Average points scored in a game of Scrabble.

2016 July 11 at 05:21 » Tagged as :scrabble, koth, pairing, django,

What is a good score in a game of Scrabble? Nigel Richards averages 462.54 in international tournaments. He has gone past 400 points 84.41% of the time. Craig Beavers averages 438.59 and has gone past 400 points 73.34% of the time. Mind you these are international tournaments where they would be coming up against strong opponents most of the time. Their averages would go up considerably if national level and state level tournaments were also taken into consideration. Anyway, this is not an exhaustive study on average game score, it's merely a study on the use of average game scores to evaluate the fairness of the pairing system (what's colloquialy know as the draw).

At the Age Group Scrabble Championship 2016, weaker players struggled to pass 300, the top rated players notched up 500+ and even 600+ scores with ease. That was due to a huge disparity between the top players who are some of the best young Scrabblers in the world and others who compete only at the domestic level. This disparity makes it possible to use the average number of points scored by each player as an indicator of the leve of competition faced by that player.

Position Name Wins Margin Mean Points
13 Hasindu Arumapperuma 4 1409 506
1 Aabid Ismail 6 829 475
37 Thirandi De Silva 3 660 461
14 Shakeel Ahamed Ajim 4 754 459
3 Hayati Rassool 5 738 450
38 Janidu Karunarathne 3 619 443
15 Vignesh Pirapaharan 4 494 434
16 Hemaka Gunasekera 4 492 432
20 Janul De Silva 4 404 429
2 Migara Jayasinghe 5 746 428

Table 1 Average (mean) points per game and marging sorted by average points

Janul won the prize for highest game score by racking up 646 in the first round. Despite two losses defending champion Hasindu averaged 506 per game, 31 points higher than the new champion's average. Hasindu had three scores between 500 - 600 and once scored 625. Hasindu’s lowest score was 367. That means Hasindu’s lowest score is higher that 91% of scores in the entire tournament.

As with many other comparisons for this event Aabid is right up there with the best. It shows that despite it’s faults King Of The Hill (KOTH) is capable of selecting a champion. However only three other prize winners make it to this list.

37th placed Thirandi averaged 461 per game which is the third highest despite losing three games and she has a healthy margin of 660 points too (sixth highest among all players). Janidu with 443 was 38th. Compare this with an average of 259 for 36th placed Jithmi Linara.

 

Position Name Wins Margin Mean Points
1 Aabid Ismail 6 829 475
2 Migara Jayasinghe 5 746 428
3 Hayati Rassool 5 738 450
4 Hansi Weerasooriya 5 630 425
5 Radinka Dissanayake 5 574 421
6 Rehan Wijesekera 5 481 427
7 Danusha Muhandiramge 5 421 406
8 Yenuli Hewage 5 417 379
9 Navodya Jayaratna 5 400 383
10 Akshai Yogalingam 5 269 326

Table 2 Average scores for the prize winners

The first 7 prize winners have very respectable average number of points scored but for the last three places the spread and the average per game is much below par.

Position Name Wins Margin Mean Points
2 Migara Jayasinghe 5 746 428
1 Aabid Ismail 6 829 475
20 Janul De Silva 4 404 429
13 Hasindu Arumapperuma 4 1409 506
38 Janidu Karunarathne 3 619 443
21 Thavalakshman Yoganathan 4 390 381
3 Hayati Rassool 5 738 450
5 Radinka Dissanayake 5 574 421
37 Thirandi De Silva 3 660 461
15 Vignesh Pirapaharan 4 494

434

 

Table 3 Average scores for the rated players.

Though six of the rated players have not managed to get on the prize list, they have done very well in terms of average points score. The lowest amongst them is 381 by Thavalakshman. He would be disapointed with that. But it is still a respectable score.

So in conclusion it can be seen that King Of The Hill is grossly unfair if you use Average Points Score as a measure of performance. Earlier we looked at Buchholz score and Average Opponent Rank to find that KOTH has been grossly unfair.

Do I rest my case? Not yet. We will next look at Aristomancy to judge the effectiveness of the pairing system