Milton Keynes, MGI, Harshan and other thoughts
It’s been a while! I wrote most of this on my flight home from an incredible vacation! Tim and I had a great time seeing the sights in Paris and the MGI tournament was one of my favorites I’ve played in a long time. Lukeman, If you’re reading this, Tim said that you and your entire team did an amazing job and that he’s already looking forward to coming back next year, and the Tim Weiss stamp of approval is not an easy one to receive. I think that Lukeman’s superpower is that he naturally does great job of making the people around him feel valued, whether they’re working for him or just playing in an event, and that’s an incredible quality for a leader of anything to have!
I made a point of reading his WESPA manifesto and even wrote a draft of a blog post responding to it point by point, but I never published it because a) I wanted to attend his event in person before glazing him and b) My post was kind of clumsily formatted and rambly anyway. My thoughts basically boil down to: Lukeman is ambitious but also has a proven track record of being able to walk the walk. I’m skeptical that he’ll be able to accomplish everything he sets out to do, but even if he only does like, 25% of it, I’d consider it a big win for competitive scrabble as a whole. Lukeman for Chairman of WESPA!!!
Now onto the tournament itself. I unfortunately can’t share too much about my games because I mistakenly left my scoresheets in Milton Keynes. Neurodivergence probably helps me put tiles on the board real good but it has its downsides too! I can still give a “vibes report” though.
I came in expecting nobody to know who I am and made it my goal to bring them up to speed very quickly and very aggressively. Unfortunately and hilariously, during the opening ceremony, they literally said “we have a large number of strong foreign players attending this event, including Ben Schoenbrun!!!” Whelp, so much for that idea. It wouldn’t have worked anyway as my reputation preceded me and a lot of people knew me from stream games, Woogles, and even this blog. I felt like a minor celebrity!
Day 3 was a heartbreaker as I went 3–6, starting off the day by losing to Tim and ending it losing on stream to Harshan. In the middle, I lost to Sammy 520–530, and it wasn’t even a “these tiles play themselves” 520! I had a lot of tough decisions throughout and I think a few small errors did me in!
The highlight of the day, however, was my first game against Harshan. Before I talk about that, I want to talk about Harshan since he might not be all that well known in the US. If you think I’m enthusiastic about Scrabble then you should see him!!! He’s thoughtful, curious, excitable, gracious, humble, and a complete and total chatterbox who talks a mile a minute in casual conversation. During the finals in Vegas, I was sitting in a crowd of people and it seemed like most of them were rooting for David Eldar to win so I made a point of cheering for Harshan and going up to him and wishing him luck in between games. I didn’t do this because I felt bad. I did it because Eldar is a great world champion, but Harshan would’ve made a great world champion too!
Anyway, of all the people in the UK he might have been the most excited to see me. I was looking forward to finally playing him a few times, but the reverse was also true! In our first game, it was even for most of the game but eventually I got stuck fishing for a few turns and he took a decent lead (I also didn’t know that OPHIURAN took an S which made a lot of my decisions less weird.)
In the preendgame, I threw out a hail mary fish instead of bingoing. I fished off my E (playing RE/EE) to try and draw (MY)RIADThS. And I drew it. AND HE SAW IT AND BLOCKED IT BY PLAYING (MY)OGEN!!!! What a play, what a player, what a champion.
After the game he told me how much he respected and appreciated my attempt and after the tournament he was nearly begging me to come back again next year so we can play more games. I can tell that this win meant the world to him and if it wasn’t going to be me, I’m glad it was him. If you haven’t heard his acceptance speech I highly recommend it.
I’m genuinely unsure if something clicked for me strategically or temperamentally in like the past 6 months or if I’m just running hotter than the sun, but it’s probably a little bit of both. I say that because I’ve also been winning a lot more MTG matches lately and I have a bigger sample size there, so I think it may be at least some of the former! Either way, I’ll take it and enjoy it for however long it lasts!
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I made a lot of word knowledge errors this tournament and had at least half a dozen phoneys challenged off, but I kept not getting punished. My stream games might’ve been my 5 best played games of the tournament. Since we all like to laugh though, I’ll share a quick blooper reel since this tournament had some memorable ones.
In my penultimate game against Sammy, I failed to challenge off PUORIE*. This play came but 3 rounds after I played POURIE against Lewis MacKay. I didn’t notice it until after the game. He went to the restroom and as I was waiting for him to get back so we could submit the result, I noticed it and said “OH MY GOD!”
Against Paul Allan, he played off 5 tiles, drew, and then said “Aww Shite! I’ve overdrawn!” I look across the table, see 2 tiles on his rack, 5 tiles in a pile, and I’m like “are you sure?!?!?”
Against Noble, he overdraws to open and I turn over a blank and throw it back. He then opens with CARLINE. Later on in the late game I go to count tiles but he tells me I’m not allowed to do that during his turn. I’m pretty sure that I am so I just call the director. He says that I’m allowed to count tiles as long as he’s not currently accessing the bag, but if he wants then the director can just count the remaining tiles and tell us the number. We agree on that and the director says that there are 10 tiles in the bag. He then plays a bingo to go up about 10 points and I decide to play off 4 tiles for 46 points. To my shock and horror, I reach into the bag and find 4 tiles remaining. Thankfully I draw the unseen blank and the X and proceed to win a close game.
I mean, I guess it’s my fault for not checking the director’s work, but as Tim would say: Man, what a clown bath.
In my first game against Bob, he missed his out bingo of GROWLERY. I thought it meant a brewery but it actually is an archaic word meaning “a room where you go when you’re angry.” If he played it, I would have finished the game with 242 points. I drew 0 vowels in my first 3 turns, including when I played N(U)LLS for 5 big ones, and then after that things really got bad. I definitely could’ve used a growlery after that game!
All in all, I was very lucky to finish where I did. A lot has to go right to have a 6–0 day against tough opponents like Raymond, Lewis, Lipe, Paul Allan, Sammy, and Sammy again. I could’ve easily gone 3–3 or worse against that lineup and even a 4–2 day would’ve put me in like a mediocre 7th or 8th place.
Like I said, pretty much everything about the tournament was great. Lunch was provided every day (and it was a nice lunch!) there were a ton of reasonably priced restaurants basically right outside the hotel, the prize ceremony felt like an actual ceremony, and I made a bunch of new friends! As the Brits would say, cheers!
Other Thoughts:
- I felt more welcomed at this tournament than maybe anywhere else I’ve ever been in my life. Part of it is certainly that the Brits are a welcoming bunch, but I think part of it is also what I represent for this tournament. Me being there gave the tournament more prestige as a big international event rather than just another local tournament (I’m also not taking it for granted how insane it is that I just described myself as “an international draw.”)
- After my game on stream against Kevin McMahon I said the game was kind of a no-brainer and uninteresting, and while that is still true for me, I think it goes to show how important fundamentals are in Scrabble. Having good word knowledge and being good at finding bingoes will get you a lot of free wins where you don’t really have to do much thinking, and this is true no matter how good your opponents are.
- A piece of advice I’ve heard thrown around a lot is: “don’t give your lower rated opponents easy ways to score.” I think a better piece of advice is just “don’t give ANY of your opponents easy ways to score, especially when you’re already behind!” It doesn’t matter whether you’re playing Nigel Richards or your grandma. If the 7 tiles on their rack don’t go anywhere for more than 15 points, then they’re not going to score more than 15 points.
Thanks for reading! Albany is less than two short months away. I’ve got a lot of work to do if I want to be ready!
