill involved, of course; the players who consistently make the plays which give themselves the best chance to win will, in the long run, prevail. That's why tournaments are twenty games long--to give that skill a chance to show itself, to smooth out the variance. But the long run is a lot longer than most people believe it is. As one high-profile Scrabble player once put it, "Life is too short for the law of averages to catch up."
In my case, it took nearly twelve years of tournament play to finally get good enough--and lucky enough--to put it all together for twenty games and come out on top. Other players have won far sooner in their careers; does that make them better than me? Or just luckier?
Who knows? And, to be frank, who cares?
Nobody plays perfectly. Everyone--myself very much included--makes mistakes. Some mistakes don't matter, and aren't worth obsessing over. Just avoid the big, critical, game-losing mistakes. Though for every winner, there is a corresponding loser, many more games are lost by bad play than won by good play.
I simply managed, for one weekend, to avoid screwing things up. And that's good enough for me.