Aw, c'mon folks, there were only four people at club today. The weather's not that bad!

On the bright side, even though Will beat me, I got to play a 96-point phony on him! We both thought it was a valid word. Oops!

I designed a score sheet with a club graphic on it. See the Links page on our website
lexscrabble.info/links.htm if you would like to download it.

First Perkins' meeting

A total of 8 showed up for the first Perkins Restaurant meeting on Sunday, Jan. 3. I bet there would have been more if it hadn't been so cold! And hey, Perkins serves breakfast all day long - pancakes and eggs sounded good to me after just arriving after work. :D

See you next week?

New Day, Time, and Place for Club Sessions

Beginning next Sunday, January 3, 2010, the Lexington Scrabble Club will be meeting every Sunday at the Perkins Family Restaurant, 2401 Richmond Road, at the front of the old Lexington Mall property. We will have a separate room to ourselves; sessions will start at 3 p.m. and can last until the shift change between 8 and 9 p.m., so players may arrive late if they need to and play for an extended period of time. Scrabblers from Louisville and northern Kentucky/Cincinnati (or anywhere else!) are always welcome to join us.

There were seven for our final session at VFW Post 680 last night -- Betty, Cheryl, Joetta, John, Pat, Steve, and Will. Many thanks to the VFW for allowing us to use their meeting room in 2009 for our club sessions and two one-day tournaments!

We look forward to seeing members who have been unable to play at club while our sessions at Good Foods Co-op were suspended during construction there and hope the new day will work better for those who have not been able to make it to Monday night sessions at the VFW.

A Happy New Year and much fun at playing Scrabble in 2010 to all of you!

Come join us at Perkins on Sundays.

Skipping Second Sunday again

There will be a party this Sunday at the VFW, so there will be no Second Sunday meeting of the club this month.

(Next month we'll see if Good Foods' meeting room is back in action.)

Ratings Changes from Lexington 11/21 Tourney

NASPA now has the results of our one-day tournament on Saturday, November 21, posted with official ratings changes. Here is a link to that results page.

These are the ratings changes --

(Format: Finish -- Player Name -- Old Rating -- New Rating -- Change)

DIVISION 1

1 -- Marc Broering -- 1739 -- 1763 -- plus 24 -- NEW PEAK
2 -- Kelly McKenzie -- 1694 -- 1704 -- plus 10
3 -- Will Scott -- 1310 -- 1302 -- minus 8
4 -- Robert Kearn -- 1289 -- 1264 -- minus 25

DIVISION 2

1 -- David Meredith -- 949 -- 1016 -- plus 67
2 -- Thomas Webb -- 1004 -- 1018 -- plus 14 -- NEW PEAK
3 -- Lois Greene -- 1154 -- 1141 -- minus 13
4 -- Chris Sitler -- 836 -- 851 -- plus 15 -- NEW PEAK
5 -- Andrew Wade -- 1019 -- 981 -- minus 38
6 -- Brad Wade -- 865 -- 843 -- minus 22

DIVISION 3

1 -- Margaret Pozgay -- 801 -- 856 -- plus 55
2 -- Elizabeth Davis -- 783 -- 850 -- plus 67 -- NEW PEAK
3 -- Susanna Webb -- 500 -- 550 -- plus 50 -- NEW PEAK
4 -- Betty King -- 650 -- 603 -- minus 47
5 -- Janet Scheeline -- unrated -- 500 -- (initial rating)
6 -- Cheryl Coovert -- 503 -- 465 -- minus 38

Although the tourney itself is not yet reported on cross-tables.com, it appears that individual player statistics there have already been adjusted to reflect our tourney results. Players whose lines above are shown in RED have new personal ratings' peaks on cross-tables.com .

Good luck to Kentuckian Brian Bowman at WSC 2009!

The 2009 World Scrabble Championship is being played at Johor Bahru, Malaysia, from November 26 to 29, and one of the players there is BRIAN BOWMAN from Villa Hills, Kentucky, who has played at our club and in Lexington tournaments. We wish him all the best there!

Unlike club and tournament play here under the rules of the North American Scrabble Players Association, the WSC uses Harper/Collins (SOWPODS) instead of OWL2 + the LL, and the penalty for an unsuccessful challenge is a five-point penalty for each incorrectly challenged word, not loss of a turn.

There are competitors from Australia, Bahrain, Canada, England, France, Ghana, Guyana, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, Malaysia, Malta, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Oman, Pakistan, Scotland, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Tanzania, Thailand, Trinadad and Tobago, Uganda, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Wales, and Zambia.

And, one of them is our friend from northern Kentucky. Good luck to Brian!


ADDED COMMENT (11/28/2009):

The 2009 World Scrabble Championship website has live coverage of its games. John Chew, NASPA Co-President and developer of tsh tournament management software, is providing this and doing the commentary.

Brian finished the next-to-the-last day of the tournament at 14-10, +441. He is currently in 23th place out of 108 players. The top ten finishers will receive prizes totalling $30,500.

Here is a link to Brian's tournament results page.