| Player 1 |
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#player1 Josh Josh
#player2 Elise_0.1.8 Elise 0.1.8
#description Saved by Elise version 0.1.8
>Josh: AAEINQT H4 QANAT +48 48
#note This was a great game I had against Elise.
Time remaining on clock: [24:49.95]
>Elise_0.1.8: EHNNTTZ G7 HENT +23 23
#note Time remaining on clock: [23:00.71]
>Josh: AEEIPRV I5 REPAVE +36 84
#note There are 4 interesting moves here, one of which I failed to consider. F6 PAVE, I7 PAVE, I5 REPAVE and I3 VIE. I didn't consider VIE. It has great defensive merits as the top right is basically dead afterwards, and I retain the best leave I could ask for while scoring decently (23).
F6 PAVE is one less than I7 PAVE, but it suits my EIR leave better, since I am drawing into a bingo a good deal more often with the less lucrative placement. In that sense it is probably a tad better than the I7 placement.
But since I am overlapping QANAT after Elise has done the same, it would seem drawing into a bingo is less of a possibility and therefore less of a priority, despite it always being positive to retain a good leave. REPAVE at I5 blows my rack up, leaving me with the first seen I of the game, which makes it likely I will draw another. That is the biggest downside of REPAVE: leave value. My leave is unmistakenly in the negative after REPAVE. And I am also locking down the only good spot for an I dump, which is making a word downwards with (Q)I. REPAVE scores the best out of any play and also has the most short-term defensive merits of the candidate options (given the superior defense there is really no reason to go with F4 REPAVE, if it wasn't already for the 5 fewer points). Elise is not scoring very well at all next turn, especially since HENT infers vowel shortage, and is certainly not getting a bingo down more than once out of 10 times. REPAVE blocks every floater on the board and doesn't give back a decent lane in return. It does a fine job at building a lead, and it is therefore my favorite for this turn. Hopefully I won't need to exchange next turn!
>Elise_0.1.8: NORRTYZ 5E ZON..Y +36 59
#note Time remaining on clock: [21:31.20]
>Josh: BGIILNR 4J BRIG +21 105
#note I drew one more I, which is not bad at all!
Options this turn were 4J BIRL, 4J BRIG, 4J BRING, F2 BRI(O)/BIR(O), J10 LIB and F8 BI.
Playing at 4J meant opening the top right a bit, which wasn't a positive, really. If I play BIRL, Elise would have no problem making a play with (BIRL)E and scoring, while opening the board. I have an early lead and if I can, I should try and avoid that. ING is a positive leave, and BIRL seemed to generate the most bingo opportunities for myself in the near future, so it had that merit, certainly. BRING had the merit of not keeping just a bingo-oriented leave, so that I could normally score well if I didn't have a bingo. BRIG kept LIN, which isn't too good of a leave for anything other than balance. I don't score too well with it nor do I have a bingo that often with it, but both are possible. On the other hand BRING just seemed to give Elise easy scoring points if she has an S, which is likely, and scoring tiles, which is even more likely. She is still probably vowel-deficient, so it's a good thing to exploit that. BRIG does that much better than BRING, and better than BIRL. So it seemed BRIG was the best 4J play.
BIR(O) and BRI(O) were, on the other hand, great for reducing Elise's options. They block the big hotspot under the ZO of ZONARY, unless Elise spends an S, but tripling the S is much less of a worry than tripling an H, a W or even the X, so BIRO and BRIO are very decent options. The problem is that they don't score very well, and Elise may not even have anything to play on that hotspot, so 12 points might be a bad sacrifice in many cases. 3 A's are gone, so it doesn't seem much more likely than not that Elise has something there. Because of that and because of the lack of decent scoring, I decided to take the BRIG route. It creates a hook that will last a while, but it seemed the hooks on HENT and REPAVE already had that downside to them, so I was fine with that. There is a lot more to be said about this position, however, and I am open to discussion!
Time remaining on clock: [20:46.79]
>Elise_0.1.8: BEORRTX F4 B.X +28 87
#note Time remaining on clock: [19:08.92]
>Josh: DFIILNO H10 INFOLD +45 150
#note Time remaining on clock: [20:42.39]
>Elise_0.1.8: EEOORRT 12E ROO.TREE +72 159
#note Time remaining on clock: [17:53.68]
>Josh: ACILMNU K7 MACUL. +20 170
#note I struggled to find a decent play here, to no avail. 14H (L)UMINAL is by all means the move to make. I inexplicably blanked on it. I saw 11K MAUL and 3L MAUL, but I really didn't want to open any easy spots to score, especially with Elise's random rack that is likely to contain an S. But I just totally spaced, otherwise, and decided I was fine with this play, and hoped if Elise scored at 8K it would give me a good place to bingo with a positive IN leave. But IN is barely positive, especially with the pool, and MACULE sucks. I should have looked longer, and I imagine I would have spotted a better play, and hopefully that play would have been LUMINAL.
Time remaining on clock: [18:20.65]
>Elise_0.1.8: ADEIIJU E10 JU.IED +28 187
#note Time remaining on clock: [15:17.10]
>Josh: CILNSUW 15A LUCI. +27 197
#note Now that I have an S, it's important to hang on to it with two "S-only" bingo lanes on this board. If I couldn't help it, 14B UNS(E)W would be a fine move, but LUCI(D) scores 27, keeps an OK leave and most importantly holds on to that S. It has my reanalysis' seal of approval.
Time remaining on clock: [17:35.47]
>Elise_0.1.8: ?AEHIIO I12 .HIO +25 212
#note Time remaining on clock: [12:36.65]
>Josh: ?AAENSW M9 WEASANd +88 285
#note Time remaining on clock: [17:29.23]
>Elise_0.1.8: ?AEISTU C8 EUStATI. +70 282
#note Time remaining on clock: [09:53.79]
>Josh: ADEEFPV 8A PE.VE +42 327
#note Now what? I'm in great shape here, there's no denying that. and I have a few candidates to choose from. 8A PE(E)VE jumps out as a great play. Scores 42, retains a good, balanced leave and takes out the biggest scoring spot on the board.
8A VE(E)P, on the other hand, retains an even better leave, and the more you compared ADF with ADEF, the more VEEP looks great. There are only 2 more E's left, and the pool is slightly consonant heavy, so two vowels are definitely better than one. And N6 is a great scoring spot, even though it opens up a lucrative bingo lane. The only problem with playing at 8A was that it was going to be a fear that Elise could play an 8 down from B1 whenever she pleases, unless I blocked for a small score. But if that happened, VEEP might be better since I could then play less worriedly at N6 next turn, equalize the score, and open that lane up that Elise might in turn have to worry about. I then considered plays down N this turn. PAVED jumped to mind, as it left me with a good scoring leave that went relatively well with the pool. I didn't know the invariable 6-letter-word, PAVEED, that also plays and makes column O less of a worry for me. There are also N9 EF or N8 DEF, which I didn't consider long enough. They ensure I am scoring more than 36 points next turn, and considering the pool, it's not necessary to discount that I might be scoring 40+ on column O as well. Although it seems this form of aggressiveness is too variant to be a prime factor in my decision-making for this turn. I think VEEP and PEEVE are tactically superior to plays on column N. I also think that despite the benefits of ADEF over ADF, 6 points is probably worth it, so I'll take PEEVE.
Time remaining on clock: [13:21.97]
>Elise_0.1.8: EGIIMOS 7K .IG +8 290
#note Time remaining on clock: [05:42.44]
>Josh: ADFORTY B6 DY. +11 338
#note When Elise played MIG, I was really really confused. But obviously, it was just a fishing play. There was really not much else it could be. With the pool, I should be quite happy to see only 8 points being added to her score. Anyways, it made me shift gears. It would seem that Elise's rack was really bad for scoring. So maybe another G? But if she had another G, she wouldn't have an S, otherwise MIGG would have gone down, right? I think so. So either Elise doesn't even have an S or doesn't have the other G. Well, there were really quite a lot of things Elise could have, so it wasn't worth scratching my head for too long. All that I needed to do was see if there were two equally likely spots she could have a bingo, and that was in no way the reality of the board. It seemed I would just need to block columns B and A and I would be in business. Obviously Elise could have been creating a distraction, and really fishing for something at N5 like MISTERS, but that really didn't seem all that likely, and I couldn't do much about that anyway. If I had a scoring play that blocked that side of the board, I would have considered it. And I was all set to play 14K FA(d)DY. But Elise's last move seemed to have merited a very defensive play. And given the pool, I think keeping both of my vowels was the right thing to do. Maybe FA(d)DY is still correct?
Time remaining on clock: [09:06.11]
>Elise_0.1.8: EIMNORS E5 .ON. +22 312
#note Hmm, I didn't block anything. Meh...
Time remaining on clock: [03:58.98]
>Josh: ADFORST 13G F.. +22 360
#note I missed OZONE this turn. 4D FO(B) looks very good. I also missed L6 F(I)DO, which looks great. Given I drew an S I no longer have to worry about a freak bingo at N5. I also considered N8 SOFA or SOFT, but there was really no reason to give Elise something else to go for that I couldn't even get rid of too well next turn.
Time remaining on clock: [07:27.61]
>Elise_0.1.8: EIILMRS A6 IM.ERILS +73 385
#note But I had no idea this would come down! Whoa...
Time remaining on clock: [03:06.69]
>Josh: ADEORST N2 ROSED +28 388
#note But that E was extremely lucky to draw on my part. And I had enough time to figure out the gist of this endgame. Unfortunately I was still blind to O(ZONE). I think I would have seen that over the board. So I saw OKA at K3, and it looked like a good idea to block that. I saw N8 ROD that left me with ATES for 24. But I calculated that playing ROSED at N2 gave me more points in the end, since I blocked OKA. It left Elise with WO(N)K at K14. This could have cost me the game, as it ended up being too close for comfort. ROD is the right play, 2 points superior to this.
Time remaining on clock: [02:27.47]
>Elise_0.1.8: AGKOTW 4D KO. +32 417
#note "Oops!"
>Josh: AT 3L TA. +14 402
#note Whew!
>Josh: (AGTW) +16 418
#note Elise played better than me without a doubt! MACULE was a really silly lapse on my part, and OF/FOH was lazy. Other than that I think I made very informed decisions and I was able to take down the Scrabble queen!
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