Can we hope to get to this level?
The World Scrabble Championship is the most prestigious title in competitive English-language Scrabble. It was held in every odd year from 1991 to 2013. From the 2013 edition, it became an annual event. It has been an open event since 2014. Although the official brand name and organizations of the event have changed over the years, many Scrabble enthusiasts from more than 30 countries compete to become World Scrabble Champion.
The reigning World Scrabble Champion is Nigel Richards from New Zealand, who won his record fifth title at the 2019 Mattel World Scrabble Championships by winning the final in Torquay, United Kingdom.[1][2]
The North America Scrabble Players Association hosts the North American SCRABBLE Championships (at one time the National SCRABBLE Championship).
Who is Nigel Richards and why is he called the GOAT of Scrabble?
Notice his peak rating.
Perhaps one of the best ways to see this is looking at the WSC finals matches over the years.
Who is Joel Sherman?
https://www.cross-tables.com/results.php?p=53&tsel=w
Also one of the greats of the game.
First write down or use your tiles to see the initial racks for Joel and Nigel.
Joel: AENSTUU Nigel: AELNOQT
Now let's watch this match from the 2018 Scrabble Championships.
Note: Nigel has won this tournament 5 times. Joel wins this tournament in 2018.
What did you observe?
Like we talked about in the previous course in this summer semester, both players exchanged tiles on their first turn! This happens often!
Robin and Conrad didn't even notice that Nigel exchanged letters instead of playing QAT. They figured that this was a done deal!
What do we need to do to achieve this Championship level of play? This is the question that we will attempt to answer in this course.
Vocabulary
Know the 2-letter words. Cold. (tools: Anki, Aerolith, our SS)
Learn 7-letter, 8-letter, and 9-letter Bingos (tools: Aerolith, anamonics)
Next learn other word lists like the 3-letter words, letter dumps.
Have good anagramming skills (tools: Aerolith)
Strategy (tools: Quackle, Maven, Videos between top players with commentary by top players)
How do we win a Scrabble game? We score more points than our opponent - not just in this turn - but in the whole game!
The experts seem to be following the strategy in the opening phase of the game of placing a high premium on scoring Bingos. They search for and set up for Bingos.
How do they do this?
Rack balancing: vowels to consonant balance
Bingo stems by concentrating on their leaves
Fishing
So with this in mind what do cross-tables and Quackle have to say about Joel and Nigel's plays?
First level analysis using these tools.
Joel's exchange makes a lot of sense. In the beginning of the game playing a Bingo should be one of the main priorities.
What does Quackle have to say about this play and what does cross-tables have to say about the leave?
So what Joel leaves are good letters to make a Bingo next turn.
Now what about Nigel's play?
In exchanging OQ and not playing QAT Nigel gives up 24 points and leaves Joel the DWS! This is even more scary knowing that in exchanging tiles last turn Joel was fishing for two letters to give him a Bingo!
What does Quackle have to say about this play and what does cross-tables have to say about the leave?
Is this the end of the analysis for the first turns of Nigel and Joel?
Let's watch the video again, but this time through the eyes of César Del Solar. César is the author of Aerolith and Macondo.
So with more information, Nigel exchanges two tiles instead of playing the "obvious" play. I tested Quackle and it doesn't have any inference AI.
Do you understand the concept of 'inference'?
This gives us a peek into how deeply the GOAT and other experts think. Not only are they making the best plays given their rack, but they are also thinking about what their opponent might have!
This is the depth of thinking that the elite players of Scrabble are able to achieve.
Can we get there in six weeks? DQ
Do not publish this. I only made the text larger so it will be easier to read while I give the lesson.