“Without a decisive naval force we can do nothing definitive, and with it, everything honorable and glorious.”
— President George Washington
Here are some potential tips/strategies for your naval battles this weekend:
http://www.boardgamebeast.com/battleship-strategy.html
http://twiceover.blogspot.com/2007/04/battleship-strategies-and-stuff.html
http://www.ehow.com/way_5772052_battleship-game-strategy.html
Here are a couple of links that may help you in next weekend’s Spades tournament:
Basic strategies: http://www.gamesinfodepot.com/games/cards/spades/strategy/
Advanced and situational strategies: http://home.att.net/~masterspades/strategy.htm
The format for the upcoming Spades event has been changed: It is no longer a double-elimination tournament.
In an effort to keep the length of events under control, the league has decided to use a two-phase approach. Phase one will be a round-robin format in which all players play the same number of games within a three-hour period. Following the round-robin portion, the top four players will advance to phase two: a mini bracketed tournament to determine first through fourth place.
Ranking of players — to determine who advances and the order of players who don’t — will be determined by the number of wins during the round robin portion. If there is a tie, the cumulative scores for all games will be used as a tie-breaker.
Please contact the league if you have any questions.
Congratulations to William (ATL) and Krystal (PDX) on winning gold at the inaugural event of the 2010 Card/Board League season!
Willow and Dave won silver and bronze in Portland, and Claire and Katherine finished two-three in Atlanta. Not coincidentally, William and Claire also won gold and silver at last year’s Scrabble event. This will be a rivalry to watch as the season continues.
William also won all three bonus awards in Atlanta, extending his lead in the overall standings. In Portland, three different players won bonus awards creating a tight race on the West Coast. But this is only the first event and league watchers expect the standings to fluctuate as the season continues.
To see the full standings, visit http://cardboardleague.com/standings/
The Scrabble tournament is coming soon (Sign up if you haven’t yet). Seasoned players Jessica, Krystal and Tara have a few tips to help you get ready:
- Learn a few Q words that don’t require U’s, like QI and QAT.
- SUQ (“an Arab marketplace”) and QAT (“an Arabian shrub”) are the most important words you can know to use up a Q. One doesn’t require a U and the other has the Q after the U.
- Each turn’s score is important, but so is making sure your rack stays balanced. If you have five vowels and two consonants, don’t play just your two consonants — you risk pulling even more vowels! It’s usually worth playing a lower scoring word if you need to ditch some tiles that are making your rack really hard to play.
- Remember the musical dealie, “do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do.”
- Don’t overly focus on building the perfect word in your rack. Use the best premium squares (triple-letter score!) and build a word around that.
- You should never play an S for less than 30 points.
- If you score out possible plays on a turn, you’ll find that the long single words almost never score as many points as a shorter one that places a high-scoring letter on a premium tile.
- Simple words bring big points if they’re placed right! Look for more than one word per turn by watching both vertical and horizontal placements.
- Good Scrabblin’ takes PRACTICE.
- Good at memorizing? http://www.k5m.org/uhx/2letterwords.tiff
- Never, ever play something that opens up a triple word score tile for your opponent. They WILL use it, even if it’s with low scoring tiles, so you can’t. And if they can pull off even a moderately good word, you could be in the hole by 50+ points in a single turn.
Commissioners Curt and Mike are raising the stakes for this year’s inter-city competition. Both are confident enough in their hometown players to put some of their own skin into the game:
The commissioner whose city loses the Grand Championship will shave his head.
Welcome to the 2010 season of Card/Board League. We’ve made some changes in order to make sure that this year will be the biggest and best season yet!
The biggest change is the addition of a Portland charter for players in the Pacific Northwest. Players in Atlanta and Portland will play the same events throughout the season and the best player from each city will compete for the league championship in the fall. Think of it like the World Series of Card/Board League!
After listening to valuable feedback from players, the league has revised the scoring system for each event to make it more consistent and easier to understand. Players will receive points based on what place they finish at each event. First place is worth 100 points, second is worth 90, third is worth 85, and so on. For a complete list, please refer to the About section of the league web site.
In order to defray the costs of the league, including medals, games and supplies and logistics for the championship event, each event will have a small entry fee.
Speaking of events, we’ve got some old favorites and some new challenges this year. First up is Scrabble on February 20 — register now — followed by Spades, Battleship, Poker, Backgammon, Magic: The Gathering, Chess and Cribbage.
We look forward to a fun and competitive season! Please let us know if you have any questions or comments.
Curt Merrill
League Commissioner
Mike Merrill
Commissioner, PDX Charter
Curt sports the official colors of the CBL.
