Date: Tue, 7 Oct, 1997
From: Jim Geary
To: cgp
Subject: Banking Points and Recounts

On Tue, 7 Oct 1997, Paul Sidorsky wrote: 

 Absolutely.  If scoring and/or math is a problem for a player, then like any
 other aspect of this game, it should be PRACTICED!  I doubt there are any
 experts that can't properly score a Scrabble game.  They may be appalling at
 math, but have overcome this obstacle at least for the purpose of playing
 Scrabble.
Well, I think I qualify as an expert.
I was the best mental math person I knew before I started playing Scrabble. Something got short circuited at the age of 25. I can still do cube roots, but can't count to 19 to save my life.

Allan White wrote: 

 Last year, I played the tournament at Las Vegas and in the early stages
 of a game I miscounted my score and inadvertently gave myself three extra
 points.  I announced the score of the play, then the cumulative and my
 opponent agreed, then we moved on with the game.  However, at the end of
 the game (which I won by about 50 so a recount was not really an issue)
 my opponent said, "By the way, I just 'happened' to notice that back here 
 on this particular play, you gave yourself three extra points."  I of
 course removed the points but was left with the feeling that the opponent
 had "banked" those points in hopes of using them in the recount of a 
 close game, because the sudden awareness of the error was absurd to the
 situation.  A close endgame may be played differently if the player was
 made aware of his scoring error.

In addition to being ditzy at times, I also have flashes of lucidity. Times like this, I just "know" that a play 5 turns ago was misscored. I hope that on those occasions know one thinks I'm "banking." It seems to me that if someone was truly banking, they wouldn't say anything at all when they win games by a comfortable margin, spending the banked equity only when necessary. Anyway, I hope I'm not giving lessons on angle-shooting intricacies.

As a safety precaution, I recount the entire game silently before going into any close ending. Any error favorable or unfavorable is promptly reported. I still lost a recount to FFJ this Reno when I repeated the same error during the mental recount, but by and large I don't sweat now while my opponent does recounts.

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