RENALDO MOOOOON...and Scrabble Cubes.

[Renaldo Moon]

Looks like this forum is still hustlin' and bustlin' and as active as ever. How's everyone out there doing now? Are you all still on Worldwinner?

Let me know how all you guys are doing-- What changes have occurred in the Skillgaming sector? Are you all still miraculously able to make profit? When I left Worldwinner, my peers-- the top tier in Scrabble Cubes and WOF, were barely able to squeeze a few dimes of profit off worldwinner, and even then there were 8 of us fighting over those dimes. I figured it will only get worse, so I gave up. Has it gotten worse? Or did Worldwinner kick Peter Blacklow out of office and put someone in charge who knows how to run a (successful) company?

As for what happened to me? I spent 9 weeks in Basic training to be an Army Firefighter-- 21M. During a 12KM road march, I unknowingly had pneumonia, and that messed up my body's thermoregulation. 11KM into the march, I fell to a severe heatstroke and spent two weeks in the hospital, and shortly after got discharged from the Army because my kidneys burned when I'd run, and thus I couldn't pass the 2-mile run in 16 minutes as the fitness test requires at the end of BCT. The heatstroke caused a condition called rhabdomyolisis, which tore up my kidneys and I almost fell to acute renal failure. Supposedly earthquake victims often develop rhabdo-- I'm not sure the connection between me and them though.

Apparently, after speaking with a few doctors on the matter, kidney injury (I'm guessing through hormonal changes) causes serious cognitive decline and depression, which plagued me severely for 5 months feeling constantly confused, aggravated, and depressed.

I'm all better now, but I'm sure you all had better summers than I did. Tell me about them! I'm sure Bmy traveled to atleast 5 exotic countries in that short time. What new games/scams/fascisms has Worldwinner introduced into their regime? And do they suck as much as their other attempts? (Bejeweled Twist, 3 trivia games, MPI, Price is Right)

[msufan]

holy cow, I'm glad your health has apparently stabilized now... wow

[sir_froofalot]

Sorry to hear about your health scare and glad you're doing better now. I can only speak about WOF--it's still tough to scratch out a profit. Not many new div 1 players have been added to the mix, so it's pretty cutthroat.

I think the only new game is Mahjongg Dimensions, which is an extremely fast-paced 3D Mahjongg game. I think it's only so-so.

As far as WW goes as a whole, there have been a number of changes recently that I think are for the better. They're updating games to Flash versions to accommodate other browser types in an effort to bring in more players. They just updated their Premier Club this week, scaling rewards according to amount of play. Big-time players like the changes, small dollar players don't (and are extremely vocal about their displeasure). There's a marketing person actively monitoring and responding to posts in the forum, which has been another welcome addition. I think they're definitely headed in the right direction. My only remaining beef is that the progressives should go back more toward the old top-heavy versions.

[Grengoddess]

WOW! It has been ages! I am glad you are ok. Health problems can really weigh on a person. I know !

[theartsyone]

...Are you all still miraculously able to make profit? When I left Worldwinner, my peers-- the top tier in Scrabble Cubes and WOF, were barely able to squeeze a few dimes of profit off worldwinner, and even then there were 8 of us fighting over those dimes. I figured it will only get worse, so I gave up. Has it gotten worse? Or did Worldwinner kick Peter Blacklow out of office and put someone in charge who knows how to run a (successful) company?...

So I'm up late playing Scrabble cubes and thinking about it being profitable then quickly when into hysterical laughter--anyway, I'd really like to know if any of you regular SC players actually do make a profit? There are certainly a bunch of tournaments (a survival just finished) and at glance, there's money to be made if you're good. And good is what I am not because I can only get 800-900 on a great game. Once I got over 1000 because I spelled Jettier and Jettied using both triple letter cubes and the triple word cube--it was a totally awesome moment for me and I did that on the Daily $600 so at least the score wasn't wasted on a practice game.

But anyway...generally I only enter the daily or maybe a $3/5-player tournament because if I enter anything else the top score is always over 1000 so if you're one of those people who can do that regularly, why wouldn't you turn a decent profit playing? There is this guy wranderson1 or something like that who's some professional scrabble champ and I see him winning almost everything. I thought he was going to get the survival but I guess I he gave up. I'm just curious if you're in that small percentage of the population who has a brain for memorizing words, what would stop you from winning constantly? Or least a million times more than I do and even if I suck at the game, I still won some money (like last year some time...)

Anyway, just my two cents--oh I'm glad you're all better (I know I don't know you, but sounds like you went through quite an ordeal) and I really like Bejeweled Twist but the rest of WW's additions blow.

[Renaldo Moon]

Eh, it's not all about memorizing words. I was one of the top scrabble cube-rs and I'm not familiar with nearly so many of the arcane words that the other top players know. I didn't even know about "Jettied" until you mentioned it. Most of the game is in cognitive details-- recognizing quickly when words you do know show up. There are usually plainly simple 7-letter words on the board that people don't piece together because it's all jumbled.

Anyway, the reason the 10 players or so who can average 900+ don't make profit is because they're all fighting each other, and are all relatively of the same skill. Over time, they'll all lose money, unless they lay low and skim a little off the top when possible, like in specials, survivals, and large (25, 50, 100 player) matches with low entry fees. That's all good, but when you're skimming off the top of an already dry pool of cash, there's even less cash in rotation, and less to skim off in the future. Worldwinner takes a cut each time the money changes hands, and for people of the same skill, that money will change hands back and forth a lot.

There used to be pretty good money to be made, but that was imbalanced and couldn't be expected to stay, as it moved gradually towards the equilibrium we see now.

[theartsyone]

Ah, several good points. I guess it's possible the "matching ranks/division" on WW are really huge pools of people. I'm lumped in with the really good SC players and after losing enough time, I don't even bother with any of the higher-payout tournaments. So it makes sense that these really good folks have to fight it out with each other if they play those same tournies. The special tournaments aren't incredibly frequent, but 100/50-player games seem to go on weekly so one could try to squeeze something from those.

But I still don't understand how a person could score over 1000 without having a substantial vocab--And that includes knowing crazy obscure words that a typical person wouldn't ever run across unless they were studying a wordlist. I'm a word-game hobbyist so I have a standard vocab which I've fancied up with a decent number of obscure words and even with thousands of SC games under my belt--I'm average at best. Often the typical vocab lends itself to lesser scoring word than when I find one my fancy words—plus once you find something like hexoses, you freaking never forget it... But I've even tried tackling SC other ways, like being strategic about how I clear the cubes, trying to link as many bonus cubes together as I can for the higher scoring word. But still, I suck...oh well, it's apparently not worth it to be that good anyway--profit-wise.

[Renaldo Moon]

YouTube - Canal de Cashgamers

YouTube - Canal de Cashgamers

Here's a couple average games for me, or what were pretty average from like two years ago. There aren't many obscure words in there.

Something I've offered to do in my tutorials, but nobody's ever taken up the offer, is to do little exercises here on the forums to help see how others view the same set of cubes differently. Pretty much, if you wanna' take a screenshot of the cube layout at a point in a game where you *feel* like there's something there, but can't quite find it, or just any place at random where you feel a little stuck, you can post it on here and several of us can look at it, share our first impression and how we'd play, and see what else can be played from it.

It won't help for the match the screenshot came from, but doing this a few times will help you see things differently. I used to do this with Jacob(Meikyusisui) over MSN, and looking at the same screenshots now I think "Wow, (insert word) is really obvious, and I never even saw it before," and can see how far I've come.

[bmy1]

i'll post more later... but it looks like ASB has FINALLY been banned.... after hundreds of complaints to WW... Thanks to wanderer for compiling a huge spreadsheet and others to contributing their scores and input.

The calibre of SC has gone up. 1000 is the new 950. 1100's are no longer that uncommon. A few more players have hit 1200 (zach, wanderer, i94, kev and a couple new legit word gamers).

WOF has been updated to flash so the spin times are 4 seconds instead of 6 or 7 and a lot of new puzzles added (i'm guessing 30-35% of the puzzles are new)

[theartsyone]

YouTube - Canal de Cashgamers

YouTube - Canal de Cashgamers

Here's a couple average games for me, or what were pretty average from like two years ago. There aren't many obscure words in there.

Something I've offered to do in my tutorials, but nobody's ever taken up the offer, is to do little exercises here on the forums to help see how others view the same set of cubes differently. Pretty much, if you wanna' take a screenshot of the cube layout at a point in a game where you *feel* like there's something there, but can't quite find it, or just any place at random where you feel a little stuck, you can post it on here and several of us can look at it, share our first impression and how we'd play, and see what else can be played from it.

It won't help for the match the screenshot came from, but doing this a few times will help you see things differently. I used to do this with Jacob(Meikyusisui) over MSN, and looking at the same screenshots now I think "Wow, (insert word) is really obvious, and I never even saw it before," and can see how far I've come.

So I liked the videos, but as bmy says, the 900s aren't really that competitive anymore. I am impressed that you got those scores finding so few 7-letter words. The second vid has twinset and wayside which I was like, play, play, play...but you didn't it still managed to come out ahead. I exhausted my 25 free game limit yesterday trying to get some screen shots but as I've looked at the results the problem is always the same thing, I'm too slow...I'm basically always looking for 7-letter words or the highest point value play which generally takes me several seconds to find. Eventually I find the words but then I’m trying to see how that will effect the cube layout…blah, blah, I’m just painfully slow at times.

Here's an example -- this is an okay start but the time has crept away...



so here is the end result --



I missed spelling tippled instead of rippled and jacket--both would have at least got the score over 900 but I was racing to finish. I definitely kill time looking for those longer words but historically I've gotten the highest scores when I play like that. When I'm fastest I can get very close to 1000 so I hope continued practice will make that happen more but I think my limited vocab is the largest factor behind my slowness. I do like the way you used the cubes, very smart which I should work on more often—but I’m not sure of you could get over 1000 playing that way. There’s a vid on youtube with someone getting 1200+ (but I think people say it’s a cheat) but he/she got that score because they have nothing but seven letter words and I envision that is possible legitimately.

Perhaps one of these days I’ll be faster or obtain a less expensive hobby