First game, pretty good player (Will)...
He opens by exchanging, fairly nondescript first few turns. 5th turn he has cHANGES, and we're even at 114... this looks good for me, I haven't played anything particularly valuable, and he's burned an S and a blank just to maintain an even score. I've drawn the remaining blank, and the Q (no U of course)... so 7th turn is REQuITE hooked with the U as BEDu. Unfortunately, this set up an S or D hook to the TWS lane at the bottom. He comes back with ZARFS for 71. After the game he must have spent 15 minutes telling anyone who'd listen what a wonderful play this was. Unfortunately his wonderfulness seems limited to turns where he's holding premium tiles and has blatantly obvious hooks available.
On his 10th and 12th turns, he exchanged (that's 3 exchanges for him). I wasn't seeing any S's, there were 2 unaccounted for, other than the 2 he'd already played. The only S bingo hook was the LID/SLID hook that required an S in 6th position... which he seemed to be carefully leaving alone. It was difficult to block... needed a word ending in -UL or -OL to eliminate it... but the lovely VIO combo presented itself, and I was only too happy to throw VIOL there. My last pick grabbed an S... he'd given up on bingoing and took the only nice S play for 27 or something. Ended 392-359 for me.
Game 2, pretty lousy player =)
Couldn't bingo till 10th turn (GORIEST), and after 10 it was 263-91. She exchanged 4 times. Ended 503 to 268.
She actually did bingo... REfINES, for 64. It was towards the end of the game and she had second thoughts about playing it because it "set up the triple". I pointed out she was well over 200 behind... that the most dangerous threats to the triple were ALREADY on the board... and how else is she going to get anywhere near a 60 point play? Why are people so scared sh*tless about setting up a lousy triple word???
3rd game, Mr. Erratic, Richard. His first turn... exchange, after I open with COO. I draw nicely and stick OUtLINES. With REFRIED on his rack, he misses INFERRED for 82, and takes the double double FIELDER, 44. He got INTERNAL on turn 5 for 60. 8th turn, I play AVERRING thru the N. After 10 I'm up 369-193... he's exchanged on 4 of those 10 turns... and does AGAIN on his 11th.
Ends 518-285.
4th game... vs good player, Harold. One of the few guys I occasionally learn words from at the club.
I open with the rather unremarkable BUM for 14. He takes ANY/BY for 21. I'm holding WA?TZER, and I try to convince myself WANY is good. Sometimes even 4's take on strangeness when you look at them. Maybe it wasn't good, and I was only THINKING it was good because I was confusing it with WALY? Of course, I could certainly hook the Z onto ANY, but that would have WALTZER run right up to a DWS... and if he had S, he has 38 points sitting there plus whatever his word was. I finally shook my head, told myself that certainly WANY was good, stuck WALTZER for 98. Harold held... wondered chiefly about WALTZER... I knew 100% it was good because of an earlier discussion in this very forum!! He challenged. When it was ruled legit, he said, "Challenge WANY too." Now I KNOW you can't do that... when he was asked what he was challenging, he pointed to WALTZER and said WALTZER. I was going to object IF the challenge on WANY was successful... but WANY's good anyway. More incredibly, on the turn he challenged, he had DURATION on the bottom triple through the R of WALTZER!!
Anyway... picking up from WALTZER, I grabbed SERATE?. I usually can't get that good a rack after 8 turns of balancing. Down goes the rather obvious SERRATEd for 113. 8th turn I'm holding an S and an X... there's little opportunity for the use of either... so I play PILE onto an E for 12, setting up a potential XI play, as well as a fairly obscure S hook (SPILE). He dumps ROUE hooking as PE, messing up the S hook a little but allowing me GOX hooked as OPE/XI for 55. He plays off GOX, setting up top center triple... which gives me SWIM/MAG/something for 50 points.
After 10 turns it's 421-174. And now, holding ACIONRT, I stare at it till clock shows 4 minutes left, but I cannot for the life of me see CAROTIN. Then again, there's not a lot of motivation, I'm up by 250. I play CAR(T)ON for 28. He dumps a J for 29, I'm holding CHILORS. This looks naggingly like another bingo rack, and I somewhat reluctantly try ORCHILS, thinking pessimistically that surely I'm confusing this with ARCHILS. He challenges, and the play stays. The triple that CARTON opened earlier is now available for AYE (31).
Final was 613-256. A new personal club high score for me, and one point short of the official club high game >=\
But... the four game average of 506 DID set a new club record. =)
Yes yes I know, if my silly opponents didn't exchange or challenge as often I wouldn't get close to those sorts of scores.
I can't believe I missed CAROTIN tho!! Maybe I'm reviewing too many 8's.