Comments on: James Leong wins 2007 Scrabble Player's Championship

James Leong wins 2007 Scrabble Player's Championship

solid-one-love — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 09:20:02 -0800

Wunderkind James Leong of Vancouver, BC defeated veteran Jerry Lerman of Foster City, California, with a score of 423-377 to win the 2007 Scrabble Player's Championship in Dayton, OH. He takes the top prize of $12,500. Held during years when the bi-annual Nationals don't occur, this is the biggest tournament of the year. The tournament attracted about 450 players from around the world. Think you've got what it takes? You'll probably want to study up.

By: Stynxno

Stynxno — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 09:26:22 -0800

I heard James was juicin'.

By: gomichild

gomichild — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 09:27:16 -0800

That last link is gonna make me Queen of fb scrabble! can hear her opponents quaking in their boots right now

By: solid-one-love

solid-one-love — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 09:27:30 -0800

Unfortunately, the PC07 site is structured to make it difficult to link directly, but if you hunt around you can check out the replays of all the games held at table #1 (where the current #1 player in the top division plays). To give you an idea of what an underdog Leong was, Lerman has actually won more tournaments this year than Leong has entered in his lifetime.

By: Poolio

Poolio — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 09:29:13 -0800

I recommend the documentary Word Wars to anyone interested in competitive Scrabble.

By: gomichild

gomichild — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 09:29:44 -0800

Really your fate rests in the tiles you get....

By: cortex

cortex — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 09:34:51 -0800

Here's a direct link to the final game, re: solid-one-love above; here's the list of all games. Friends don't let friends use HTML frames.

By: Abiezer

Abiezer — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 09:34:52 -0800

N₁I₁C₃E₁ P₃O₁S₁T₁

By: LordSludge

LordSludge — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 09:35:06 -0800

A₁A₁A₁E₁E₁E₁Q₁₀ Crap.

By: unixrat

unixrat — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 09:35:11 -0800

Other than Go, is there a game that cannot be destroyed by rote memorization?

By: CitrusFreak12

CitrusFreak12 — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 09:35:20 -0800

Shit, those last two links are going to make jessamyn unstoppable. And I was thinking of challenging her to a game of email scrabble too...

By: lazaruslong

lazaruslong — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 09:36:35 -0800

It's a worm found in New Guinea.

By: cortex

cortex — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 09:36:54 -0800

(And I love this Leong guy for playing an [oy, up, yup] combo.)

By: DU

DU — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 09:37:00 -0800

I assume from your question that you think chess could be destroyed by rote memorization. Pretty memory requirements there.

By: the painkiller

the painkiller — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 09:41:58 -0800

judging by that final game, scrabble champions must be determined by who can use the most cromulent words.

By: cortex

cortex — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 09:42:29 -0800

Don't be such a binator, the painkiller.

By: the painkiller

the painkiller — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 09:48:52 -0800

hey, don't take that hoise tone with me, cortex!

By: solid-one-love

solid-one-love — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 09:51:19 -0800

I ran this post by the mods yesterday because I was worried that there would be a conflict. Like James, I am a member of the Vancouver Scrabble Club. I've only played him twice (and won once), but he is one of the best players I've ever seen. He's a machine. And he's one of the nicest, most humble guys you'd ever want to meet. The plan is for the club to meet him at the airport with balloons and a big sign and to have cake at club night on Thursday.

By: dismas

dismas — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 09:52:34 -0800

There was also a pretty fascinating book by Stefan Fastis (Word Freak) about the competitive scrabble circuit. It explains in pretty intricate detail the techniques of the hypercompetitive players.

By: Plutor

Plutor — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 10:00:16 -0800

unixrat: "Other than Go, is there a game that cannot be destroyed by rote memorization?" Technically, Go can be destroyed by rote memorization. It's just that the game state complexity and tree are many orders of magnitude more complex than those of more "destroyable" games such as checkers. Wikipedia has an article on game complexity that seems to indicate that some games like Connect6 and Backgammon are roughly as complex in terms of analyzability. It's also a bit unfair to imply that Scrabble is simply a matter of memorizing the dictionary. There is strategy to it. Good players have a good idea what pieces their opponents have, especially towards the end of the game, and play words in order to block them. You also want to open up the bonus corners, but it's just as important to do it in such a way that your opponent can't capitalize on them. In the same sense, it isn't always in your best interest to play your best-possible word on a given turn, given that your next turn you may be able to place a bingo on a double-word-score or some such. I'm not a Scrabble pro by any stretch of the imagination. But it's quite easy to see that at the highest levels, there's certainly a bit of chess look-ahead strategy as well as some blackjack playing-the-odds strategy, not just a wordlist grep.

By: CrunchyFrog

CrunchyFrog — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 10:00:29 -0800

Check out this video about Scrabble as a religion (Earlier).

By: lalochezia

lalochezia — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 10:03:24 -0800

If you want to play online: Look at scrabulous for the beginnings of competetive scrabble. >90%of players aren't tournament worthy, but once you gt to the top 10% you can begin to see real scrabble being played. isc.ro is where the real players hang out. World champions etc. Nice links btw. I'm recovering from a scrabble addiction but may have a relapse soon after seeing all those words. VIGGIA grrrr new words list mumble mumble shouldnt'tve challenged brr grr ffftt pzzzd

By: Pollomacho

Pollomacho — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 10:07:17 -0800

James Leong of Vancouver, BC Some body explain how some goddamn foreigner came over here and took OUR goddamn National championship? And don't gimme no crap about no National Hockey League neither!

By: solid-one-love

solid-one-love — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 10:16:09 -0800

I'm not a Scrabble pro by any stretch of the imagination. But it's quite easy to see that at the highest levels, there's certainly a bit of chess look-ahead strategy as well as some blackjack playing-the-odds strategy, not just a wordlist grep. Totally. An amateur with an anagram program who is therefore able to maximize his wordlist will rarely be able to hold his own against an expert strategist who doesn't necessarily know all the words. Rack balance, draw probability, when to keep an open board or a closed board ("the widow's game"); these are strategies that rote memorization won't help with. Even the best computer Scrabble programs have difficulty against the experts. Like in poker, humans keep beating the computers in competitions. Pollo: it wasn't the Nationals. And even if it was, an American won the Canadian Nationals in 2000.

By: DevilsAdvocate

DevilsAdvocate — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 10:34:10 -0800

Other than Go, is there a game that cannot be destroyed by rote memorization? "Destroyed?" To play chess at the highest levels requires memorization, in addition to many other skills. To play Scrabble at the highest levels requires memorization, in addition to many other skills. To play Go at the highest levels requires memorization, in addition to many other skills. I don't see how any of these games are "destroyed" by having a memorization component at the highest levels of play. Yes, a casual game between amateurs in any of these may involve little or no memorization. So what? Does it surprise you that experts use skills in a game that casual players do not? Is the game "destroyed" because a game between experts is qualitatively different than a game between amateurs?

By: Pollomacho

Pollomacho — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 10:43:13 -0800

And even if it was, an American won the Canadian Nationals in 2000. Cry me a river. It's just like those foreigners, always bitchin' about 'mericans kickin their ass!

By: cortex

cortex — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 10:49:41 -0800

Also, actually solving Scrabble—solving solving, like Checkers was—isn't possible. With hidden tiles per-player, it's not a game of perfect information. It can be dealt with probabilistically, just as poker can be, but that's a compromise. Bluff changes everything. And aside from that aspect, the branching remains enormous—you have to calculate every possible set of opponent plays at each turn based on unrevealed tiles, and calc a new tree on each one of those, and so on. It's explosive. In that sense, Scrabble is probably closer to Go than it is to Checkers or even Chess.

By: rollbiz

rollbiz — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 11:03:59 -0800

Think you've got what it takes? You'll probably want to study up. Or, you could just get lucky.

By: troybob

troybob — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 11:47:57 -0800

Scrabble seems like one of those things (like spelling bees and such) that are kinda fun when you're sitting around with a group of friends (or in 3rd grade, for spelling bees), but that become ridiculous when taken this seriously. The first time a Scrabble board is tainted with some fucked-up word like 'QAT', the rest of it pretty much sucks.

By: Plutor

Plutor — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 12:23:39 -0800

troybob, you know what I hate more than people who play something intelligent and do it better than me? People who play something intelligent and get angry when I do it better than them.

By: cortex

cortex — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 12:25:50 -0800

I don't know why I didn't just post his earlier, but regarding the prior direct links, this root page will get you all over the place, frames-free.

By: Hat Maui

Hat Maui — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 12:29:45 -0800

i think the problem that some people have, myself included, is that scrabble is thought of as a "word" game in the english language, and yet some of the best players don't even speak the language. so really, given that that's possible, it's much more akin to a strategy game like chess. but in people's minds, it occupies the word game space, and so they look upon the way it's played by non-english speakers as somehow unfair, or not right. but no one would object to a non-english speaker being successful at chess.

By: troybob

troybob — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 13:08:27 -0800

Who's talking anger? It's simply that to me, once you start studying for a game, it's not a game anymore. It's kinda like how I think a good athlete is someone who happens to be good at athletics, not someone who dedicates a lifetime to become one. There's something about recreation that loses is recreationality when it becomes more than just a bit of fun. I'm no hater myself. Pretty much everybody does anything better than me, and I'm cool with that.

By: cortex

cortex — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 13:32:12 -0800

It's an interesting point, though, Hat Maui. Scrabble is a word game in a more literal sense than the term gets used: it's a game at the word level. I think the common (American?) usage really means "language game"—games that depend at some level or another on written or spoken language as playing pieces. But Scrabble isn't really unique in it's word-level focus, at that. Parlor games like GHOST can be played disfluently—it's all vocab, no grammar—and a spelling bee is itself a sort of high-level all-and-nothing vocabulary game. Compare that to something like Charades or a crossword puzzle, where language context is so vital, the words no use without a structure of higher-level communication to give them meaning. I think the idea of language as the essential metagame, the game that everyone can and does play in a dozen different ways every day, may indeed drive some provocation when word-based competitions meet with cultural divides. But then, it's nerd-town as it is, and that's probably as much a problem as anything with getting folks het up. For every anti-jock knee-jerk there's an anti-nerd to match, etc.

By: Tube

Tube — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 16:32:01 -0800

My qat is tainted.

By: rob511

rob511 — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 17:02:45 -0800

AX ME IF MY MA IS AS BI AS ME. . . . GO ON, DO IT. UM, NO. OX. HO.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 17:24:08 -0800

There was also a pretty fascinating book by Stefan Fastis (Word Freak) about the competitive scrabble circuit. It certainly made me never want to play competitive scrabble. Quite a cast of "characters" in that book.

By: solid-one-love

solid-one-love — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 18:07:07 -0800

For the sake of writing a book with interesting characters, Fastis generally picked the outliers. Most competitive Scrabble players are pretty normal, even at the top end.

By: srboisvert

srboisvert — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 07:09:41 -0800

Some body explain how some goddamn foreigner came over here and took OUR goddamn National championship? The letter "u" worked in his favour.