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Lexington Scrabble® Club 2010-2011 Season

This reports on the season which ran from September, 2010 through August, 2011.

The Lexington, Massachusetts Scrabble® Club #108 has been running continuously since it was started by Edie Berman and Muriel Sands in January, 1980. We meet nearly every Thursday night of the year in a comfy basement meeting room of the First Parish Church, situated on Lexington Green behind the Lexington Minuteman Statue. Judy Horn has been directing this club for about 25 years. Judy Cole serves as associate director. Mike Wolfberg joined the club within its first month of existence, and he took on the role of club statistician within the first year. The club has operated with its own rating system, designed primarily by Alan Frank, since early 1981. Ratings are based on the percentage of points which each of the players scores in each game. The club web site includes a detailed description of this system.

This is a report of the highlights of this club's Sep-10 through Aug-11 season. In this season, individuals played 5308 games, and so there were 2654 games in all. The average score in all of these games was 388. These numbers were 5256, 2628, and 386 for the previous season. Two seasons ago, the average was 387.

Of the 5308 individual games, 4882 were played by an "active player". We define an active player as someone who played at least 20 games in the season. The average score of the active players was 387 for the season. These numbers were 4853 and 387 for the previous season.

There were 50 club sessions during the season, and average attendance was 22.8. These statistics indicate that each player plays on the average of about 4.6 games per session. We realize this is higher than in many other clubs, and so some of this club's achievements in one season should be understood in this context. The average attendance in the previous season was 24.6.

147 different players have attended the club in the past 2 years. During the 2010-2011 season there were 42 active players, namely those who played at least 20 games, and here are the top 30, ordered by decreasing club average rating (not shown here, but these are in the other table below) :

Sinna Vijayakumar - averaged 433, won  13 of  20 games
Evans Clinchy     - averaged 459, won 148 of 185 games
Seth Lipkin       - averaged 420, won  32 of  42 games
Richard Buck      - averaged 430, won 128 of 180 games
Steven Saul       - averaged 416, won 109 of 159 games
Jamie Ryan        - averaged 433, won  81 of 131 games
Mike Wolfberg     - averaged 423, won 108 of 156 games
Merrill Kaitz     - averaged 412, won  58 of  93 games
Joel Horn         - averaged 413, won 204 of 301 games, scored 124,230 points
John Cheras       - averaged 409, won  32 of  45 games
Barbara Revkin    - averaged 404, won  16 of  26 games
Ben Harrison      - averaged 414, won 173 of 277 games, scored 114,803 points
Jake Bergmann     - averaged 406, won  89 of 143 games
Mark Fidler       - averaged 400, won  97 of 146 games
Chris Sinacola    - averaged 422, won  40 of  60 games
Carl Durdan       - averaged 402, won  34 of  55 games
Bob Becker        - averaged 403, won  74 of 125 games
Judy Horn         - averaged 399, won 158 of 292 games, scored 116,430 points
Ben Greenwood     - averaged 398, won  19 of  36 games
Rebecca Lambert   - averaged 414, won  14 of  23 games
Larry Katz        - averaged 388, won  87 of 182 games
Susan Kirchhausen - averaged 377, won  26 of  42 games
Judy Cole         - averaged 381, won 133 of 266 games, scored 101,404 points
Diana Spiller     - averaged 376, won  15 of  38 games
Chris Kulig       - averaged 372, won  40 of  96 games
Carol McDonald    - averaged 375, won  30 of  62 games
Linda Giovinazzo  - averaged 361, won  49 of 132 games
Tim Lutts         - averaged 362, won  19 of  58 games
Morris Greenberg  - averaged 398, won  21 of  35 games
Trx. Kt.          - averaged 352, won  94 of 238 games

These high-rated players attended our club during the season, but failed to
play the  minimum of twenty games to qualify to be considered as active:
Donna Balkan, Mic Barron, Ross Brown, Jane Conti, Jesse Day, Joev Dubach,
Alyssa Faria, Marshall Finn, Kate Fukawa-Connelly, Aaron P. Green,
Cornelia Guest, Sam Heinrich, Jamie Jamieson, Nicole Kazarian, Cecilia Le,
Scott Leifer, Rod MacNeil, Joey Mallick, Jere Mead, Jack Niles,
Bradley Robbins, Jon Shreve, Thomas Stumpf, Iam Weinstein.


           Season Average Ratings of the Top 40 Active Players
           ---------------------------------------------------
   1815.41    Sinna Vijayakumar        1682.92    Larry Katz
   1797.71    Evans Clinchy            1681.48    Susan Kirchhausen
   1766.70    Seth Lipkin              1674.44    Judy Cole
   1766.16    Richard Buck             1671.37    Diana Spiller
   1756.04    Steven Saul              1660.69    Chris Kulig
   1751.38    Jamie Ryan               1644.02    Carol McDonald
   1750.53    Mike Wolfberg            1631.65    Linda Giovinazzo
   1743.45    Merrill Kaitz            1630.23    Tim Lutts
   1739.97    Joel Horn                1619.03    Morris Greenberg
   1737.72    John Cheras              1618.59    Trx. Kt.
   1735.16    Barbara Revkin           1616.07    Betsey Wood
   1734.97    Ben Harrison             1589.58    Wayne Yorra
   1734.76    Jake Bergmann            1589.06    Catherine Day
   1729.16    Mark Fidler              1582.09    Claudia Cassel
   1729.07    Chris Sinacola           1579.26    Marvin Kraus
   1725.86    Carl Durdan              1556.86    Marla Choslovsky
   1720.67    Bob Becker               1556.71    Norma Marshall
   1703.21    Judy Horn                1511.19    Steven Gonzales
   1698.39    Ben Greenwood            1504.10    Marc Goldstein
   1688.70    Rebecca Lambert          1499.42    Megan McMahon

There are many notable achievements this season:

Club Web Site

The club's web site continues to be at http://wolfberg.net/scrabble/lexington, and it is also reachable using the shorter http://LSC.wolfberg.net. You can also click on the "Clubs" box at http://ScrabbleClub.com to get there.

NASPA ratings

We usually have about 4-8 players in the top 100 rated tournament players in North America, based on the North American Scrabble® Players Association (NASPA) ratings. NASPA took over the from the National Scrabble® Association (NSA) in July, 2009. Our club roster lists NASPA ratings of active players; these are updated a few times each year.

ISC Players

Several of our club members are active at the web-based Internet Scrabble® Club. Our club roster includes ISC handles for many of these folks.

Challenges and Postmortems

The club has continued to use the WHAT program on one or two laptop computers available to all players at the club. Players tend to handle their own challenges using the program, and they often check on racks, etc. after a game is completed to see what was possible. Since WHAT can provide definitions, this is an efficient method of doing postmortems.

High Games

The highest game score in a club session during this season was 707 by Richard Buck. This was Richard's highest-scoring game to date. Richard played two triple-triples in the game: DATELESS for 140 and REVOLUTe for 149. He played two other bingos: AGENiZE for 92 and STAINER for 85. The game is detailed here.

Other games above 600 were: Richard Buck 700, Ben Harrison 680, three games by Evans Clinchy, two games by Joel Horn, a second game by Ben Harrison, and single games by Bob Becker, Chris Sinacola, and Jamie Ryan.

Most Games

Joel Horn played the most games during the season, with 301 games, which is 12 higher than his previous season's number. Judy Horn played 292 games. Six seasons ago Judy Horn played 406 games, which broke the record for the most games in a season.

Most Wins

With 204 wins, Joel Horn had the most wins, and the runner-up was 173 wins by Ben Harrison. In the previous season, Joel also had the most wins with 191.

Most Points

With a total of 124,230 points, Joel Horn scored the most points in this season, up from 118,292 in the previous season. Judy Horn scored 116,430 points.

Highest Percentage Above Average

In order to qualify for the highest percentage above average accolade, you must have already played at least 20 games in the season. The highest such game was Wayne Yorra's 584, and that was 73.6% above his average. The runner-up was Wayne's 605 with a percentage of 73.0%. This was played when Wayne's average was higher by 14 points. Two runners-up are Richard Buck with 63.9% and Marvin Kraus with 63.8%.

Many Bingos by One Player

There were two 6-bingo games played in the season. Richard's 700 game was one of these, and Joel Horn's 668 was the other.

High Losing Score

The highest loss during this season was visitor Jon Shreve's 484 (to Rebecca Lambert's 502).

High Bingo

Norma Marshall's 266-point QUICKEST was the highest single play of last season. The runner-up was Wayne Yorra's 175-point VERTICAL, which was pla vertically-played triple-triple.

High Tie

Near the season's end Merrill Kaitz and Richard Buck tied with 447-447.

High Non-Bingo

In October, 2010, Jamie made a 144-point non-bingo, which became the club's highest over its history. In the previous season, Larry Katz broke the short-lived club record by getting 136 points for a non-bingo.

Low Tie

For the second time in club history, there was a game in June in which the scores were negative. By starting with six consecutive plays of zero points, Richard Buck and Chris Kulig tied -7 to -7.

Newsy Item

In May, Linda Giovinazzo played ISATINE twice in the same game and then again in her next game.

High Session Attendance

The highest attendance during this season was 36 players on 12-May-11. One contributing reason for the unusually high attendance is Mark Fidler's Scrabble® students had been attending the club as part of their course activities.

More Details

Further details for many of the club records mentioned above can be found on this club's statistics page.


back to the top of this page This page, maintained by Mike Wolfberg, was last updated on January 31, 2014.