up to the Lexington Scrabble® Club
This reports on the season which ran from September, 2016 through August, 2017.
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 30 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 2016 through August 2017 Season. In this season, individuals played 2632 games, and so there were 1316 games in all. The average score in all of these games was 389. These numbers were 2758, 1379, and 390 for the previous season. Two seasons ago, the average was 390.
Of the 2632 individual games, 2448 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 389 for the season. These numbers were 2758, 2534, and 388 for the previous season.
There were 49 club sessions during the season, and average attendance was 12.33, which is down from 15.5 in the previous season. These statistics indicate that each player played on the average of about 4.3 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.
78 different players have attended the club in the past 2 years. This is down from 80 one year ago and 92 players two years ago. During the 2016-2017 Season there were 27 (up from 23 and 28 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) :
Carl Durdan - averaged 411, won 21 of 34 games
Richard Buck - averaged 430, won 45 of 61 games
Jack Peters - averaged 399, won 19 of 37 games
Wes Eddings - averaged 417, won 46 of 60 games
Mike Wolfberg - averaged 408, won 119 of 179 games, scored 73,119 points
Joel Horn - averaged 414, won 154 of 235 games, scored 97,299 points
Don Finkey - averaged 399, won 20 of 34 games
Steven Saul - averaged 408, won 96 of 153 games, scored 62,412 points
Mark Fidler - averaged 394, won 84 of 133 games
Chris Kulig - averaged 402, won 75 of 135 games
Jake Bergmann - averaged 399, won 36 of 64 games
Bob Becker - averaged 389, won 22 of 48 games
Judy Horn - averaged 402, won 120 of 220 games, scored 88,506 points
Aaron Green - averaged 391, won 37 of 69 games
Barbara Revkin - averaged 416, won 23 of 37 games
Carol McDonald - averaged 387, won 76 of 160 games, scored 61,881 points
Diana Spiller - averaged 390, won 20 of 45 games
Betsey Wood - averaged 374, won 11 of 26 games
Marvin Kraus - averaged 375, won 60 of 155 games
Wayne Yorra - averaged 359, won 16 of 42 games
These players attended our club during the season, but failed to
play the minimum of twenty games to qualify to be considered as active:
Emmanuel Aronie, Mic Barron, John Cheras, Judy Cole, Catherine Day,
Steven Gonzales, Morris Greenberg, Keith Hagel, Andrea Hatch,
Seth Lipkin, Norma Marshall, Jere Mead, Scott Saveriano, Jon Shreve,
Chris Sinacola, Lee Smith, Nathan Smolensky, Basil Sousounis,
Christopher Sousounis, Maria Sousounis, Sue Spates.
Season Average Ratings of the Top 20 Active Players
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1762.74 Carl Durdan 1727.94 Jake Bergmann
1755.92 Richard Buck 1720.42 Bob Becker
1748.92 Jack Peters 1718.99 Judy Horn
1747.21 Wes Eddings 1713.19 Aaron Green
1747.09 Mike Wolfberg 1707.60 Barbara Revkin
1743.84 Joel Horn 1702.69 Carol McDonald
1739.74 Don Finkey 1693.81 Diana Spiller
1739.52 Steven Saul 1673.81 Betsey Wood
1738.71 Mark Fidler 1672.59 Marvin Kraus
1729.95 Chris Kulig 1639.62 Wayne Yorra
Here are the players of the above top 20 who increased their average
ratings in comparison with their average ratings in the 2015-2016 Season.
Thanks to Joel Horn for the idea.
28.8 Diana .5 Carol
20.9 Don .5 Bob
8.2 Judy H. .5 Jake
5.8 Marvin .1 Richard
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.
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 OWL16 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 168 Collins games, and so there were 84 such games in all. The average score in all of these games was 421. These numbers in the previous season were: 100, 50, 431.
These are the average ratings of the players who played at least 20 Collins games in the 2016-2017 Season:
1784.09 Richard Buck 1753.47 Jake Bergmann 1751.01 Carl Durdan
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 670 by Judy Horn. Other games above 599 were: Jon Shreve 648; Mark Fidler 641; Richard Buck 633; Joel Horn 607; Judy Horn 606; Joel Horn 600.
Joel Horn played 235 games, which is 5 lower than his previous season's number. Judy Horn played the second-most games during the season, with 220 games, which is 6 higher than her previous season's number. Twelve seasons ago Judy Horn played 406 games, which broke the record for the most games in a season.
With 154 wins, Joel Horn had the most wins, and the runner-up was 120 wins by Judy Horn. In the previous season, Joel also had the most wins with 167.
With a total of 97,299 points, Joel Horn scored the most points in this season, down from 100,966 in the previous season. Judy Horn scored 88,506 points. In the previous season Judy scored 86,233 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 Judy Horn's 670, and that was 66.8% above her average. Runners-up were Marvin Kraus with 56.9% and Aaron Green with 53.8%.
Richard Buck played a 6-bingo game. Joel Horn played 2 5-bingo games in this season, and there may have been other such games.
The highest loss during this season was probably Joel Horn's 477 (to Mike Wolfberg's 506). Joel tied the 9th-highest losing score to date in the club. In second place for a high losing score during the season was probably Joel Horn's 473 loss.
Judy Horn defeated Trx. Kt. 538-460 for a total of 998. The runner-up highest total was probably 983 in a game between Mike Wolfberg and Joel Horn.
Don Finkey scored 203 for his triple-triple dOPEH(E)AD. Mike Wolfberg played the runner-up high bingo scoring 194.
We did not make a note of noteworthy non-bingos for this season.
We did not make a note of noteworthy long words for this season.
Judy was in first place in the club news dated 16-Mar-17.
Judy Horn and Chris Kulig tied with 400-400.
The highest attendance during this season was 20 players on each of three dates.
Further details for many of the club records mentioned above can be found on this club's statistics page.
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