Lady Luck is golden, and she favors the bold.  I had some ridiculously good luck this past weekend at the EC, but I think playing aggressively helped play into that.  See how day 1 went after the cut.

( Games 1-8 )

A decidedly mediocre tournament.  7-7, -114, 378 scoring average, 16 point gain to a new peak rating of 1611.  But life's not so unpleasant in this little neighborhood of Middletown.  Let's do the rundown.

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A modest man from Raleigh traveled west to Atlanta.  He had a need to discover a use for his newly found word knowledge.  How did the cinderella man manage in Alpharetta?  ( Read more...and there's a lot more... )

On Saturday I felt caught in a spindrift.  Over the course of 8 games my play vacillated from poor to great to OK; the tiles likewise were very generous one game but brutally unforgiving the next.  I got a pretty average result out of it all; 4.5-3.5, +243, new rating of 1530.  I at least kept my streak of cashing in Durham; $80 for somehow getting ( Read more... )

If I could wave a magic wand, well, I probably wouldn't use it for Scrabble purposes initially.  But if that wand was limited to Scrabble tricks, pulling 5 bingoes (4 consecutive) out of a hat in the last game of a tourney to seal up second place, finish in the money, and grab 15 rating points would be quite the trick.  But we'll get to that game ( Read more... )

Well, in Scrabble sometimes you are the windshield and sometimes you are the fly.  In my first three tournaments I was the windshield, smashing through the competition, drawing well and not making as many mistakes as my opponents in general.  This tournament I was the fly that went splat.  3-12, -703, last place and a new rating of 1495.  I managed ( Read more... )

Another successful Scrabble tourney in Durham this weekend.  In my first tournament in D1 (but comparable in strength to the D2 field in Charlotte), I came away with a 7-1 record, +427 spread, $180 for first place and 85 more rating points to bump up to 1560.  I say "came away" because by all rights I should have been 5-3.

In two different games on ( Read more... )