up to the Lexington Scrabble® Club
This reports on the season which ran from September, 2007 through August, 2008.
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 23 years. Ellen Miller 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 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-07 through Aug-08 season. In this season, individuals played 5806 games, and so there were 2903 games in all. The average score in all of these games was 388. These numbers were 7504, 3752, and 386 for the previous season. Three seasons ago the club average was 13 points less. It is likely the new words in the OWL2 contributed to the increases in the average.
Of the 5806 individual games, 5439 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 388 for the season. These numbers were 7112 and 385 for the previous season.
Average attendance thoughout the season was 24.8, and with 51 sessions. 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 30.
156 different players have attended the club in the past 2 years. During the 2007-2008 season there were 49 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) :
Joey Mallick - averaged 446, won 20 of 22 games Seth Lipkin - 429 77 99 Alyssa Faria - 426 75 102 Cecilia Le - 428 32 44 Kate Fukawa-Connelly - 424 76 92 Rod MacNeil - 430 73 116 Richard Buck - 417 137 198 Steven Saul - 414 95 148 Brad Whitmarsh - 418 52 77 Jamie Ryan - 438 140 208 Ben Harrison - 415 172 262, scoring 108,615 points Bruce Adams - 412 98 138 Joel Horn - 417 182 269, scoring 112,395 points Mike Wolfberg - 419 123 193 Evans Clinchy - 414 38 57 Mark Fidler - 400 96 150 Leigh Bernstein - 400 53 83 Carl Durdan - 403 23 40 Elaine Patterson - 389 42 81 Bob Becker - 393 79 164 Jake Bergmann - 394 46 97 John Cheras - 383 50 77 Joev Dubach - 380 25 49 Ben Greenwood - 397 12 22 Barbara Revkin - 384 41 76 Judy Horn - 389 143 300, scoring 116,679 points Gary Reid - 392 11 28 Ellen Miller - 376 81 163 Chris Sinacola - 379 33 66 Larry Katz - 377 88 187 Also of note: Trx. Kt. played 354 games and scored 119,718 points. Judy Cole played 283 games and scored 102,032 points. 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: Ian Weinstein, Jon Shreve, John O'Laughlin, Jere Mead, Jesse Day, Merrill Kaitz, Samantha Southard, Rich Reiben, Jack Eichenbaum, Steve Polatnick, Doug Brockmeier. Season Average Ratings of the Top 46 Players who Played at Least 20 Games ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1852.55 Joey Mallick 1688.64 Ben Greenwood 1786.04 Seth Lipkin 1686.66 Barbara Revkin 1780.31 Alyssa Faria 1682.17 Judy Horn 1778.85 Cecilia Le 1671.76 Gary Reid 1765.29 Kate Fukawa-Connelly 1667.28 Ellen Miller 1761.81 Rod MacNeil 1662.90 Chris Sinacola 1755.94 Richard Buck 1661.72 Larry Katz 1754.42 Steven Saul 1652.23 David Root 1750.75 Brad Whitmarsh 1648.12 Diana Spiller 1748.31 Jamie Ryan 1632.85 Tim Lutts 1747.41 Ben Harrison 1632.31 Judy Cole 1747.35 Bruce Adams 1631.06 Betsey Wood 1746.93 Joel Horn 1630.73 Marshall Finn 1740.46 Mike Wolfberg 1621.24 Linda Giovinazzo 1738.23 Evans Clinchy 1615.14 Laurie McConnell 1735.73 Mark Fidler 1604.99 Rob Wilstein 1726.69 Leigh Bernstein 1589.48 Wayne Yorra 1725.23 Carl Durdan 1582.32 Trx. Kt. 1712.52 Elaine Patterson 1562.38 Catherine Day 1707.18 Bob Becker 1558.63 Aaron Green 1704.77 Jake Bergmann 1545.71 Hilda Siegel 1704.06 John Cheras 1518.96 Norma Marshall 1692.21 Joev Dubach 1504.67 Scott Richmond
There are many notable achievements this season:
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.
We usually have about 6-10 players in the top 100 rated tournament players in North America, based on the National Scrabble® Association (NSA) ratings. Our club roster lists NSA ratings of active players; these are updated a few times each year.
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.
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.
The highest game score in a club session during this season was 655 by Richard Buck. He played five bingso in that game. Other over-600 games: Mark Fidler 637, Ben Harrison 622, Bob Becker 606.
Trx. Kt. played the most games during the season, with 354 games, which is lower than her last season's number. Three seasons ago she played 406 games, which broke the record for the most games in a season. Judy Horn played 300 games during the season.
With 182 wins, Joel Horn had the most wins. Ben Harrison had 172 wins.
With a total of 119,718 points, Trx. Kt. scored the most points in this season, Judy Horn scored 116,679 points.
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 Mark Fidler's 637, and that was 60.2% above his average. The runner-up was Bob Becker with a 53.9% game.
These players made 5-bingos in games last season: Richard Buck, Ben Harrison, Mark Fidler, Jamie Ryan, Joel Horn. Judy Horn and Judy Cole played a game in which five bingos were played at the game start and then no others were played.
The highest loss during this season was Steven Saul's 473 (to Alyssa Faria's 474).
There were no very high-scoring bingos played, and it may be that Steven Saul's 194-point gLAZIEST was the highest single play of last season.
Bruce Adams tied the club record (which was set in 2001) for the highest-scoring non-bingo in club history with a 109-point play. Bruce played ZIBET at 14J, hooking the Z to an FE at J12; there was also an O at 13K.
On 27-Sep-07, with 29 players in attendance, there were 15 games in which the winner exceeded 500.
The highest number of high losses was 10 on 17-Apr-08, when club attendance was 32.
It may be that this game had the highest total of the season: Rod MacNeil defeated Judy Horn 559-419, and so their total was 978 points.
The highest attendance during this season was 32 players on the final club session of the season.
On 13-Mar-08, Joel Horn made a 6-way overlap. On the board positioned vertically was TELERAN, and ERASION was next to it starting after the R in TELERAN. Joel played SEDARIM vertically to the left of TELERAN starting one row higher.
On 22-May-08, Mike Wolfberg made a 6-way overlap. PAGODA was on the board at position 3B, and he played NOTaTES at position 2A above it.
About twenty of our regular club players attended the 2008 NSC in Orlando, FL in July, 2008. Here are the most significant accomplishments. In 103-player Division 1: Joey Mallick was 4th. In 134-player Division 2: Ben Harrison was 4th, Brad Whitmarsh was 8th, and Joel Horn was 18th In 133-player Division 3: Jake Bergmann was 18th.
Further details for many of the club records mentioned above can be found on this club's statistics page.
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