I played Nigel Richards, the Scrabble GOAT
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- čas přidán 15. 04. 2024
- With a record-shattering ten combined North American and World Scrabble titles to his name and superhuman word-finding and calculation skills, Nigel Richards is the undisputed Scrabble GOAT. Hearing that Nigel is your next opponent will strike fear into even the most seasoned grandmaster's heart.
But that's exactly what happened to me in round 16 of the 2018 North American Scrabble Championship. Was I able to notch a coveted victory over the GOAT, or was I yet another victim to his genius? It was an unforgettable battle, so you won't want to miss this deep dive into some GOAT strategy in this fascinating game! - Hry
Nigel's far better at finding 9's and 10's than us so he probably secretly favors plays like KINO for that very reason...
Quite possibly! I like to think I’m better at finding such words than most humans whose name isn’t Nigel Richards, so maybe I ought to start doing that more hehe
I particularly enjoy that it took until 9½ minutes into the video to see ANY horizontal plays. These boys love an overlap.
Haha happens more often than you’d think!
In my heart, Mack, you are absolutely the goat of Scrabble!
U wrong
Thanks so much, really appreciate it! 😀
After that 9 tile bingo, this game was going nowhither.
Haha indeed!
Nigel's beard supports a diverse ecological habitat and is home to a previously undiscovered species of pygmy shrew.
Some folks were hoping his skills would wane when he shaved his beard at some point a few years ago. These folks were sorely disappointed.
I will remember this as Nigel's Y game
I think Championship Player just does a many-ply sim. I looked through a few of the sim variations where Mack won after NITON (using the "log sim to file" function). In many of these, bot-Nigel leaves the ER in NOWHITHER open when it could play something like CARP, CARR, or WART to clinch or almost-clinch the game; in others, it does something like play WARM when CARR would have guaranteed victory. I would guess NITON wins less than 1% of the time.
NONELITE sometimes wins when Nigel has no vowels, like Mack said, and also in some cases when Mack draws a big play in two spots and Nigel's rack is relatively clunky, like Mack draws AMOPSUW (AWMOUS) or AAACMOW (MACAW).
Yeah i think the problem with the current version of Quackle is it doesn't the probablity of opponent blocking your play spot into account like Will explained in his video of Nigel vs Jesse.
Thanks Sam! That makes total sense. And good call about winning with some draws after NONELITE that don't leave Nigel vowelless, that's probably why it's even as high as 4% and change (the odds that Nigel drew no vowels pulling 7 from a 9C/5V pool is only like 1% if my math is right)
i saw the 9 which makes me think i've seen this game before lol
congratulations on 3k subs!!!!
Thanks so much!
Here from you know who's video, glad he sent us your way. Nice video. Idk i guess the only bad thing i could say is sound quality, but im 33 years old. I've heard much worse from million dollar companies, and im sure that with success, you will address the issue 🙂
Thanks! And appreciate the feedback, yeah I acknowledge my sound quality isn't quite up to par with some other creators but it's still better than it used to be and I haven't yet invested in a more acoustically friendly setup. Maybe someday if I have enough success as you said :)
I'm no mathemagician, but I feel like drawing 5 specific tiles from a set of 14 isn't terribly unlikely. Math is quite often unintuitive, though, and I'm decades out from my statistics classes (and my statistics classes wouldn't have equipped me for this question anyways), so I could be way wrong on this.
Yeah it’s definitely unlikely but not an outlandish possibility, 4% or so seems believable
If you're talking about 22:20 and drawing either OPRST or ORSTT from the bag, then the chances of that are only 6 out of 2002. (I guess that theoretically, Nigel and Mack could each play off just one tile and Mack would get a second crack at the perfect draw, but I don't think there's any possible universe in which that would happen.)
One play which can lead to sharp positions is the counterintuitive ON 13M for 16 points. If Nigel didn't draw the O or C, it is really hard for him to block that area after, so he will often make a play like (D)AWT. Then you can play L(A) or N(A) to leave one in the bag and then you will have lanes on both sides of the board. He may be able to outrun this, but I am not sure if it's a guarantee
Interesting idea! My instinct tells me he'll often outrun this especially if he has a play at A11 but I'm not positive
@@mackmeller I think he often needs to worry about triple triples that A11 wouldn't be on the table for him
I saw the rack at 15:30 and immediately thought of the bingo HITHERTO, but unfortunately that doesn't play anywhere. Oh well - still proud of spotting that.
Nice!
The edit at 16:30 makes me think you first pronounced it as NOW-HITHER and didn't want to leave that in? But mispronouncing words is the true hallmark of a great Scrabble player 😀
Haha wow good eye Alex, you're right! I think I actually mispronounced NITON, but I wasn't really concerned about that, though I did want to pronounce the star word of the video correctly :)
Nonelite seems the best option.
Saw this nowhither play from will's video on "AUF" but never thought the opponent is you!
Ah I forgot it was in that video! Yep it was me haha :)
16:33 I actually got the "hither" part of that, but couldn't see a place for it, was thinking about making the blank an S for "HITHERs"... I'll take it. (And then I realized that I could do T for tHITHER)
Nice!
Yeah, me too. I was looking for HITHERTO somewhere, but did not see NOWHITHER.
nowhither is crazy, i cant imagine someone playing a word like that against me😢
I couldn't either... until it happened!
i didnt know nigel ever competed in nwl!
Yeah he competes in NWL, CSW, French, and who knows what next!
6:39 CROOK is a bit of a mediocre, "meh" play and Nigel just figured that ain't no such thing as halfway CROOK.
8:25 There’s no such thing as a bad bingo tile man. Especially for players with such a high scrabble vocabulary.
Quackle's championship player often shows complete nonsense in the preendgame (simming might be a little bit better, but still far from the truth). Recently I had a 2-in-the-bag situation where it identified an "always winning play", which in reality had only 30/36 odds of winning (I manually went through all 36 possible endgames after that supposedly "always winning move"). With 7 in the bag it's much more complicated and harder to tell, but I wouldn't be surprised if those percents are off by a lot.
Yeah for sure, always good to be skeptical of its evaluations in these cases haha
22:00 interesting. so you're saying that computer resources can't accurately judge the endgame even with like 14 tiles left? I would expect this is feasible at this depth.
perhaps quackle thought NITON was better because, if nigel didn’t have a C to begin his bottom-right blocking play, a lot of plays there would open new bingo lines as well?
i could be totally wrong but that’s all i can come up with
That’s a good point - he probably often overlaps though instead of playing thru the R, which would be a problem
Are these games played on a timer like in professional chess?
Yep! 25 minutes per side per game. The difference from chess is you don't lose on the spot if you go over, but you do lose 10 points per minute over (or part thereof), so you of course want to avoid it if possible still.
@@mackmellerSo you tournament players are on a timer. And you do things like….try to set up hooks for yourself. And try to draw specific tiles from the bag. And sacrifice your top point tiles. And try to guess what the other person might have even if there are still 50 tiles left in the bag as part of your strategy. Any time I try to do these things, it never works. You’ve got to play using the tiles you have and get as much value as possible out of tiles like the Q and the Z. At least until the end game.
What about NOIL at 15K for 17? If Nigel didn’t draw the S, it will be difficult for him to block the spot effectively, especially without emptying the bag. Even a play like AT on top still allows for -ERS words to fit, and if Nigel empties the bag and you bingo out on the left, I think it would often be enough. I do think I would have probably just played NONELITE here (which certainly is not descriptive of either of these players) :)
Ooh that's a really cool idea! ENT as a leave should also hit way more bingos down the C column than EL after NITON since both the N and T can go next to the U in ENDURE. I feel like I draw the S and a good enough rack often enough that it should win more than NONELITE, but not positive. Either way great find!
Wish ❤🎉
How about TONNE down that A11 triple lane, does that just not score enough?
The issue isn't so much that it doesn't score enough, it's that it gets rid of my E (and there are none left) so I can't possibly hit a bingo down the C column making RE. So Nigel just blocks on the right and I have nowhere to bingo, so I'm sunk.
@@mackmeller fair, I knew there were problems with it, my brain just latched on and refused to let go.
I think once you get to endgame decisions against the GOAT chances of winning are slim
Mack is def a great player
Thanks! And yeah for sure, I knew my chances were bad after NONELITE but still haven't seen an option I like better suggested
Woof.
Love holding a Y. It is all the iiiiiiis which I hate. I thought TOILE may be a good move for you near the end there.
TOILE does score a lot but the problem is keeping NN is really bad for bingoing, and Nigel can just block the left and I'm pretty much lost. Nice find though!
@@mackmeller I totally get that. I only play CSW anyway so know nothing about US Scrabble. Good vid though. Nigel is definitely godlike.
first
Yay thanks for watching!
I'm not sure I would call Mack the goat, he doesn't seem to do that well at Nationals. At least for NWL, I'd consider Josh Sokol the goat in that lexicon, the best players now are better than the best players 10 years ago, and he's the most recent champion. Jackson Smilie is probably also the GOAT. I will say while Nigel is a really good player, I don't like that we can't see any of his most recent games, mostly because he never plays in the US, and really it looks like he just hardly plays at all for years. Hardly a GOAT in my opinion.
Hmm, your take seems fairly divorced from reality.
Even if you can't judge the quality of his play, consider that top players (obviously including the people you just named) unanimously consider Nigel to be both the historical GOAT and current best player.
You could also subtract from Nigel's trophy case all the championships won by the second and third most decorated players of the past 30 years (David Eldar and Joel Sherman), and he'd still have the most.
Just for the benefit of anyone else reading, this is not a very informed opinion. The degree of Nigel's dominance does not leave any room for doubt, and all the players named in this comment agree. Google "Nigel pernoctated" to find a thorough article on the topic :)
Nigel won a French tournament without speaking French. Need I say more
@@BalI00ns honestly not relevant.