Cross-Tables, Wow!

I got a call from the director of the New Orleans Scrabble Tourney coming up this weekend. She asked if my Scrabble membership was up to date, because she saw that on cross-tables, I had expired. I assured her that I just received my new Scrabble card and newsletter just a couple days before.

So I decided to check out the cross-tables website. Holy moly! It's got everything that any Scrabble obsessed tournament player would love. Graphs, stats, hyperlinked everything. It has graphs of everybody's ratings: who's moving up, who's staying put, etc. It has links to all the tournaments. It has pictures of everone who has official pictures (I don't, yet).

For the New Orleans tournament, it shows who is signed up and what the division rankings are like. Currently, I'm the second ranked in the 3rd division. That bodes well for me. Since I haven't played a tournament in a year, my ranking hasn't had a chance to adjust to my true strength. So my true strength is likely higher than my rating. Therefore I have a good chance to win some cash.

On the other hand, part of me would like to play up a division so that I could play with some higher skilled players. Not only would I learn a lot, my rating would jump if I were able to steal some games from the higher rated players.

Although cross-tables is not officially sanctioned by the NSA, as far as I know, it shows how the Internet and a little bit of effort by the tournament directors can make the whole experience more enjoyable. With this and all the new software available, it truly is a golden age among Scrabble players. Anyone who thinks that the Internet will destroy tournament Scrabble (think ISC) needs to look at this site and see that it might actually help the scene after all.