Baton Rouge Tournament: 2nd place

I ended up with a record of 9 wins and 2 losses. Good enough to come up with 2nd place and $75 cash money. Here I am with the envelope.

The glaze in my eyes is not due to the camera flash; they are glazed over with Scrabble® tiles.

Kudos to Annette McCaffery and Rhonda Roederer for running an excellent tournament.

Analysis follows.

Personal Highlights

Game #1: My first play was through a W for a Double/Double, CRAWLED for 52 points. Then I played BOON for 30 and then bingoed with ENTASIA (forming SCRAWLED) for 80. So after 3 turns the score was 162 to 40. It was my opponent's 1st tournament and she was visibly nervous. But it reminded me of my first game of my first tournament, so that when she played JON* for 13 points, I let it go. But I shouldn't have, because the accumulation of point spreads over the tournament acts as a tie-breaker.

Game #2: I had a nice 8 letter bingo on my second turn: ROTATION. At one point I had EEUTZAL on my rack. It's the closest I've ever come to having QUETZAL.

Game #3: I opened with VAC. My opponent extended it to play VACINATED*, which I held but I wasn't completely sure that it needed two Cs so I let it go. Now I know better. Then she bingoed with CHARGERS and NATIONS. At one point I was losing by 119 points. Then I found DELOUSER which hit a TWS while forming WHIGS. Here's a picture of it.

It gave me 89 points, which I think was my high play of the tourney. I ended up winning the game by 20 points. What a comeback!

(I just found out that SLINKER* is no good. I played that one.)

Game #4: A heart-breaking loss. I was up 353 to 326 but had 30 points taken off because I went over my time limit by 2 and a half minutes. I lost by 3 points. Very painful. Throughout the tournament I was routinely in time trouble. I need to learn how to play quicker.

Game #5: My worst game. I scored only 289 points, but still managed to win the game by 7 points. I would like to sweep this one under the rug. Worst play: a parallel play in which one word formed was DA*, which was quickly challenged. I just took the play back without even going to the computer. DA* used to be good back in the day!

Game #6: A tough, gut wrenching game against a very good player. He played some of the best parallel plays I've ever seen. I played STANINE early on (forming the phoney AWARES*, UNAWARES is good). I slowly built up a lead, which he wiped out with the appropriately relevant bingo: STEALING (as in he was stealing the game away from me). The endgame was tooth and claw. He got stuck with the Q while I got stuck with the V. He had added up a score wrong, and so we had to go back over our scores. In the end we discovered my scores were correct, which had me winning by 2 points. A squeaker! On one of his last plays he played KAE for 7 points, just below where he could have played KEN for 12. He'll remember KEN from now on.

Game #7: First game in the morning on Sunday. I had ARSINE+I which I was certain was a bingo due to the phrase poison might kill child if it's driving. But I took a long time and couldn't find it. After the game I figured it out: SENARII. That -II makes it hard to find, but should also make it easy to remember. I did bingo with SPATTERS.

Game #8: I bingoed with STUNNERS which was immediately answered by ROUNDER, but I won: 389-284.

Game #9: My second loss was to someone who had yet to win a game in the tournament. We each had 2 bingoes. MIDDLES and SNORTING for me. NETTLES and FREEING for her. Again under time pressure, I missed an obvious way to block a bingo lane (TAU to form ALIVE), and she played FREEING to take the lead. I also challenged GIP, which I should have known. I played 2 bad phoneys: NELL* (KNELL is good), and OWER* (WORE is a singleton). I had ENNOBLE and didn't play it, thinking that I was getting it confused with IGNOBLE.

Game #10: A no bingo win for me against the eventual tournament winner. I let him get away with JETED*. A defensive game.

Game #11: By coincidence, for my last game I play the same player that I played last at the Lafayette tournament. I lost to her in that one, which took me out of the top 3. I played an early GLOOMIER, which relaxed me. She let me get away with VATTU* (VATU is good). I think she had set a trap for me by playing AI at a spot near a DWS where I would be tempted to add a D on it for AID. But I figured that she had the Q, where she could have hooked the Q on a double letter, forming QAID and some other 5 letter QU- word on a TWS lane. It could have been a killer (90+ points). I played somewhere else, and she played away her Q. I won the game by 66.

I played a lot cleaner than I did in the Lafayette tournament (not as many phoneys). But it seems like I had a lot of ugly wins in this tournament, with entirely too many close games. I mean, they're still wins, but to move up to a higher level I need to win by more comfortable margins. I need to play quicker. A lot of my troubles began in the endgame when I was under time pressure.

Posted by Mike Waugh at December 5, 2004 07:11 PM | TrackBack