On Fri, 18 Aug 2000, Chris Guilbert wrote:
i haven't been in scrabble tournament circles for very
long, but was disturbed by some behavior that occurred
quite often in Providence. While playing in division
4, i would every so often call "Hold" like any normal
scrabbler. Approximately a third of the time my
opponent would write down the score for their play,
add it to their previous total and tile track for the
play, which is on hold,...!!???
Seeing your opponent tile tracking and scoring
for a play that's on hold, made me a fraction more
hesitant to Challenge... with a thought process of
(How can i challenge a play that my opponent was so
sure of that they already tile tracked for!?) In some
cases I challenged anyway and won some of them.
Is this dirty scrabble? is it just gamesmanship?
and what, if any action should i take next time this
occurs?
It should be noted that i don't hold on obvious,
Duh plays just to irk my opponent. Also I won over
half of my challenges in Providence, so i don't
believe my challenging ethic was any kind of a factor
in my opponent's course of action.
I do that EVERYTIME. Why should the player calling hold screw
up my bookkeeping? Should it come to pass that one of my words
gets challenged off, the tracked letters go into a different space
on my sheet whereat I track what information my opponent has about
my rack. If the other guy doesn't like it, too f* bad. Additionally
by doing the same thing EVERYTIME, my opponent will never have any
tells about what I think of the validity of the play. I don't think
you understand what is coffeehousing and what is not. Not letting
your tracking get screwed up everytime someone decidees to call hold
is NOT coffeehousing.
Last Modified 2/23/01
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