up to the Lexington Scrabble® Club
This reports on the season which ran from September, 2009 through August, 2010.
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 24 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-09 through Aug-10 season. In this season, individuals played 5256 games, and so there were 2628 games in all. The average score in all of these games was 386. These numbers were 4762, 2381, and 387 for the previous season. Two seasons ago, the average was 388.
Of the 5256 individual games, 4853 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 4364 and 388 for the previous season.
There were 49 club sessions during the season, and average attendance was 24.6. These statistics indicate that each player plays on the average of about 4.4 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 22.2.
147 different players have attended the club in the past 2 years. During the 2008-2009 season there were 44 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) :
Jere Mead - averaged 425, won 17 of 25 gsmes
Rod MacNeil - 448 40 50
Brad Whitmarsh - 434 43 59
Evans Clinchy - 437 145 195
Alyssa Faria - 439 35 52
Merrill Kaitz - 416 51 84
Seth Lipkin - 415 32 50
Steven Saul - 421 116 163
Richard Buck - 414 130 199
Ben Harrison - 418 138 210
Mike Wolfberg - 419 97 152
Jamie Ryan - 432 53 80
Joel Horn - 409 191 289, scored 118,292 points
Jake Bergmann - 413 84 118
Carl Durdan - 406 38 70
Chris Sinacola - 406 35 51
Bruce Adams - 396 26 47
Mark Fidler - 395 98 153
Barbara Revkin - 419 47 66
Judy Horn - 405 167 277, scored 112,139 points
Bob Becker - 392 73 143
John Cheras - 376 28 51
Larry Katz - 391 94 171
Joev Dubach - 382 12 22
Judy Cole - 377 141 290, scored 109,390 points
Diana Spiller - 380 35 77
Jane Conti - 384 12 22
Tim Lutts - 360 31 69
Linda Giovinazzo - 369 65 144
Also of note:
Trx. Kt. played 276 games and scored 95,722 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:
Sam Rosin, Chris Cree, John Van Pelt, Kate Fukawa-Connelly, Jon Shreve,
Jesse Day, Karl Higby.
Season Average Ratings of the Top 40 Active Players
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1785.57 Jere Mead 1707.47 Bob Becker
1782.35 Rod MacNeil 1705.65 John Cheras
1775.43 Brad Whitmarsh 1694.00 Larry Katz
1774.24 Evans Clinchy 1676.46 Joev Dubach
1766.91 Alyssa Faria 1669.55 Judy Cole
1763.20 Merrill Kaitz 1652.45 Diana Spiller
1762.13 Seth Lipkin 1647.14 Jane Conti
1751.89 Steven Saul 1639.25 Tim Lutts
1743.95 Richard Buck 1638.76 Linda Giovinazzo
1740.01 Ben Harrison 1625.23 Susan Kirchhausen
1739.00 Mike Wolfberg 1622.82 Marshall Finn
1733.81 Jamie Ryan 1600.02 Betsey Wood
1733.67 Joel Horn 1592.69 Trx. Kt.
1733.28 Jake Bergmann 1590.55 Sam Heinrich
1728.29 Carl Durdan 1584.78 Catherine Day
1727.77 Chris Sinacola 1582.97 Quinten Steenhuis
1725.11 Bruce Adams 1579.37 Claudia Cassel
1724.91 Mark Fidler 1578.43 Morris Greenberg
1718.58 Barbara Revkin 1577.71 Wayne Yorra
1717.98 Judy Horn 1541.25 Marla Choslovsky
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 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.
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 689 by Steven Saul. In that game, he made a 248-point play of QUALMIER. Other over-600 games:
Judy Cole played the most games during the season, with 290 games, which is lower than her last season's number. Joel Horn played 289 (just one fewer) games. Five seasons ago Judy Horn played 406 games, which broke the record for the most games in a season.
With 191 wins, Joel Horn had the most wins. Last season he also had the most wins with 164. Judy Horn had 167 wins.
With a total of 118,292 points, Joel Horn scored the most points in this season, Judy Horn scored 112,139 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 Larry Katz's 600, and that was 54.8% above his average. The runner-up was Steven Saul with a 54.0% game.
No 6-bingo games were played in the season. There were several 5-bingo games, but these are not that special in this club anymore.
The highest loss during this season was visitor Chris Cree's 499 (to Steven Saul's 551).
Steven Saul's 248-point QUALMIER was the highest single play of last season.
Mark Fidler played a 5-bingo game which included 4 consecutive bingos starting on his first play of the game. It was interesting that all of his bingos scored between 62 and 65 points and none of them hit a DWS or TWS.
On 5-Nov-09, Larry Katz broke the short-lived club record by getting 136 points for a non-bingo. Here is Joel Horn's description of how the play was made: After Larry played WeBSITE at K3 to take a sizable lead, I played EMeRGE at 4I to set up a couple spots. He played ANI at 3M to try to block. I drew an S, but couldn't use the spot very well, so I played HOP at 2M to set up my S. He then played EPISODIC at O1 for 136 (through PI).
On 11-Feb-10, Joel Horn played a triple-triple of TWEEDIER through WE, which scored 117 points. Then on 15-Jul-10, Joel played wHELPING through HELP, again for 117 points. These are both runner-up scores for a non-bingo in this club.
Steven Saul's QUALMIER for 248 was the fourth-highest in club history.
The lowest tieing score and the lowest score in club history was -10 to -10 by Claudia Cassell and Richard Buck. This was the only time in club history there had been a negative score. The club rating system was unable to handle this in a standard way.
With a club record of 18 games in a club session in which the winner exceeded 500, it is rare that we notice something worth announcing for this category. The most such games in this season were 14, tieing the fourth-highest number in club history.
With a club record of 12 games in a club session in which the loser scored at least 400, it is rare that we notice something worth announcing for this category. The most such games in this season were 10, tieing the third-highest number in club history.
The fourth-highest total score in this club was 1050 in a game on 15-Apr-10 in which Steven Saul defeated visiting player Chris Cree 551-499. Each player made only 10 turns in this phony-free game, four of which were bingos. This also set the runner-up record for a high losing score. This game can be viewed here.
The highest attendance during this season was 41 players. This was the third-highest attendance in club history.
Further details for many of the club records mentioned above can be found on this club's statistics page.
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