Scrabble online

[Martin Gardner]

I'm sure a few of you play on the Internet Scrabble Club (virtually always known as the ISC). The good side is that you can play as many games as you want for free. There are seven different dictionaries as well so the site appeals to a lot of people. I know Jette7 (only in French) is basically a pay site to do something you can do for free on the ISC. And it's not even as good as it!

The downsides... everybody cheats, or seemingly so! I just played Dwanepipe who's not only a brilliant player in English, he's also got a high rating in OWL (USA) and ODS (French). Coincidentally those are the three dictionaries you can download for free from the site. Unfortunately the sort of thing is dirt common, either you put up with it or you dont'. A lot of tournament players won't touch online Scrabble because of this. I know Brett Smitheram who was BrettS on the ISC wrote "tired of playing all the infinite cheats on here, so not playing at all".

I just put up with it and try to stick to people I know. If someone has a brilliant game against me I do tend to check that they haven't done all "optimal" solutions but generally I won't get into an argument about it anymore because there will always be another cheat later on. But in fairness, playing computer players all the time is boring and there are a lot of good players on the ISC so I wouldn't advocate giving up Internet Scrabble all together because you miss out on too much.

Martin

[Ben Wilson]

I just put up with it and try to stick to people I know.

Generally speaking, the best attitude towards this sort of thing. I rarely play on isc nowadays- the official facebook scrabble game has me hooked- but when I do I never play anyone outside my friends list, or who isn't an ABSP member/regular player.

[Charlie Reams]

At least one paid-up and respectably rated ABSP member cheats filthily on ISC. I just consider it like playing against a bot. A lot of the time novice players will overrule the computer opponent and end up playing something worse, so if anything it's probably easier than that.

[Joseph Bolas]

The downsides... everybody cheats, or seemingly so! I just played Dwanepipe who's not only a brilliant player in English, he's also got a high rating in OWL (USA) and ODS (French). Coincidentally those are the three dictionaries you can download for free from the site. Unfortunately the sort of thing is dirt common, either you put up with it or you dont'. A lot of tournament players won't touch online Scrabble because of this. I know Brett Smitheram who was BrettS on the ISC wrote "tired of playing all the infinite cheats on here, so not playing at all".

I used to play on ISC under the username ilawwaq, but like you have said, people cheat all the time and its hard to work out if your opponent is playing fairly. If I knew someone but didn't know how good of a Scrabble player they were, I would still be skeptical of them.

I prefer to play Scrabble in public instead of online, but I have added the Scrabble application on Facebook, hoping that there will be an option soon to play against a computerised opponent. You can still cheat on it, but its practice I suppose for when I play in public.

[Martin Gardner]

At least one paid-up and respectably rated ABSP member cheats filthily on ISC. I just consider it like playing against a bot. A lot of the time novice players will overrule the computer opponent and end up playing something worse, so if anything it's probably easier than that.

Yeah my opponent today just played the highest scoring move every time, including a blank on a 35 point play. Anyone who plays like an ISC bot with less tactical play, well... I won't even comment lol.

Martin

[Martin Gardner]

Just as annoying as cheats are really good players that don't fill in their profile, so people think they cheat. One player who ended up in my noplay list is now ranked 4th out of 1593 in the French world ratings... but how am I supposed to know that if there's nothing in his profile?

Martin

[Ben Wilson]

Just as annoying as cheats are really good players that don't fill in their profile, so people think they cheat. One player who ended up in my noplay list is now ranked 4th out of 1593 in the French world ratings... but how am I supposed to know that if there's nothing in his profile?

Martin

THAT is a serious annoyance of mine. I think I've seen a case before where he says 'I'm rated over 160 and play in lots of tourneys but I don't want to reveal my identity to you'. Kinda likely we've met then, bellend!

And the regular players cheating online... yeah. Rather a lot has been written on that subject.

[Martin Gardner]

I think people forget as well that the poorer cheats are using anagrams solvers that don't use SOWPODS so even if they do miss a bingo it doesn't mean they're not cheating. And as Soo indicated, if they're using something that finds the words and not the places, they'll often be missing big scores and bingoes even though they have all the available words from the rack.

Still someone suggested to me that Lewis Mackay was cheating a few years ago when he was 1900+ on the ISC... and now he's got a 202 ratings in the UK, joint-second, only the current world champion is ranked ahead of him.

Martin

[Joseph Bolas]

And as Soo indicated, if they're using something that finds the words and not the places, they'll often be missing big scores and bingoes even though they have all the available words from the rack.

They may not win if they don't know the right places, thus making it pointless for them to cheat, but would you still want to play against that type of player?

[Jon O'Neill]

I quite enjoy playing the cheats. In my ISC experience, the people who cheat are the same people who are easily wound up. A lot of the time I only really played on ISC to wind up the idiots with a short fuse, so trash-talking to someone who is cheating, then beating them, made me feel jolly big indeed.

One of my old friends from school cheated against me at Scrabble (Cheaty Mike, i called him) so I went to his house and fucked him up over a real board. Awesome!

[Ben Wilson]

Still someone suggested to me that Lewis Mackay was cheating a few years ago when he was 1900+ on the ISC... and now he's got a 202 ratings in the UK, joint-second, only the current world champion is ranked ahead of him.

Martin

...And is now unbeaten in his last 22 ABSP rated games.

And I remember cheaty Mike- does he still play online or does he still require therapy/stitches from the damage done to his arse?

[Joseph Bolas]

I don't know if you can on ISC (been ages since I played), but what slightly annoys me about the Facebook Scrabble application is that you are not allowed to play swear words etc. If you have the rack CEFKRSU, then there should be nothing wrong with playing the word FUCKERS, because it exists in the Tournaments and Clubs Word List dictionary which is supposedly the dictionary that is used with the application.

[Charlie Reams]

I don't know if you can on ISC (been ages since I played), but what slightly annoys me about the Facebook Scrabble application is that you are not allowed to play swear words etc. If you have the rack CEFKRSU, then there should be nothing wrong with playing the word FUCKERS, because it exists in the Tournaments and Clubs Word List dictionary which is supposedly the dictionary that is used with the application.

Are you sure about that? Jono and I have played a variety of naughty grown-up words and have never had a problem, although I don't remember trying FUCK or any variant thereof. There was an expurgated Scrabble players dictionary published in America (OSPD3 I think?) at some point which was considered "safe for school", but I've never heard of it being used in the untamed wastelands of the Internet.

[Joseph Bolas]

Are you sure about that? Jono and I have played a variety of naughty grown-up words and have never had a problem, although I don't remember trying FUCK or any variant thereof. There was an expurgated Scrabble players dictionary published in America (OSPD3 I think?) at some point which was considered "safe for school", but I've never heard of it being used in the untamed wastelands of the Internet.

Well I am just going by the Scrabble application on Facebook, I don't know about ISC.

What exactly do you mean by rude words? According to the Scrabble word checker, you can actually have GOBSHITE , but I haven't found any other allowable swear words.

[Craig Beevers]

I came across dumbshit on JumbleTime a while ago which I thought was quite nice.

[Charlie Reams]

I came across dumbshit on JumbleTime a while ago which I thought was quite nice.

Haha. I like APESHIT too.

[Joseph Bolas]

I came across dumbshit on JumbleTime a while ago which I thought was quite nice.

Haha. I like APESHIT too.

You can have SHITHEAD too I believe, but would've thought that was two words.

[Martin Gardner]

Talking of online cheats, does anyone know Dandls on the ISC? He actually does the English WSC and the French one, although he didn't do either last year. The problem is he's usually in the bottom 10 of both, yet on the ISC he plays like a world champion. Last time he did the English WSC he finished with 6 wins out of 24, average score of 356 points per game. On the ISC he's about 450 points a game. It's the same thing in French, he managed to win 4 games out of 12 in 2006, and on the ISC he's more like 470 points per game. To be honest if he's not cheating, he's probably the worst pressure player of all time. I'm being completely serious.

Martin

[Ben Wilson]

Is that Dan Sandu? Might need to have someone look into that...

[Martin Gardner]

Yeah and I know what I said sounds harsh - indeed I've not only met him but we've been for a beer together. We even played a game together using the "multi" dictionary on the ISC, but in real life (I won). I can confirm he's a nice guy. But the statistics real life/ISC are really really one-sided.

[Charlie Reams]

Yeah and I know what I said sounds harsh - indeed I've not only met him but we've been for a beer together. We even played a game together using the "multi" dictionary on the ISC, but in real life (I won). I can confirm he's a nice guy. But the statistics real life/ISC are really really one-sided.

If you graph the ISC and ABSP ratings against each other for the top players, you'll see a similarly huge "outliar".

[Martin Gardner]

I was actually talking about average score rather than ratings. If you look at his participation in the WSC,

2005 : average 358
2003 : average 378
2001 : average 359

For the others I can't find the information on the net, but we're seriously talking about average 100 points more per game on the Internet than in real life. Say about 13 moves per game, that's about 8 points per move extra. I just don't buy it at all.

Martin

[Ben Wilson]

I was actually talking about average score rather than ratings. If you look at his participation in the WSC,

2005 : average 358
2003 : average 378
2001 : average 359

For the others I can't find the information on the net, but we're seriously talking about average 100 points more per game on the Internet than in real life. Say about 13 moves per game, that's about 8 points per move extra. I just don't buy it at all.

Martin

DAMN. That is a discrepancy and a half. Especially over such a large sample of games such as an entire ISC career.

For some unknown reason I'm always the other way around- averaging around 380-390 online and around 410 IRL. :-/ Then again, I take pride in being a weirdo.

[Martin Gardner]

DAMN. That is a discrepancy and a half. Especially over such a large sample of games such as an entire ISC career.

For some unknown reason I'm always the other way around- averaging around 380-390 online and around 410 IRL. :-/ Then again, I take pride in being a weirdo.

I averaged 407 at Peterborough and my average on the ISC is about 385 after a string of losses. It does depend on whether you're on a winning streak or a losing streak, as the ISC claims to keep your average "for the last 10 games" but actually it just multiplies your old average by 0.9 and your most recent game by 0.1, so if you score 0 ten games in a row, you will still have a positive average score (NB I've seen someone do it). If I'm on a winning streak on the ISC I can get up to about 415.

Martin

Edit: Peterborough not Lincoln.

[JimBentley]

I was actually talking about average score rather than ratings. If you look at his participation in the WSC,

2005 : average 358
2003 : average 378
2001 : average 359

For the others I can't find the information on the net, but we're seriously talking about average 100 points more per game on the Internet than in real life. Say about 13 moves per game, that's about 8 points per move extra. I just don't buy it at all.

Martin

Is this so strange, though?

Placed 100th in 2005. Placed 85th in 2003. Placed 84th in 2001.

There's about 100 or so competitors in the WSC, so that means he lost most of his games all three times. So the averages are bound to be skewed quite dramatically downwards, aren't they? Presumably he doesn't lose most of his games on ISC, so can easily maintain a much higher average.

I may be talking bollocks though, 100 points per game difference does seem a lot.

[Charlie Reams]

ISC claims to keep your average "for the last 10 games" but actually it just multiplies your old average by 0.9 and your most recent game by 0.1, so if you score 0 ten games in a row, you will still have a positive average score

So, given that the average score is only given to one decimal place, it's effectively only an average over the last 4 games? Wow. I knew ISC was ineptly programmed but that's a new low.

Jim makes a good point though. You'd need to look at equity loss or something more opponent-independent before being too critical.