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#player1 Russell_Byers Russell Byers
#player2 Dave Dave
>Russell_Byers: AMOTZ 8D MATZO +38 38
>Dave: EIOOSTT I5 TOOTSIE +76 76
#note Truth be told, I had a serious word knowledge failure here. I could not remember whether TOOTSIE was good in Scrabble or just a good Dustin Hoffman comedy. I knew TOOTSES was good for sure, and I thought there was a chance I could be mixing it up with that. I also couldn't even convince myself whether ZOOTY took comparative and superlative forms. But I had no other bingos I was sure of, and I eventually convinced myself to pull the trigger on TOOTSIE, though not before burning some time on my clock. These were clear signs of rust on my part. If I had been playing and studying more frequently, this would have been an automatic move.
>Russell_Byers: AADPY H11 APAYD +44 82
>Dave: IIOOSVY 5I .IVY +20 96
#note Not a great situation, where I will have a suboptimal leave after pretty much any play. Quackle prefers the point greedy YO J6, which seems reasonable. At least with the V I am likely to eat up some of the vowels on the next turn and still score decently while untangling this rack. Playing off IVY as I did is not terrible, and I thought it might be worthwhile to set up the STIVY hook for plays from H1, but I might have missed that VIZY G6 plays the exact same tiles for 4 more points. Quackle thinks that VIZY is about 3 points better than my play, which tells me that the STIVY setup has a little bit of value, but not enough to compensate for the scoring difference.
>Russell_Byers: IW J5 .WI +29 111
>Dave: EILOORS D4 SLOO.IER +70 166
>Dave: ABEGNSX (challenge) +5 171
>Russell_Byers: CEIN 4L NICE +24 135
>Dave: ABEGNSX H1 BANGS +41 212
#note To me it was a tough call here between BANGS for 41 and 3L AX for 42, but if Quackle is to be believed, AX is about a 7.5 point favorite over my play. This is surprising to me, because I thought there was a decent chance I might draw another A or O and still hit the X spot at 3M on the next turn, and there is also an XU possibility at 13I. Playing AX immediately doesn't look that promising with the BEGNS leave, but perhaps with the open vowels my chances of bingoing with that rack were actually better than I estimated. It is a big scary that all of my best plays leave the E in the triple lane wide open, but sometimes you just have to play your rack and not worry too much.
>Russell_Byers: ADDF O1 FAD.D +30 165
>Dave: EGIKLPX 13H .XLIKE +50 262
>Russell_Byers: EEERSTV C9 STEEVER +79 244
>Russell_Byers: AFM (challenge) +5 249
>Dave: GGHIOPU 3K POH +32 294
#note This was a poor play on my part. Though it is my highest scoring play, the GGIU leave is ugly. I did not think of the very nice B9 PUGH, which scores a surprising 31 points and cleans up this rack well. Though PUGH is far and away the best play, the simple 15A GORP was also a significant improvement on my play.
>Russell_Byers: AFM 15A FA.M +36 285
>Dave: ACGGILU L10 GUC. +22 316
#note This is the clearly best play to untangle from this rack and score some points, but it is worth noticing here that I likely would have scored more on this turn if I had managed my rack better on the previous one.
>Russell_Byers: ?AADHNR F1 HANDcAR. +65 350
#note His highest scoring bingo was THANADAR 2B. A bit tricky to look at playing through the A when you already have two of them on your rack.
>Dave: ?AEGILL 15H .IALLaGE +80 396
#note My bingo scores by far the most, but his last play did give me the very pretty EIGHTBALL.
>Russell_Byers: EJR 14B J.ER +44 394
>Dave: EINOQUW N4 .OQUI +39 435
#note A game losing error on my part. If it is any consolation, Quackle's Championship Player does not handle this situation well either. I saw that he had some good bingo tiles remaining and that the only likely spots for them were starting with the C at N4 or down to the E on the O column. With only a two point lead I looked for a way to score and block what I could, and that is how I settled on COQUI, even though I knew it was not a perfect block of the O column. I have no excuse here, because I finished this game with around 14 minutes on my clock. I was lazy when I should have spent the time figuring out what bingos he could have in the remaining pool and blocking better. It is important to recognize that even though I do not have a big lead in score, with the remaining pool his only hope to win is to get a bingo, especially if I get down the W for WAXLIKE. (which I was sure of) For that reason, the best play to win seems to be EQUINE O10 which completely kills both bingo lanes and holds the OW for a massive WAXLIKE play. Quackle has it winning 99.8% of the time. Another blocking play is QUINE 11K, which it thinks wins about 99.4% of the time, but it isn't quite as good because of the possibilities of CONTINENT and BUTTERINE. This was a good lesson, but one that I wished I had learned before the World Championship.
>Russell_Byers: EINORTT O8 TENORIT. +83 477
#note COQUI actually blocked most of his bingos, but both this one and TOURNURE still were possible.
>Dave: BENNUUW E10 WEB +28 463
>Russell_Byers: ER G6 RE. +18 495
>Russell_Byers: (NNUU) +8 503
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