Clash of the titans vol 8 (Lodz, September 24th)

Our ultimate Clash of the Titans played before the WSC 2011 was special in the fact that the weather was very sunny and warm. 

Just like during our first meeting we played most of our games in the Źródliska Park in Łódź in a very peacful and quiet setting disturbed only occasionally by old men's quarrels, children's shouts, birds' singing, squirrels' climbing up and down the trees and wedding couples taking photos at the chess tables.

The last four games were played in Sycyliana Pizzeria - one of its specialties was a pizza called Good Father.

Very similarily to our last Clash Wojtek managed to play another brilliant game scoring 600+ points with me playing 400+ which resulted in our best combined score ever of 1045. Just like the last time Wojtek played 5 bingos and I only 2. Final score: 639:406.
http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=9494

With exception of the above and maybe a few other games the Clash was tight. I won the first game, Wojtek won the next five, then I won another four and the score was tied at 5-5. In the 11th game I got blown off the earth surface by 224-538 in my lowest scoring game ever.

And the last game went to the wire. In a brilliant and lucky endgame Wojtek outscored me in his last move by 9 points.

And so Clash no 8 went to Wojtek.

The Clash of the Titans thus ended tied at 4-4.

The STATS:

Games won: 5

Games lost: 7

Spread: -445

Average for: 398.2

Average against: 435.3

Blanks: 11/24 = 46%

S's: 22/48 = 46%

Games won:

2 blanks: 1/1 (100%)

1 blank: 4/10 (40%)

0 blanks: 0/1 (0%)

Bingos for: 22 (1.83 per game)

Bingos against: 21 (1.75 per game)

7 letter bingos: 12 (55%)

8 letter bingos: 10 (45%)

Bingos with blanks: 9 (41%)

Bingos without blanks: 13 (59%)

Highest no of bingos in a game: 3

Lowest no of bingos in a game: 0

High game: 513

Low game: 224

Highest combined score: 1045 (639-406 for Wojtek)

 Game 1 395-377

Game 2 379-386

Game 3 352-418

Game 4 384-485

Game 5 389-401

Game 6 406-639

Game 7 413-428

Game 8 423-366

Game 9 393-379

Game 10 498-375

Game 11 224-538

Game 12 422-431

the final clashdown

6 months after our first encounter and 18 days before the start of the World Scrabble Championship 2011 in Warsaw I meet with Wojtek for the final 8th Clash of the Titans. It's 4-3 for me, so today's clash will decide if it's a draw or my win.

The venue is still not known as the weather forecast predicts the maximal temperature of 17 C and we're planning to play indoors.

For the first time I'll be testing the tweeting capabilities of my new mobile phone by reporting live scores and game photos through twitter.

http://twitter.com/#!/euoi79

WYSINWYG

A few days ago I acquired the bilingual Polish-English edition of Scrabble I have written about in one of my previous posts and....

...got very surprized when I opened the box. 

Contrary to what has been stated on the packaging ("a board with a grid for supporting the tiles") inside I found a simple standard foldable board.

can't touch this

34 days before the start of the World Scrabble Championship 2011 in Warsaw a Polish PR agency released an article written in Polish about the forthcoming event.

What interesting facts did I learn from it?

1. My last name has changed from Pięta to Pieta and my fellow Polish player is called Rafal and not Rafał anymore. (NOT TRUE)

2. Pakorn Nemitrmansuk has declared a fierce fight to defend his title. (PROBABLY TRUE)

3. Rafal, Wojtek and I have been preparing for the event for months. (HOW DID THEY KNOW THIS?)

4. To excel in this game you need to read the Official Scrabble Dictionary (NOT SURE ABOUT THAT)

5. There will be approximately 4000 games played during the Championship (NOT TRUE - there will be no more than 2000 games)

I must say you'd expect from a good PR agency to proofread and verify their texts before publishing them.

It looks like this one was written by someone who 1. has difficulties with counting and 2. didn't even bother to check the names of Polish players and just copied and pasted them from the WSC 2011 registration site.

PooR!

http://centrumpr.pl/artykul/mistrzostwa-wiata-w-scrabble,26599.html

WSC 2011 - interesting facts (4)

An average WESPA rating of WSC 2011 players is 1879 (median: 1910)

The highest ranked player is Paul Gallen from Northern Ireland (2124)

The lowest ranked player is Toyo Kitua from Tanzania (1318)

6 players have no WESPA rating.

The top 10 national teams are:

1. Northern Ireland (2019)

2. Australia (2011)

3. England (2002)

4. USA (1957)

5. Nigeria (1952)

6. Philippines (1938)

7. Thailand (1934)

8. New Zealand (1926)

9. India (1916)

10. Canada (1914)

WSC 2011 - interesting facts (3)

90% of all registered players are male.

WSC 2011 - interesting facts (2)

And here comes fact no 2:

Average age of WSC contestants is 39.

Most players are 31 or 32 years old.

The youngest player is 16 and the oldest is 68.

WSC 2011 - interesting facts (1)

This is the beginning of a series of posts about the forthcoming World Scrabble Championship 2011 to be held in Warsaw between October 12th-16th.

The information presented herein will be based on the data from two main sources:

1. World Scrabble Championship site: www.wscgames.com

2. World English Scrabble Player's Association (WESPA): www.wespa.org

So here comes fact no 1

98% (or 114) of all 117 eligible players have signed up for the WSC 2011.

The missing three players are from Guyana, Qatar and Uganda.

Scrabble Bilingual Edition

With 38 days to the start of the first ever World Scrabble Championship taking place in Poland Mattel decided to celebrate this fact with a special bilingual Polish-English edition of Scrabble.

What's so special about it? In addition to the standard Polish edition they added an English set of tiles plus an extra rules leaflet in English. It isn't much really but I suppose this little effort could finally help Scrabble on its feet in Poland. We'll see...

Anyway, a good try Mattel :)