up to the Lexington Scrabble® Club
This reports on the season which ran from September, 2015 through August, 2016.
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 29 years. Judy Cole and Joel Horn serve as associate directors. 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 2015 through August 2016 Season. In this season, individuals played 2758 games, and so there were 1379 games in all. The average score in all of these games was 390. These numbers were 2874, 1437, and 390 for the previous season. Two seasons ago, the average was 387.
Of the 2758 individual games, 2534 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 2874, 2660, and 387 for the previous season.
There were 48 club sessions during the season, and average attendance was 15.5, which is the same as from the previous season. These statistics indicate that each player played on the average of about 3.7 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.
80 different players have attended the club in the past 2 years. This is down from 92 one year ago and 105 players two years ago. During the 2015-2016 Season there were 23 (down from 28 and 34 the two previous seasons) active players, namely those who played at least 20 games, and here are the top 20, ordered by decreasing club average rating (not shown here, but these are in the other table below) :
Mike Wolfberg - averaged 426, won 116 of 162 games, scored 68,956 points
Richard Buck - averaged 436, won 40 of 56 games
Steven Saul - averaged 412, won 93 of 135 games
Jake Bergmann - averaged 412, won 46 of 71 games
Joel Horn - averaged 421, won 167 of 240 games, scored 100,966 points
Mark Fidler - averaged 409, won 86 of 120 games
Chris Kulig - averaged 408, won 107 of 170 games, scored 69,343 points
Bob Becker - averaged 408, won 49 of 82 games
Don Finkey - averaged 407, won 22 of 33 games
Judy Horn - averaged 403, won 119 of 214 games, scored 86,233 points
Carol McDonald - averaged 394, won 94 of 170 games, scored 67,009 points
Barbara Revkin - averaged 389, won 18 of 35 games
Marvin Kraus - averaged 380, won 76 of 180 games, scored 68,406 points
Diana Spiller - averaged 377, won 31 of 83 games
Wayne Yorra - averaged 362, won 31 of 79 games
Linda Giovinazzo - averaged 359, won 36 of 94 games
Claudia Cassel - averaged 352, won 38 of 100 games
James Krycka - averaged 352, won 25 of 66 games
Emmanuel Aronie - averaged 350, won 17 of 52 games
Marc Goldstein - averaged 349, won 25 of 75 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:
Mic Barron, Dan Blake, John Cheras, Judy Cole, Wes Eddings, Morris Greenberg,
Rebecca Lambert, Seth Lipkin, Joey Mallick, Matthew O'Connor, Chris Sinacola,
Brad Whitmarsh (for only Collins games), Betsey Wood.
Season Average Ratings of the Top 20 Active Players
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1756.60 Mike Wolfberg 1702.19 Carol McDonald
1755.79 Richard Buck 1688.01 Barbara Revkin
1749.27 Steven Saul 1666.82 Marvin Kraus
1749.20 Jake Bergmann 1655.01 Diana Spiller
1748.95 Joel Horn 1654.83 Wayne Yorra
1744.68 Mark Fidler 1652.60 Linda Giovinazzo
1733.03 Chris Kulig 1641.28 Claudia Cassel
1719.96 Bob Becker 1629.35 James Krycka
1718.85 Don Finkey 1619.45 Emmanuel Aronie
1710.83 Judy Horn 1619.06 Marc Goldstein
Here are the players of the above top 20 who increased their average
ratings in comparison with their average ratings in the 2014-2015 Season.
The 10-point boost for all players at the 2015-2016 Season start has been
removed. Thanks to Joel Horn for the idea.
39.1 Don 12.2 Linda 4.4 Mark F.
23.8 James 10.5 Claudia 4.2 Joel
16.3 Carol 9.3 Wayne 3.9 Marc G.
15.1 Richard 8.8 Chris K. 2.9 Marvin
6.8 Mike
Since ratings bounce around from week to week, the following is of
less significance. Here are the those highest rated active players
in the 2015-2016 Season whose ratings went up in the season. The
comparison is between ratings on 3-Sep-15 and 1-Sep-16.
65 Trx. 43 Marvin 26 Don 10 Marc G.
63 Carol 40 Mark F. 26 Steven S. 5 Diana
53 Norma 40 Mark C. 26 Mike 4 Catherine
46 Bob B. 30 James 22 Chris K. 3 Judy H.
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 OWL3 games and Collins games (if any), and the acceptable words shown are based on the CSW2015 Lexicon. Collins games were played on 29 evenings during the season and on 36 evenings during the previous season.
In this season individuals played 100 Collins games, and so there were 50 such games in all. The average score in all of these games was 431. These numbers in the previous season were: 146, 73, 425.
These are the average ratings of the players who played at least 20 Collins games in the 2015-2016 Season:
1771.53 Richard Buck 1744.82 Jake Bergmann
Richard Buck played the 11-letter PHANTOMLIKE in a Collins game during this season.
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 Richard Buck. Other games above 599 were: Mike Wolfberg 649, 609; Mark Fidler 641; Joel Horn 628, 607, 603; and Steven Saul 611.
Joel Horn played 240 games, which is 4 lower than his previous season's number. Judy Horn played the second-most games during the season, with 214 games, which is 13 lower than her previous season's number. Eleven seasons ago Judy Horn played 406 games, which broke the record for the most games in a season.
With 167 wins, Joel Horn had the most wins, and the runner-up was 119 wins by Judy Horn. In the previous season, Joel also had the most wins with 157.
With a total of 100,966 points, Joel Horn scored the most points in this season, down from 101,649 in the previous season. Judy Horn scored 86,233 points. In the previous season Judy scored 91,880 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 Steven Gonzalez's 548, and that was 68.9% above his average. Runners-up were Diana Spiller with 63.6 and Mark Fidler with 58.2
Mike Wolfberg and Judy Horn each played 5-bingo games in this season, and there may have been other such games.
The highest loss during this season was probably Chris Kulig's 465 (to Joel Horn's 467). In second place for a high losing score during the season was probably Bob Becker's 458 loss.
The highest total score for the current season was probably 974 in a game between Judy Horn and Chris Kulig.
Steven Gonzales scored 167 for his triple-triple STR(E)AKeD.
Diana Spiller and Mike Wolfberg played the runner-up high bingos scoring 149.
We did not make a note of noteworthy non-bingos for this season.
The club record for longest words played are 11-letter words, and in this season Morris Greenberg played the 11-letter PREDRILLING.
Judy Horn and Mike Wolfberg tied with 433-433. Carol McDonald and Joel Horn tied with 432-432.
Chris Kulig made a 9-letter DIS(OBE)YED non-bingo double-double for 64 points.
The highest attendance during this season was 21 players on each of these two dates: 17-Mar-15 (St. Patrick's Day) and 14-Jul-15 (Bastille Day).
Further details for many of the club records mentioned above can be found on this club's statistics page.
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