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#player1 Mike_Frentz Mike Frentz
#player2 Jim_Burlant Jim Burlant
>Mike_Frentz: AADEENT -AADEE +0 0
>Jim_Burlant: ILLNOST 8D LINTOLS +66 66
#note This was held and let go. Mike wasn't sure about it, but he realized his rack had no 7's and needed one of the vowels I'd floated to play through. I was sure about this until Mike held, then I second-guessed myself. And the humorous moment of the tournament came the next day. While I was waiting to start my round 9 game with Darrell Day, Mike was playing Joey Mallick at the adjacent board. He calls me over and he's practically giddy as he shows me his rack. Why, it's LINTOLS! Much guffawing all around.
>Mike_Frentz: ?CEENSX H7 C.NvEXES +74 74
#note Post mortem, Mike chastised himself for not playing E7 S(I)XpENCE for 82.
>Jim_Burlant: EFINORY G11 FOY +36 102
#note FOYER scores 40 but breaks up too much of the rack for my taste. Quackle agrees - this is the clear winner.
>Mike_Frentz: AINV F12 VAIN +28 102
>Jim_Burlant: AEILNRS E4 AIRL.NES +82 184
#note Only other bingos are RAINLESS at J1 and J2 for 62. 79% to win, but within a couple of turns, this game was going to turn into a total grind.
>Mike_Frentz: AMOTU 15A OUTMA. +33 135
>Jim_Burlant: EHIINOO D3 OHO +24 208
#note This is a very strong choice but it's not best. One of my own rules of thumb is that, whenever possible, duplicated I's need to be dealt with and I'm often willing to give up as many as 8 or 9 scoreboard points to unload one because of how potentially toxic they can be to a rack, Quackle's infatuation with duplicated I's in a leave nothwithstanding. While this is the highest equity play I have and it wins only 0.2% less than the sim winner, I think the sim winner is definitely best here: D8 LOOIE, which I never saw.
>Mike_Frentz: OWW D10 WOW +25 160
>Jim_Burlant: AEEIINS 6E .EI +5 213
#note Given this pool - RRRRTTTT? unseen, I thought I could risk opening a line for a 7. While a fish is the right call given that none of my options score, I think it gives up too much even if Quackle thinks it's a B+ choice. 7G ICE scores 13 and should have been the play. That said, I do benefit from this.
>Mike_Frentz: Q G5 Q. +11 171
>Jim_Burlant: AAEIINS H4 AI +14 227
#note Was a little nervous about floating the R hook but, again, nothing scores and a fish is the right call. This is best, and it wins 81%.
>Mike_Frentz: BCEI 2B BICE +25 196
>Jim_Burlant: AEEINPS 1E PINE +22 249
#note In Quackle's estimation, my first real mistake. Obviously, row 1 has to be addressed but there's a much better means of dealing with that than this: F2 PIE scores 34, keeps AENS together and accomplishes the same thing. Unfortunately for me, I always miss the BICE -> BICEP back hook. :-( This sucks.
>Mike_Frentz: EEEEGHR -EEEEGH +0 196
>Jim_Burlant: AEEEHRS C11 HAE +23 272
#note No R for REHEARSE, and I would have never found the 8 through the D, HAERE(D)ES. It's either this or F8 NEE. Given how the rest of the game panned out, I certainly wish I'd played NEE. 92% to win.
>Mike_Frentz: ?ADEGIT 3G TrIAGED +72 268
>Jim_Burlant: EEFJPRS L1 JE.P +42 314
#note Seriously considered JEFE but felt that, even though this gave back easy J extensions row 1 (has anyone in the history of Scrabble NOT ever been able to extend a J into a 4-letter word?), it gave up too many points on the scoreboard to justify playing them. Quackle indicates that this wins maybe 0.6% more often than JEFE but sims with identical valuation. I figured I could trade 42 for a probable 33.
>Mike_Frentz: AKU 1L .AUK +45 313
>Jim_Burlant: EEFRSTZ J2 Z.RF +36 350
#note I double-checked the tracking before making this play. I have the case S for a JEEPS back hook but the problem is that, courtesy of all my fishing earlier, this pool only has 1 E in it and I need to hold my E's since I'm not likely to get one back. Plus, with RRRR still unseen, unloading my R was a good idea. Hence, this choice. Quackle agrees - it's best. 84% to win.
>Mike_Frentz: ART 1A RAT +15 328
>Jim_Burlant: EEMOOST 9G O.O +11 361
#note Call me crazy, but I didn't think OSTEOME* 6I would fly against Mike. :-) Kidding aside, this position puzzled me. The really are no good options here - the only scoring options are 6J SMOTE 30 (which I never saw), and K3 GEE 23. However, I neither want to float him an E, nor do I want to burn both my E's given how ugly this pool is. This was the only thing I could come up with that left me a decent (not great, but decent) combo and didn't open anything up for him, as everything else I could find (4L POEM/POMO, 4J ROPE, etc.) either opened up the O column and/or created hooks that weren't in my rack.
>Mike_Frentz: DIT 11G ..TID +18 346
>Jim_Burlant: DEELMST 10J MED +25 386
#note When I had put down HAE a few turns ago, I noticed that I had created front hooks to HOS (M, R, T). But as this pool got uglier and uglier, I took my eye off the ball. I didn't look hard enough at the pool to realize there were still some low-probablility bingos in it (BUGGERY, for one) that needed to be blocked. I saw this, saw how unbalanced the pool was, and as I put this down (MELD would have probably been a hair better) and snickered to myself as I smugly expected to add another 20 or 30 points to my spread with my case S while he ground through RRUVY or whatever other garbage he had in his rack. Little did I know what awaited me.
>Mike_Frentz: EGGNRRU B5 GRUNGER +70 416
>Jim_Burlant: ADELSTV - +0 386
#note And here's where my second failure occurs. Board blindness set in. While I had originally looked for plays back hooking JEEP with my S, I forgot about that hook and strictly obsessed on the MED back hook I'd just created. AFter spending a few minutes looking this over, I (wrongly) concluded that I had no win if this stuck, and challenged. As we walked to the machine, Mike's words: "This was the play I had to make and you absolutely had to challenge." He was as shocked as I was when it came back good - he said he was 20% sure of it when he put it down. As it turns out, the shame of this is that if I'd bothered to look at the whole board, I'd have realized that I didn't have to challenge. LUV 7A scores 10, and leaves me with an unblockable FASTED 5J 34 for a one-point win. Losing my turn challenging this word throws the game away.
>Mike_Frentz: BRUY 3A BY +15 431
>Jim_Burlant: ADELSTV M10 STAVED +27 413
>Mike_Frentz: RU 15K UR. +5 436
>Mike_Frentz: (L) +2 438
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