The following is not at all an adhominem on two of my friends, however I disagree with their analyses and think that they have even misunderstood the premise, that is "that ZAGS did so well." Please read this analysis.

Jere Mead wrote:

 Speaking as one of the J etceteras, I'd say that among the reasons ZAGS
 sims so well are these:  1. It cuts down on over- and underlapping plays;
 2.  It eliminates opponents' plays that hook an -S to ZAG (big reason,
 this one); 3.  A 2-ply might not go ahead enough turns to let you use the
 S held after ZAG to full advantage, versus using it for ZAGS.  Mind you,
 no one knows less about the heuristics involved than I do.

 ZAGS gets rid of 3 consonants AND doesn't allow the S back hook for the
 opponent which would be worth 14 pts right off the bat.

JG writes:

ZAGS is really bad given you've seen ZAG, guys. Simulating 10 points worse does not a good play make. It is only good compared to worse plays and the reason it is so is not because of these fancy S-burning reasons but because you're laying the Z down for 20 and keeping the board tight.

Burning the S here is actually worse than under "average" circumstances where it would normally only cost you 5 pts (-7 for diminished rack + 2 for 2 more points.) If these fancy S-burning motifs even had a shred of weight, ZAGS would simulate LESS than 5 points worse than ZAG, when in fact it simulates 5 points (thats a lot) more worse than the 5 points linear analysis would indicate.

Let me address the points mentioned individually:

1) "it cuts down on over/underlaps" - granted, however working around a G with the premiums killed is usually no prize anyway, plus the one-way-ness that the Z creates will force all plays to either expose more tiles and premiums OR only be hittable via an S, which the ZAG-player retains.

2) "it eliminates opponents plays that hook an S onto ZAG" There are only four S's in the bag, and you currently are sitting on 25% of them. The odds of the opponent having an S currently are 1 - [(90/93)*(89/92)...(84/87)] = 21 %, whereas the odds of you having one next turn are 100%. The ZAG player is the 5:1 more likely to capitalize on S-spots.

3) "two-ply may not be enough to see the full advantage of the S" this may be true, but it would appear from the sim results that the advantage of the S is already manifesting itself to a greater degree than it would normally be expected (5pts)

4) "improves # of consonants on rack, and eliminates opportunity to use the S for 14 points." As shown in (2) above, your the bigdog to hit the next S-spot. Tho it may not be to ZAG, an S-hook from above to an over/underlapped play will probably additionally be a board killer.

Also keeping the S does not affect vowel/consonant ratios to the degree other "true" consonants do. Of course if you had say seven consonants, now you're starting to think about pitching the S to gasp for air, but three consonants does not yet put you to that point. As an aside it should be remembered that keeping an S with a bunch of vowels doesn't count as much either for c/v ratios. I posit that there is a continuum of consonant-ness probably starting with F,J,V and winding down at H,R,S or so.

In conclusion, please let me restate that ZAGS did not do "so well." It only appears to have done so compared to worse plays such as BLAHS, but compared to a play that is in every way like it save burning the S, it performed significantly poorer than normal points/leave mathematics would indicate.

Last Modified 9/26/00

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