But I honestly missed competing in academic-esque things. This summer, I started not-hate re-reading Word Freak. At the same time, my mom started playing me online with the official Scrabble app. I felt like I was halfway competent at the game and started exploring the possibility of competing. I found out there's a club here in Lexington.
So, I started competing in Scrabble. In a lot of organizational ways, it's easier for me - there's a robust online set-up to play against other people through the Internet Scrabble Club**, plus rather than having to travel a few hours one-way at least one Saturday a month, to play in person all I have to do is drive 20 minutes one-way on a Sunday and be gone a few hours. When you're married and in pharmacy school, the path of least resistance - or at least the path of least time consumption - is pretty appealing.***
My first club meeting was last Sunday. Everyone was very nice. I sit down to play my first game against a nice guy named Matthew Ridout. He goes first and plays INLAYED for a bingo - he played all of his tiles, and in turn got an extra 50 points for his work. On my second turn, I manage to find my own bingo with MENACING. I then proceed to make a bunch of rookie mistakes and lost by about 100.
I play three more games that day and lost them all. I did nearly win one, only falling 278-262 (my opponent cleared her rack first, and that was that), but lose the other 2 by about 150 points each. Which is fine. I'm new, I expect to lose.
I then find out that my first opponent has about a 1700 level rating. Scrabble players are ranked on a ELO system; only about 150-200 people have ratings in the 1700s. I also find out that the first word played against me is fake. I really don't believe this was intentional. And it's okay, because I also played fakes during this game (I hooked my bingo into MENACINGS lol what was I thinking). The fact that I stayed within about 100 points in my first "real" game with someone ranked that high made me pretty happy.
In the ensuing week, I spend a good amount of free time studying words. WORDS WORDS WORDS. I get the 2 letter list memorized, all near 100 of them, going from AA (lava) to ZA (short for pizza). I start working on the 3 letter list in earnest and feel like I'm around 80% good with it. I spent a Saturday afternoon shopping trip with Nicole running the weird 3s that start with the letter K through my head to the point that I feel like they're basically embedded.
I play two games yesterday at club and lose both by huge margins. My first opponent plays three bingos, including one I unsuccessfully tried to challenge off the board (COXITIS - this cost me a turn, and some pride due to its medical nature). He wins 539-261.
In my second game, I play like crap and know it. I don't draw anything good and my attempts to find something worthwhile on my tiles are failures. Meanwhile, after a slow start, my opponent Betty finds two bingos in ELATING and DEFAMES to win 455-205.
I leave at this point a couple hours early, mainly because Nicole and I need to buy a new washing machine, but partly because I kind of want to react like the kid from Insider Out at her first hockey practice in San Francisco. I suck, which in turn sucks. And, I guess, I'm also pretty crappy about sucking. And the worst part is I know that I'm not getting any better from these beatings. I don't know what I could have done in these couple of games to be more competitive, and no one is really going out of their way to make sure I learn it. My first opponent, who was perfectly cordial the entire time, paused for about half a minute after the end of our game and just stares at the board. He then looks at me and drawls out, "The Ashville club has a good list on their website." He then goes on to talk about how I probably could not have actually added a s to the end of SUNNING to make a play during the game (he was right), but it was a move for such a low number of points that it didn't matter (he was also right).
I feel like there's a couple of lessons that quiz bowl could take away from this:
Don't Coddle New Players at Practice, But Have a Strategy to Help Them - Ridout playing me was a good experience, because I got glimpse into what a good player thinks. But what would have been better is if I had played a game with him looking over my shoulder and critiquing my play after every turn, or at least when it mattered - someone shouting in my ear WHY WOULD YOU WASTE YOUR BLANK TILE ON A 20 POINT PLAY YOU DAMN MORON (or possibly something nicer, whatev) would have been a good lesson. I'd have preferred to not get that lesson a week later when I happened to go over the game with a non-local friend who is an accomplished player in her own right.
I fortunately did play my second game against a guy who occasionally stopped the clock and explained a few things to me - what to do if you draw too many tiles, a couple other "mechanistic" things related to the rules of competition.
So what could quiz bowl do? Obviously, overloading every player with the fullest extent of quiz bowl's limited game theory probably is not good, but doing something like intra-squad scrimmages and then commenting when, say, your history player locks out her teammate the science player with a neg on a physics question would probably be beneficial. Also, consideration as to how to introduce players to a game are probably a good idea - obviously, if Eric Xu walks into your college practice, you don't have much to worry about, but if a fresh kid walks in, maybe having them play against Eric Xu as their first ever quiz bowl experience isn't the greatest idea. Of course, quiz bowl practices and Scrabble club have different end games - in quiz bowl, you definitely want your teammates to get better so you can win games. At Scrabble club, it doesn't matter the slightest if a new player succeeds. You aren't necessarily rooting against them, but it doesn't impact your future that much.
Find Out What Your Players' Experience Level Is - When I walked in to my first club, the following statements were true:
- I had not played competitive Scrabble at any level before
- I had done some reading about Scrabble
- I had started studying the 2s and the 3s, the latter only a little bit
- I had found out about the Internet Scrabble Club and had played maybe 3 games
- I had never played any kind of word game regularly before
- I had never used chess timers for anything and had no idea how they worked
What quiz bowl could do is ask a new player about their experience with academic competitions, what they've studied, what they enjoy studying, etc. Even better, actually consider that information before you go too far down the path of immersion. Personalizing their introduction to the game and how they approach it certainly couldn't hurt.
Since I'm running out of steam on this post, a couple other thoughts:
- Have someone responsible for new players and for guiding their improvement.
- Have that someone be someone who attends practices regularly
- Have more than one person be competent at introducing new players to the game - sure, have someone specializing at it would be great, but having everyone have some baseline of competency at it as well would also be great
**serious players don't like various aspects of the official app, most notably that phony words are automatically rejected by the system and the games aren't timed.
***on this note, I have no idea how Eric Mukherjee is able to do all he does do for quiz bowl while also going to med school. Studying is a huge time sink. The fact he's able to do both and have a dating life is preposterous. I feel like I barely have time to shower sometimes. (Just joking, I always make time to shower, because personal hygiene is great!)
