up to the Lexington Scrabble® Club
This reports on the season which ran from September, 2014 through August, 2015.
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 28 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 September 2014 through August 2015 Season. In this season, individuals played 2874 games, and so there were 1437 games in all. The average score in all of these games was 390. These numbers were 3302, 1651, and 387 for the previous season. Two seasons ago, the average was 385.
Of the 2874 individual games, 2660 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 3302, 3038, and 383 for the previous season.
There were 49 club sessions during the season, and average attendance was 15.5, down about 1.5 from the previous season. These statistics indicate that each player played on the average of about 3.8 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.
92 different players have attended the club in the past 2 years. This is down from 105 one year ago and 111 players two years ago. During the 2014-2015 Season there were 28 (down from 34 and 40 the two previous seasons) active players, namely those who played at least 20 games, and here are the top 24, ordered by decreasing club average rating (not shown here, but these are in the other table below) :
Jake Bergmann - averaged 413, won 55 of 80 games
Steven Saul - averaged 413, won 88 of 129 games
Mike Wolfberg - averaged 419, won 127 of 183 games, scored 76,587 points
Jamie Ryan - averaged 425, won 15 of 21 games
Joel Horn - averaged 417, won 157 of 244 games, scored 101,649 points
Richard Buck - averaged 418, won 46 of 70 games
Mark Fidler - averaged 399, won 89 of 132 games
Bob Becker - averaged 410, won 31 of 53 games
Chris Kulig - averaged 396, won 86 of 151 games
Wes Eddings - averaged 405, won 19 of 36 games
Judy Horn - averaged 405, won 141 of 227 games, scored 91,880 points
Barbara Revkin - averaged 403, won 24 of 38 games
Carol McDonald - averaged 390, won 76 of 171 games
Don Finkey - averaged 405, won 24 of 42 games
Betsey Wood - averaged 370, won 26 of 62 games
Diana Spiller - averaged 378, won 42 of 95 games
Marvin Kraus - averaged 374, won 62 of 166 games
Tim Lutts - averaged 374, won 13 of 28 games
Wayne Yorra - averaged 370, won 43 of 100 games
Linda Giovinazzo - averaged 369, won 45 of 98 games
Claudia Cassel - averaged 346, won 25 of 108 games
Emmanuel Aronie - averaged 351, won 9 of 24 games
Marc Goldstein - averaged 349, won 11 of 50 games
James Krycka - averaged 353, won 18 of 63 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:
Scott Appel, Susan Blanchard, Lisa Brown, John Cheras, Judy Cole,
Mohan Chunkath (Collins games only), Marshall Finn, Marty Gold,
Morris Greenberg, Chris Guilbert, Karl Higby, Merrill Kaitz,
Susan Kirchausen, Leah Kruley, Rebecca Lambert, Seth Lipkin, Joey Mallick,
Jere Mead, Cheryl Melvin, Justin Morris, Rob Rosenthal, Lilla Sinanan,
Mike Thelin, Chris Sinacola, Brad Whitmarsh.
Season Average Ratings of the Top 24 Active Players
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1745.42 Jake Bergmann 1675.88 Carol McDonald
1743.81 Steven Saul 1669.79 Don Finkey
1739.76 Mike Wolfberg 1661.46 Betsey Wood
1735.62 Jamie Ryan 1656.56 Diana Spiller
1734.82 Joel Horn 1653.88 Marvin Kraus
1730.66 Richard Buck 1637.86 Tim Lutts
1730.31 Mark Fidler 1635.46 Wayne Yorra
1720.34 Bob Becker 1630.44 Linda Giovinazzo
1714.24 Chris Kulig 1620.76 Claudia Cassel
1710.76 Wes Eddings 1615.55 Emmanuel Aronie
1709.23 Judy Horn 1605.59 Marc Goldstein
1704.19 Barbara Revkin 1595.58 James Krycka
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.
This club started keeping statistics for games played using the Collins lexicon for the 2011-2012 season. A Collins-specific weekly stats report is now issued by email and posted on the club web site even when there were no Collins games played. The weekly news includes challenged and considered words in OWL2/OWL3 games and Collins games (if any), and the acceptable words shown are based on the CSW2012 Lexicon. Collins games were played on 36 evenings during the season and on 26 evenings during the previous season.
In this season individuals played 146 Collins games, and so there were 73 such games in all. The average score in all of these games was 425. These numbers in the previous season were: 116, 58, 427.
These are the average ratings of the players who played at least 20 Collins games in the 2014-2015 Season:
1768.96 Chris Sinacola 1766.98 Jake Bergmann 1766.92 Richard Buck
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 669 by Joel Horn on 2-Oct-14. Other games above 599 were: Richard Buck 656, Brad Whitmarsh 605, Carol McDonald 602.
Joel Horn played 244 games, which is 16 lower than his previous season's number. Judy Horn played the second-most games during the season, with 227 games, which is 14 lower than her previous season's number. Ten seasons ago Judy Horn played 406 games, which broke the record for the most games in a season.
With 157 wins, Joel Horn had the most wins, and the runner-up was 141 wins by Judy Horn. In the previous season, Joel also had the most wins with 179.
With a total of 101,649 points, Joel Horn scored the most points in this season, down from 107,566 in the previous season. Judy Horn scored 91,880 points. In the previous season Judy scored 96,726 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 Richard Buck's 656, and that was 61.3% above his average. Runners up were Carol McDonald with 57.9% and Marvin Kraus with 55.8%.
There was a 5-bingo game played in this season by Judy Horn. It is possible there were others which were not reported.
The highest loss during this season was Joel Horn's 499 (to Jamie Ryan's 501). This tied the club's record for the second-highest losing score set by Visitor Chris Cree. The club record is just one higher at 500, and it was set by Joel. In second place for a high losing score during the season was Mark Fidler's 482 loss.
The highest total score for the current season was 1039 in a game between Richard Buck and Judy Horn.
The second-highest total score for the current season was 1000, achieved in the 501-499 game described above with the highest losing score. The game can be viewed here.
Joel Horn scored 185 for PATCHIER.
Wes Eddings played the runner-up high bingo scoring 176 with SOuTHERN.
The likely high non-bingo of the season was Mark Fidler's 106-point ZOOID.
There were no noted long words played during the season.
Carol McDonald and Chris Kulig tied with 443-443, and this became the 6th-highest tie in club history.
Both Chris Kulig and Joel Horn made 6-way overlap plays during the season.
Marvin Krauss opened a game with 4 consecutive bingos.
Tim Lutts opened a game with 3 consecutive bingos.
Chris Kulig opened two games on the same day with 3 consecutive bingos.
In a game between Steven Saul and Mike Wolfberg each player made 4 bingos.
In determining pairings on 25-Jun-15, 14 players drew tiles from the club's "draw bag".
The highest attendance during this season was 22 players on each of these three dates: 11-Sep-14, 12-Mar-15, and 16-Apr-15.
Further details for many of the club records mentioned above can be found on this club's statistics page.
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