

Scrabble and other games have overvalued points - michael_dorfman
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123731266862258869.html?mod=rss_Today%27s_Most_Popular

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clobbered
I am confused. There is only one Z in the game, so the only way to get ZZZ
would be to use both blanks, which would get you a lousy 10 base points. Given
a blank should normally give you an out, you would be 100-150 points worse off
if you played ZZZ instead of a word already in the dictionary.

So I hardly see what the issue is. Okay, so Q is a little bit easier to dump -
but you could dump it pretty easily with qat anyway.

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trominos
The ability to form two words containing Z/Q rather than one in a single play
is a fairly big deal.

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mhb
Why would the NHL want to offer an incentive for longer games? Maybe people
buy more beer and food?

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r7000
I believe it was the idea that: "Americans don't like tie games" combined with
4-on-4 hockey and shoot-outs will create many more short exciting scenarios
that can be shown as news clips on sports shows.

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time_management
Word games are an example of a genre of game that becomes utterly different at
expert/professional levels than what it is at the amateur level.

For amateurs, it's a game of vocabulary, whereas it's more of a strategic game
at professional levels. <http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?a=6517#36>

Although the scores for the letters might need to be re-calibrated; especially
for a word game, Scrabble holds up extremely well at high levels of skill.

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stcredzero
Overvalued points introduce a lot of fun and drama to the game. Sort of like
the exponential escalation in Risk.

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xenophanes
risk card values go up pretty linearly.

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stcredzero
Yes, but capturing someone else's territory and cards can double your
effective strength.

