Kutno here we come.

I'm very excited. On Saturday I'm playing English Scrabble in the first ever friendly match between Warszawa and Poznan. We'll be playing in Kutno - a city almost exactly in the middle of Poland and almost exactly midway between Warszawa and Poznan.

So far we have 3 participants from Poznan and 4 from Warsaw.

In preparation for the match I'm reviewing the lists of 3-5 letter words with doubled consonants. I'm also going to concentrate on some awkward consonant dumps like HWYL and on vowel dumps like EUOUAE. The nice thing about those words is that they divide into managable groups of about 100's. I hope that on Saturday they will help me in dealing with strange racks like DNOSVWW.

It seems that my overall game has improved recently. My ISC ranking has gone up to 1550. I hope it's not only due to the good tiles I am getting.

I noticed that I am now able to concentrate better. I also try to control the board and manage my rack all of the time. And most importantly, I am mean and greedy - I try to get as many points as possible and lose as little points as possible. Simple as pumpkin pie.

Keep your fingers crossed for Team Poznan on Saturday - it's gonna be tough but with a little bit of luck we're gonna make it! :)