WordsWithFriends.net

Dear Friends,

As much as I enjoy facilitating and competing in these tournaments, there is a great deal of effort that goes into maintaining the site, and sometimes I fall behind in making updates. I’m going to take August as a breather, and I hope to do some more streamlining and automation on the PHP/MySQL side. We’ll come back in September better than ever. By then, if it goes according to plan, maintaining the site will be even easier for me.

In the meantime, the blog remains open for comments, and I’ll post articles of interest from time to time. People can still register for the tournaments at any time via the MyTourney tab.

If you’re itching to compete in August, please link over to http://wordswithfriendstournaments.com. My good friend Marcus runs that tournament, and I’m sure you’ll have a great experience.

Thank you for all the support and kind words as we’ve grown this community over the last few months.

Funny how fast 1,902 becomes just 16, but we’re here. These are the elites!

There were so many upsets in Rounds 6 and 7 for me (comedypace, sajeel, zdoyle, grizzgrazz, dave.foxx — all worthy players whom I expected to be in the final 16), so it’s hard for me to predict a winner. We have a crop of new players or perhaps old players who have really stepped it up.

This is all I’m going to say: I predict the winner of the July Tournament will be a woman! I won’t say which one, but I think you’re all in for a shock, because she’s pretty “slick” (and I don’t mean cheating).

• idjd
• rokwilder – Our only past winner still in the mix; gotta give him that edge
• zlamder – A dominant player; worked me over good in a friendly match recently
• wildonrio
• PSNAX
• Jesse Davis
• rfar45
• golfnphil – Fear him; I’ve seen him retire many a top player
• fongster
• 2tuff
• Scotty Poo Poo – Don’t let the name fool you; this player’s all business
• Veetus
• WWF Lover – Took down sajeel in 2…need I say more?
• _22_ – Just lost to this player in a friendly match today. A very patient and methodical player. I swear I was baited into a TW just so that he could outscore me with an ‘X’ on a DL going 2 ways. Now, who does that?!
• Meshell333
• noela67

I’m sure all the other players in the final 16 are excellent, too. I just don’t have as much exposure to them, but they’re certainly making their marks now.

Can’t wait to see who makes it to the final 8!

Here’s the breakdown on winners. A negative score means the player won 2 of 3 but was outscored for all three games combined.

Players awarded a “bye” for Round 7 are indicated in GREEN. Since there was a 3-way tie for the 7th and 8th slots, I looked at the previous round (Round 5) to determine which players should advance.

Veetus over fly by 123 (Previous Round = 62)

2tuff – no score (bye)

RockRockwell over brycekris2 by 63

cruisindee over dave.foxx by -68

Scotty Poo Poo over DavidM7501 by 328

the rlck over elistar by 32

rokwilder over eyespy31 by 62

golfnphil – no score (bye)

grizzgrazz over Ewmello – no score (forfeit)

idjd over dsyao by 123 (Previous Round = 53)

Jesse Davis over Vemuri by 116

hawksball over kevingibbs1 by 48

maz316 over cdh79 by -114

Meshell333 over claytonmathis by -20

fongster over Michelechell by 206

noela67 over comedypace by 31

PSNAX over zdoyle by 1

rfar45 over Opus61 by 15

WWF Lover over Sajeel by 261

myrna17 over sdicko by -128

cowstein over Vyper911 by 123 (Previous Round = 26)

wildonrio over kbowen25 by 165

zlamder over Kueeny by 190

_22_ over JNR82 by 201

Here’s how I intend to balance the numbers by Round 7.

Awarding “Byes”

Right now in Round 6 we have 46 active players. I am giving a pass to the only two players who have not yet been assigned at this moment: golfnphil and 2tuff. This is not merit-based, but more random in that they just happened to be drawn last. However, they will as a result be ineligible for a second “bye” opportunity based on Round 6 performance. So, ultimately, it balances the advantages.

In Round 7 I’m awarding a bye to the 8 players who post the highest total margin of victory (all 3 games) over their Round 6 opponent. Thus, even if you’re winning, show no mercy and get the most points possible to put yourself into contention for the bye. Every point counts.

Round 6

Action: 44 competitors, 2 sitting out

Result: 24 advance (22 wins + 2 byes)

Round 7

Action: 16 competitors, 8 sitting out

Result: 16 advance (8 wins + 8 byes)

Round 8

Going into Round 8 we’ll have the requisite 16 competitors and no further byes will be awarded. Straight up battle through Round 11 and a winner.

Admittedly, this wasn’t the most elegant solution, but it ensures that we get to straight division by the final 16, and no one who loses gets a second chance.

It’s nice when it works out like this, isn’t it? This one submitted, naturally occurring in the wild, by Nixster!

Got this email from a fellow tournament player. I could only wish to be in the top 8! We’ll see.

BloggerMark,

OK, so I have too much time on my hands.  I did a breakdown of most of the remaining players in the tourney.  Seeding them so far as to who I see the top 8 favorites are by Vegas lines.  Based it on past results, scores of games, and personal matchups I have had with several.

Here is who I see the top 8 seeds remaining are :

#1 Sajeel
#2 rokwilder
#3 _22_
#4 schristian1
#5 GolfnPhil
#6 ssseth
#7 the rLck
#8 BloggerMark

Hey, all. Down to 91 players!

I may have some pending issues and disputes in  my in-box that will even the numbers, and that brings up a good point. We’ll use Round 7 to address the imbalance in the numbers. Got to get to 32 by that time, so most likely we’ll use a merit-based “bye” in R7 to get there.

For those of you who are awaiting an email reply, please be patient. I will have time this evening to get caught up.

Cheers!

Inexplicably, a Word Press plug-in just sent a weekly blog digest to our original subscribers to this site. This list was created before we adopted Constant Contact for mail list management.

Unfortunately, this old list is no longer managed, so people who had opted out of mailings recently were not purged from the old list. No doubt we’ll have a few disgruntled people emailing back about our having “spammed” them. Well, we were in the wrong, so we’ll take our lumps. I’ve since deleted the old plug-in and the old list, so this won’t happen again.

If you were impacted by this email, please accept my sincere apology.

To be perfectly honest, I just wanted to post something new, so I Googled for a recent news item. The first thing I came across was this WWF review on slidetoplay.com.

http://www.slidetoplay.com/story/words-with-friends-review

Why not link over and leave a comment. Show some love, in other words.

Cheers!

Bear in mind the cautionary tale of several hundred players who were eliminated in R1 due to failure to report. If you have an active game with no play by your opponent in over 1 day, and you made no agreement on a postponement, then you have every right to declare a no-show.

Better to ask for quick play now than to have to declare a win against your slow-playing opponent’s protest later.

And above all… have fun out there! It’s just a game.