Noah repeatedly using 'amount of . . . ' when it should be 'number of . . .'. One would expect such a talented wordsmith to know the correct usage.

Nitya has a lovely voice and is my favorite Scrabble commentator/analyst. She would be perfect for voice over acting for animated films, doing roles like Pocahontas or a princess. Maybe voice overs for video game characters too.

Penthias

Lecanora

Quartals really should be in the dictionary... it's not an uncommon word in classical music

Untufted

Oh man, 32:10. He would’ve made so much point for “Compiler” if “Le” was a word. Just saying

Thomas the pretender, Charles the one true Reinke

Very impressive. I think my longest tournament winning streak is about 4.

Wow - great job guys! Excellent commentary; both sharing your thoughts and trying to get into the heads of each player. Matt Canik and team did a great job throughout - very respectful of everyone. Morris provided a wonderful viewpoint. Although Morris should be glad he didn't put money on the line. When game 3 started, he said I'd give Mack a 15-20% chance of winning the tournament! 😂 Yet to keep my attention for 5 hours is quite a feat! And I played at SPC and learned a ton there and from this video.

"AI", "GI", "TA", "RE"... wtf, have I been playing scrabble wrong? If I tried to pull that in a family game I'd be drop-kicked down the driveway. What kind of street rules is this?

Really well played by both players. Loved the egg fake play. Announcers are A++++++

Happy 6 years

These players are all a million times better than me. But I don’t understand why you’d empty the bag giving your opponent and easy opportunity of out in two and the win.

Chloe has been working HARD, very well deserved

Wow - I played at SPC - some of those pictures must be at least 10 years old! Motivated me to change my 7-year-old picture.

Great Speech! Congrats Mack.

“Now you’re thinking with quartals.” (There’s got to be some overlap between Scrabble players and the reference I’m making by way of pun, yes?)

Awesome game and great commentary. Matt and Morris are an incredible team. Hopefully they will continue to work together. Morris is brilliant with extension plays he sees. Matt is always hilarious and insightful.

skeigher#

Just finished watching back this stream - thank you both for the great coverage!

Seth: (G)RIZ +15 400 Chloe: VEN(OM) +20 424 Seth: D(E)L +8 408 blocking UT(E) Chloe: (PI)U +5 429 Seth: (Z)EN +24 432 Seth: (T) +2 434

Instead of bloc, I thought Seth should play za for 9 to unload z and leave two in bag.

oops

Really well played by both players. Pilchard was an epic find. Mack was also incredible.

Great game. Matt’s comment about the San Antonio club and their tells was super interesting.

I’m a lousy player, but even I figured out that quoin was not a good option. It gave easy points to Mack. Quango or even qi seemed much better.

Wears a mask, touches it near his mouth, handles the tile-bag, passes the bag with his germs to opponent. Brilliant.

It would be easier to watch if the letters on the tiles were white instead of grey.

MACK-nificent display till the end 🤯

they adjudicated KIBE on the NWL computer

Me next?

I saw VIBEX on the JEU turn. I just wanted to play defense for some reason.

I love these close games. Thanks for the production and announcing team. Super fun!

Beautiful

👏👏👏👏

Enjoyable to watch. But I love close end games. And this wasn’t close at all. Not a blowout - but the outcome wasn’t in doubt the last 7-8 turns.

Chloe seems like such a nice/fun/brilliant person anyway ... but what a special award to win for her!!! Nice Chloe!!!

Game 5 was one game with $5,000 (not $10,000) on the line, because Ian received $5,000.

yet another tight loss 4 chloe... & QuARTALS staying on 👀

As a former poker pro, I might read that quick confident play as more likely to be a bluff than a real play. A few things here: 1) One of the most basic “tell” rules is “strong means weak; weak means strong.” Visible displays of strength (such as quick confident actions or staring down your opponent) are typically signs of weakness (in non-pros). Similarly, acting weak (not making eye contact, taking unusually long amounts of time to make a decision, etc) are usually signs of strength. The idea here is most people know poker is a game of deception, but they don’t understand how to be deceptive except on the most surface of levels. This is one of the best known tells in poker, being a subject of several pages in Mike Caro’s book on reading tells (still seen as the most fundamental tell reading book by most poker players, albeit most modern players value tells a lot less and rely on math/game theory a lot more when it comes to this sort of thing, at least against other pros. Against the fish, however, sharks will use whatever gets them the most to eat.) 2) Acting quickly means someone is more likely to be bluffing. This may apply more to poker, but the idea is simple- a quick action is more likely to be a bluff because it happens when you know bluffing is your only chance to win, whereas with most other hands you probably have to think about whether you’re better off betting (and if so, how much to bet, unless you’re playing limit where bet sizes are forced) or checking. To say it more precisely, a quick bet is more likely to be either a complete bluff or an unbeatable hand; it will rarely be anything in between unless your opponent is a sophisticated player (pros, generally) AND you know they know you are similarly sophisticated (pro), where you could be going into a leveling situation. Against most players, this tell is pretty reliable (it then becomes up to the player to figure out if it worth acting on, and what that action is, but it still is a good clue to work with in a lot of cases.) So this particular case is both played quickly (especially by the standard of how quickly he usually plays) and is trying to appear visibly strong and confident, and those two in combination would lead me to think about challenging if I had any doubt about the validity of the word. Something tells me Rafi knows better when he plays poker, and likely figured that, short of being up against another poker-literate scrabble player, it isn’t worth worrying about. Still, I wouldn’t attribute the way he played it to his poker background, as most poker players with a significant background in the game will be aware of at least one of the two above.

is there any replay of the CSW finals?

AURIS is a big mistake; it allows SHRiN(A)L which I missed. I should have played YA.

Great game. Loved the announcers insight - brilliant.

I saw ABORE and wasn't sure of it, knowing there's a phony that looks like it ... that phony is ABORN*.

Brutal

Mack is brilliant

riz

Well played by both.

I wonder why Chloe played SIZY at 6H vs O12. Playing at O12 would have scored more points. Wonder what I'm missing.