WordsWithFriends.net

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.

So, time is running out and your opponent is making really slow moves. The answer? You must be ruthless. Tell your opponent you want to finish and that if he cannot, then you’re going to claim the round as a win for you by marking it “Time Ran Out.”

Historically speaking, several hundred players will be eliminated in Round 1 due to expiration of time. That’s right. Both players will lose on a technicality. Then we will receive protest emails asking to be reinstated for a variety of reasons, such as, “But I was ahead in points!” or “My opponent was slow!” or even “We were equally to blame for not finishing on time.” But none of it matters because neither player took the initiative to declare a winner. So now both players are toast.

Round 1 is over at 8PM Pacific / 11PM Eastern on Sunday night.

If in doubt, claim the win. Let your opponent dispute the result afterward, but don’t let the clock kill you.

Rok's mystery-man shot.

You know he’s our June tournament champion, but here’s a little more about the guy who took the top spot among over 1,700 players.

Derek is a 28-year-old Texan in hotel management business. His scholarship includes recognition as NHRP finalist and NMS semifinalist, full scholarship to OI, A&M, TU (UT), and acceptance to CalTech. He opted for Carleton College in Northfield, where he played football and was a member of the Carleton Singing Knights acapella group. Derek completed his degree in Business Administration at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio.

Derek loves tacos, Words With Friends, Kindle, and Ms. Snodgrass (in reverse order of course). He can also be found on Twitter as @xdjdx.

Congrats again, Derek (Rok)!

As SAT scores are to college kids, so are site traffic statistics to Web site administrators. It’s what makes you appear a few inches taller than the other guy. Every month we’re looking at things like Google page rank, pages viewed per visit, referrer URL, and the all important unique visits, to see if our influence is waxing or waning. Well, this month it’s on the waxy side.

Players in the July tournament topped out at 1,902. Our standing record of 2,048 (set in April/May) was made possible through generous plugs on NewToy’s Facebook feed. This month we had just one FB plug, and we sent the usual two email blasts. So, 1,902 is quite good!

But we set a new record for unique visits in a day…

On Thursday we had 11,823 unique visits to this site!

We’re #3 in Google and Bing for keywords “Words with Friends,” right behind NewToy, Inc. and iTunes Store.

Google brought us 55% of linking visitors over the past few days, and Facebook brought us 15% and quite a few new signups.