MSI

[magratheazaphod]

I don't get it. I read about people bemoaning the lost era of Scrabble of the past ten years. In reality, what we had was pretty unremarkable. I love the community that I belong to but we have been exceptionally static for the past decade. Aside maybe from Michael Tang's Causeway ambitions, this is the best thing that's happened to Scrabble since

Comments

[gijoel666]

Magra wrote: "encourage them to stick with their plans."

Um, what exactly are their plans and where can I find them elaborated upon in their own words?

I have not been impressed by their productions to date. So far, their $40K "smart board" has transmitted errors to the web at about the same rate as John Chew's volunteer typing annotators, and their webcast does not appear to have significant sized windows of live action, plus their own site only links to the tv, and you have to go hunting to find Chew's site for up-to-date standings; on the whole, unsatisfying. The majority of their events have been held where I would have had to spend twice as much money and thrice as much time on travel as I do domestically, and be forced to play with a bullshit word list for not even 10% for first place of what they spent on that stupid board. If they had $40K to throw around, and I'm curious where that came from, it would have been better spent on a prize fund that justifies the expenses of many good players. Our talents are the real product, not their board. We are what they should have spent the money on, without a deep strong field their expensive board can only broadcast a lot of Nigel Richards against mismatched losers.

[magratheazaphod]

I think that they're not doing too bad given that they essentially stared from scratch and they will only get better from here. We are not their only game in town (it's hard not to think that poker will constitute their major money-earner). The board was unimpressive but they tried to use that to gather some PR, and it did draw some attention. I suspect that this year's worlds will be a well-run event.

[magratheazaphod]

also their stated goal is to eventually have one even per month, four per year in north america, four in europe and four in asia...I believe that's available on their press release announcing the worlds this year.