A story of what 10 year old me learned losing at National Scrabble Championships

-Games can be all skill, all luck or a mix

-In the luck/skill mixed games hard to know what is skill or luck

-Life events are a mix of “luck” and “skill” 

-Hope for the best but plan for the worst

-Mind set is important 

-Negative mindset will tilt games away from you 

-Even at the best skill, poor luck will lose games as in life. 

-Many good outcomes are due to luck as in life 

-Stand in the sunshine* when good luck comes - this is for life events or even whole life circumstances. 

-Keep a positive mindset even when you lose games.  Rolling a double six happens 1 out of 36 times.  Play a decent number of games and you will see this often.

-On average, skill in the long run makes a difference - you might never see it obviously and you may never know it’s impact - so you need to keep trying regardless. 

I’ve spent a decent part of my life playing games. All types of games, card games, video games, board games.

I was OK at chess, excellent (tournament level winning s a child) at scrabble, decent at Mah Jong, moderate at most video games, decent at backgammon and a variety of board and dice games.

When thinking about games, it’s useful to know if you are playing a luck or a skill game and importantly - what the rules are! It might seem obvious on the rules, but when I draw the analogy with life, I find that people are playing by the “rules” of other games and not their own game. Thinking on games:

Chess is a game of pure skill. There are factors that can influence this skill such as mindset, sleep, hunger but essentially the game is skill. Better players will virtually always beat weaker players. 

Scrabble is mostly skill with some luck. Skill in knowing allowable words, word placement and managing rack balance, but a little luck in drawing letters. Better players will often beat weaker players.

Backgammon is a mix of skill and luck. With use of the doubling cube, it has an element of psychology as well making it simpler version of poker.  Over a run of games, the stronger players will win (or a computer) but in any one individual game, a significantly weaker player has a chance of winning.  A much higher chance than in chess or scrabble.

If you play a decent amount of backgammon, you can find out that a double six seems to happen often enough.  One in 36 times. But how does that “feel” in a long run of games?

If you played the best moves and had the stronger position but lose to a double six, does that put you on “tilt” ?  You feel the “unfairness” of the low chance luck and the inability to do anything about it - in fact you played all the correct moves but a piece of low probability resulted in a loss. 

Or, in reverse, you were losing - perhaps made some poor moves - but a lucky throw saves you ?

I was challenged with this outcome around the age of 10 while playing scrabble. I had qualified for the equivalent of the National Junior Championships in my age category. It was held at the conference centre in Baden-Powell House, off the Cromwell Road (one of the busiest in London) in South Kensington. A detail I recall as event then Baden-Powell was a figure that sparked controversy. He founded the Scouts but is also linked with controversial views on race, and he was supposedly invited to meet HItler to speak about building ties with the German youth movement at the times.

I had never stepped foot in a place of such concerted scrabble. Tables and rows of boards and letters and clocks. Even back in 1988, the fundamental techniques of good scrabble are the same as today.

A knowledge of allowable words (meaning not necessary). Especially 2 letter words, then 3 letter words then common letters / high scoring 4 letters words, words with high scoring letters in and common 7 letter words.

An idea of “rack balance”

And the ability to find words in your rack and place them down.

Back in 1988, I knew all the 2 letter words, most of the 3 letter words and had a decent understanding of rack balance and common 7 letter words.

My main rival knew the 2 letter words but not many 3 letters words, by his admission and he was mediocre at 7 letter words as the longer anagrams he found a little tough.

On paper, I was the favourite but as the day progressed I had bad letter draws and he had good letter draws. My supposed edge in skill could not over come the luck deficit. The day was decided on points scored over a number of games and I ended up second. The trophy I still have (see picture above).

There were the usual truisms trotted out.

You tried your best.

That was an unlucky draw.

Second place is still great.

But 10 year old me was still stuck with the reality that all my preparation was not enough in the face of luck and competition that was strong even if not supposedly at my level.

Children do have this sense of fairness and what might be fair or not and I recall even my rival admitted he was lucky. 

Still at this point another truism is trotted out:

Life is not fair.

My 10 year old self had to be satisfied that my process and play had been good, examine where it could be improved further and try again. Or, I had to stew in the unfairness of it all. 

Well. It was only a game of scrabble and I had also raised a decent amount for charity via sponsorship. (Never sponsor $1 a point for good scrabble players) So I managed to mentalled resolve to be in the first mindset rather than the second.

That learning I have fairly well managed to apply to many life events as well. There is an enormous amount of luck that governs our lives and we are simply not in control. Some of the luck will be catastrophic, some will be great - but through either case the mind set is important.

I’d like to say I eventually won a major scrabble tournament. I never did. I didn’t win the second and final year I played either, although I was unsure if I was better than my rivals that year.

There is another noteworthy effect of losing/winning games. Some times, when you lose a game to a poor piece of luck or even poor skill this affects your future decision making adversely.

Games players call this going on tilt and playing on tilt is bad as it leads to more game losses and typically worse game decision making.

This applies to life decision making as well. It’s typically por to make decision when on tilt either emotionally eg in an argument or when something major might have gone wrong.

Conversely, winning games can make you overconfident at times and also impact your decision making.

Still another lesson on winning is both to be gracious but enjoy yourself. Gracious under pressure, gracious when losing, gracious when winning. But to enjoy the moment in the sunshine. It will rain. It’s perfectly OK to enjoy the moments in the sun. 

More than that.

Life is about enjoying those moments in the sun as well.

In that sense, I think the stoics had a good set of ideas on overcoming and being sanguine with setbacks, but the epicureans have a good idea in enjoying the happy moments when they come.

“Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,

a medley of extemporanea,

And love is a thing that can never go wrong,

and I am Marie of Romania.”

-Gertrude Stein

JK Rowling on benefits of failure.

Me on Life Advice.