The Association of Premier Scrabble* Players
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The Association of Premier Scrabble* Players Issue No. 62 NEWSLETTER October 1998 HELEN GIPSON WINS BMSC East Berkshire's Helen Gipson created history by being the first woman winner of the ABSP's flagship event, the British Matchplay Scrabble Championship. In the deciding game Helen beat last year's BMSC champion, Andy Davis. You'll find a report of the event on page 13, and an annotation of the deciding game on page 21. It's been a pretty good couple of months for Helen. In addition to the BMSC, Helen also won the Luton event, and won 11 games out of 16 at the August Nottingham Nomads event Her reward is a 1998 rating of 196. 1999 WSC DOWN UNDER? Negotiations for the 1999 World Scrabble Championships are still in progress, and as yet no funding has been secured. If the event does take place, it is likely to be held in early November, in Melbourne, Australia. MATTEL SURVEY SUPPORTS SOWPODS All members of the ABSP, and all UK Scrabble clubs, received a questionnaire from Philip Nelkon asking about the preferred contents of the next edition of OSW. The Mattel Survey showed that a majority of players were in favour of using a combined list of words. Full details of the survey will appear in the next copy of Scrabble Club News, due out before the end of October. You'll also find news of a SOWPODS conversion kit, to be supplied free to all ABSP members, on page 40. WHAT'S IN A NAME? Finally, it won't have escaped your notice that the association's name has changed, from APSP to ABSP (Association of British Scrabble Players). This decision was taken at the AGM. To be honest I'm not overly enamoured of the new name - I'd have preferred "UK Scrabble Players Association", which doesn't imply that you have to be British to join! Still, at least any implication of elitism inspired by "Premier" is now a thing of the past. STR ARBI l\i f«tiu«rd ludc nvui at LVHycti & Snm PIC Into**. Mkfcfi. tftgUnd CONTENTS Committee Corner Page 3 Minutes of Annual General Meeting of APSP Page 3 New Rating System explainedexpli Page 5 Event Reports 3. Page 8 Ratings at 25th September | Page 17 1998 ratines update Page 20 Annotated game; Andy Davis v Helen Gipson | Page 21 Across the board | Page 26 Frankie's final flourish Page 26 Second chances Page 27 A blow for humankind Page 29 Scrabble and Sex | Page 30 Clabbers Eulega Page 31 Twenty Questions; Helen Gipson | Page 33 The American Experience | Page 34 Word Play Page 36 Kvetching the dreck Page 36 Do U Do Requests? Page 37 Canonical hours Page 40 Book Review; Scrabble for Beginners | Page 41 Poetry Corner Page 42 Readers'Letters Page 43 Answers to puzzles I Page 45 Tournament Details I News of forthcoming events Page 46 Event details Page 47 Forthcoming Events j Page 48 Committee Corner Minutes of Annual General Meeting of APSP Sunday 30th August 1998 84 members were present. In addition, 23 members submitted proxy votes for some or all of the motions below. 1. The Chairman's Report was received. • 2. Andrew Fisher as Auditor confirmed that the accounts conformed fully to the requisite standards. Graeme Thomas stated that the count-up clocks are being steadily sold. 3. Ian Bum had volunteered to join the Committee, and was welcomed. The rest of the members were automatically re-elected en bloc, as stated in the agenda. Graeme thanked Allan Simmons for all the hard work he has put in over the years. 4. Andrew Fisher was confirmed in office as Auditor. 5. It was agreed nem. con. that the annual subscription should remain at £10. 6. Allan Simmons addressed the meeting on the subject of the development of the new OSW and the possible inclusion of the American source-book words in it. Allan described the 'conversion list' of important new words which will be made available to all members. (See page 40) 6.1. Discussion on the motion "to ratify the Committee's decision to rate games played according to both Official Scrabble Words and the Official Tournament and Club Word List (together known colloquially as SOWPODS) in the same system as OSW games". Syd Berger expressed the widely held view that the combined rating system should have been put to members first. Graeme Thomas answered that the Committee is empowered to make such a decision, but that it had been agreed in Committee that the question would be put to the members at this AGM. The vote was taken: in the hall, For: 34 Against: 42 Abstentions: 8 Proxies For: 20 Against: 3 Abstentions: 0 Total: For: 54 Against: 45 Abstentions: 8 Therefore the motion was passed. 6.2. (a) Motion "to change (he rating system*'. The consensus emerging from discussion was that the current system was the easiest to understand and for players to calculate, but that it is subject to sudden 'lurches' and is not sensitive to changes for those who play a lot of tournaments. Voting was as follows: in the hall. For: 58 Against: 11 Abstentions: 15 Proxies For: 16 Against: 4 Abstentions: 3 Total For 74 Against: 15 Abstentions: 18 Therefore the motion was passed. Page 3 6.2. (b) In the light of the above vote, the meeting then had to decide which new system to adopt: the Rolling System (RS) or the Weighted Rolling system (WR) as described in some detail in the June Newsletter. Discussion made it apparent that RS is the next easiest system to understand and for players to calculate, but that lurches would still occur, whereas WR is very complex and virtually impossible to calculate, but is fairer, smoother, and more accurately reflects recent achievement. The voting was as follows: in the hall: RS: 26 WR:43 Abstentions: 15 Proxies RS: 7 WR: 12 Abstentions: 4 Total: RS: 33 WR: 55 Abstentions: 19 Therefore the Weighted Rolling system was adopted. In the light of this decision, the meeting needed to fine-tune the details of the new system so that development could proceed. Ian Burn proposed, seconded by David Meadows, that the ratings should be based on 100 games, rather than the 70 games originally suggested. After some discussion, a vote was taken, as follows: 100: 32 70: 22 Abstentions: 30 Therefore 100 games will form the basis of the new rating system. A further vote had to be taken to decide the weightings to be used, the options suggested being 150 down to 51, and 100 down to 1. The most significant reason identified for preferring 150-51 was that under the 100-1 system, the 100th game would be of infinitesimal significance. Voting: 150-51:21 100-1: 17 Abstentions: 46 Therefore the weightings will be on a sliding scale from 150 for the most recent game to 51 for the 100th most recent. (See page 5 for a worked example of the new system) 6.3. The motion "to change the name of the association". Seven alternatives were proposed, with votes as follows: Association of Scrabble Players 12 Scrabble Players Association 5 Association of British Scrabble Players 52 UK Scrabble Federation 3 UK Scrabble Players Association 6 Bonus - The Association for All Scrabble Players 1 Association of Premier Scrabble Players 8 Therefore the Association of British Scrabble Players will be the new name of the Association. 7. Any other business. Graeme announced that six people had volunteered to be members of the Newsletter Editorial Team. Rob Dowse proposed a vote of thanks to Phil Appleby for his work as editor, unanimously acclaimed. The meeting closed at 10.10 p.m. Minutes taken and compiled by Garelh Williams, ABSP Secretary: Page 4 New Rating System explained As noted elsewhere in the newsletter, it was decided at the ACM to adopt the Weighted Rolling System from January next year. In this article I shall explain how the new rating system will work. Some of it is a near repeat of the explanatory article that was published in the August Newsletter. The rest will be new. In the examples, the ratings ore my own, but since I do not have complete records, the calculations do not match my current rating. Rating points The descriptions so far refer to "tournament ratings" and "tournament rating points", so I'll start with an explanation of those terms. They apply equally to the old and new systems. Full examples are given in the Handbook. Consider my performance at the recent Stoke Rochford tournament: Round Opponent Ratine Won Lost 1 Moira Conway 158 • 2 Steve Balment 167 • 3 Shanker Mcnon 167 • 4 Helen Greenaway 167 • 5 Richard Evana 195 • 6 Simon Carter 167 • 7 Rob Dowse 160 • 8 Nuala Clenaghan 159 • 9 Sheila Spate 174 • 10 Martin Bloomberg 156 • 11 Bob Violett 175 • 12 Martin Bloomberg 156 • Total 2001 5 7 Adding the ratings of all my opponents gives 2001. I add 50 points for each of the 5 games I won, and subtract 50 for each of the 7 games I lost; 2001 + 250 - 350 is 1901 tournament rating points. My tournament rating for that event is the average number of rating points per game, which is 1901/12, or 158.42, which rounds to 158. There are some complicating details which don't happen here, but which have to be taken into account when the ratings are calculated. If players of markedly different ratings play (i.e. more than 40 points apart) then the rating difference is fixed at 40.