Hypothetical Scrabble Question.

[Xaston]

Bob is of above average intelligence with a greater than average vocabulary. Bob only plays Scrabble about 4 times a year. His Q-vocabulary and and obscure 8-letter word vocabulary is clearly a joke compared to any serious Scrabble player.

How many tiles would Bob need to have in his rack to have an edge over a World-Class Scrabble player?

I proposed this on a smaller forum and proposed that "Bob" would have a slightly edge with roughly 11 tiles. The first two responses think I am way off.

[XXXNoahXXX]

I think with 12-13 tiles and a little luck I'd have a shot.

[secretprankster]

PM Paul Phillips LDO.

I'd say with a short amount of studying this player could have an edge, but would not now. People who don't play often are just bad at finding bingos. Just a guess though.

Oh and if the WCP was allowed to play intentional phonies, with standard double-challenge rules, doesn't seem like it would be that close.

Upon thinking about it a little more it wouldn't even be close if he studied a bit. I wonder what the tile # would be where he breaks even.

[Peter Harris]

i'd say 11 tiles is enough if you knew all the 2-letter words and kept the game tight. you'd need to know a lot of difficult 3 letter words too like suq, jor, etc. to play decent bonus tiles.

I'm definitely not world class but I could hold my own against uk county players.

[btmagnetw]

Q-vocabulary and and obscure 8-letter word vocabulary would matter almost none. tell him abuot QI and QAT and that's all he needs to know. as for an average player needing to know about 8 letter words, LOL.

2 letter words and 3 letter words are very important. if he knows common bingoes (TISANE- stems) it would help. and i assume that even with, say, 14 tiles, he gets the 50 point bonus for a 7 letter word right?

if he doesn't know 2 letter words, then he can have 20 tiles/rack and win ~0% of the time IMO. world class player would destroy him with fake bingoes as soon as he figures out how inclined he is to challenge.

a player who plays 4 times a year doesn't know the importance of rack management either. it doesn't matter how many tiles he has if he doesn't know how to balance the rack.

[punkass]

Since he doesn't know scrabble strategy, 2-letter words, Q-words...it doesn't really matter how many tiles he gets. If Bob had all the letters in his rack, an expert Scrabble player would probably beat him.

Am I off?

[Xaston]

While something like 11 tiles is only 4 more tiles than the WCP has, how many more combinations of bingos is it? A lot. A person with a decent vocabulary should be playing bingos probably like 92% (pulled that outta my ass) of the time with a 13 or so letter rack.

I gotta go win the Mega Stack Challenge at Foxwoods, but I will probably spend half of my time thinking about this.

[btmagnetw]

you also need to consider that points are added to the player who's out of tiles, so its not exactly good for bob to have 50 tiles in his rack.

[ QUOTE ]
While something like 11 tiles is only 4 more tiles than the WCP has, how many more combinations of bingos is it? A lot. A person with a decent vocabulary should be playing bingos probably like 92% (pulled that outta my ass) of the time with a 13 or so letter rack.

I gotta go win the Mega Stack Challenge at Foxwoods, but I will probably spend half of my time thinking about this.

[/ QUOTE ]i think bingoes are easier to find in a rack of AEINRST than ACCEGKIMNRSTZ. its probably a misconception that you need a high vocabulary to be good at scrabble. if you couldn't find a lot of bingoes in ACCEGKIMNRSTZ, see how many common words appear when you take out -ING, -ERS, -ER, -IER, -IES, -IEST, etc.

btw i'd considre myself a poorer intermeidate player at best, and i'd easily take myself over a 4 times a year player with 11 tiles.

[garcia1000]

Would you have to play all 11 tiles at once to get the 50-point bonus?

[btmagnetw]

in my nerdiness, here's a bunch of random 11 tile racks based on the scrabble distribution. how often do you find 7 letter words?

HAEALTERUFH

OMONIPWOTDA

DDTKICNEIEI

UUIIBGINIRE

LWDSARIIAER

after seeing this, i think a world class player beats bob ~100% of the time no matter how many tiles bob decides to use