Who doesn’t love board games? Scrabble, in particular, is one of the most beloved board games in the world. It is a delight for people from different age groups, cultures, and even languages. The strategies used in this game are what make it more fun and interesting. Even experienced scrabble players sometimes overlook some of the most useful strategies and tactics. Taking too much time to contemplate your next move sometimes leaves you with enough frustration that soon turns into an obsession with unknown tricks and word lists. If you are at that stage, then it’s time to talk strategy. If you need to take your Scrabble game up a notch and take it to the next level, then you are in the right place. Here are some bullet-proof strategies that will leave your opponents ready to throw the dictionary away.
Pass Up Your Turn
This strategy does not work unless you are willing to take the risk of a big gamble. This might pay off even more than safe, obvious moves. Every turn, you can weigh your options and decide between plunking down some tiles or taking a risky gamble that might pay off much more than the former. Before making any decision, take your time to look for all the possible ways you can move your tiles and add their points. After weighing down your options to find the biggest score you can get, if the outcome still isn’t satisfying, then it’s time to take a close look at the pattern your opponent has been playing with. At this moment, you can either decide to score a bigger word by adding to the open-ended words your opponent left, or to pass up your turn until you have the perfect opportunity to benefit from the tiles you held onto.
Technology Can Help
Regardless of your reading skills, vocabulary game level, and even your experience with scrabble, we all get stuck at some point or another without any escape. Sometimes even the pressure gets too much to the extent that you forget every word. However, you can always resort to many available online sources for scrabble and other word games to get the help you need. Scrabble pros at UnscrambleWords.net recommend training your brain enough to start seeing different combinations. This will help, especially with people who have a knack for reading or come with a huge vocabulary.
Play Nothing at All
This is different from skipping your turn or passing it up. You can still choose this option without risking your turn by playing random tiles and hoping for the best. As long as you have more than 7 tiles, exchanging tiles is always an option. Yet, many new players forget to use this trick and legit rule when everything else fails. Some others, who play casually, might not even know about this as a valid card that you can use whenever you feel stuck at some point in the game. You can always choose to change any number of the tiles you have with some new letters from the bag. This decision, however, needs to be made after calculating every possible move and possibly finding that using your turn to get some fresh new letters is much more important. You will need to sacrifice your turn because you will not score any point while exchanging tiles, but sometimes it’s the right thing to do.
Small Words Matter
You might underestimate the power of two and three-letter words. This is one of the biggest mistakes that many players, even experienced ones, fall into when playing scrabble. Avoid this mistake at all costs, especially when small words can easily fit together to form something bigger. To execute this strategy correctly, make sure to take a look at the board before you decide to create a new word that intersects with an existing one. Once your opponent starts opening up double score space, it’s your turn to take out the big guns, or small two-letter words in this case, and fight back. This will not only give you a big score with a few simple steps and tiles, but it will also block your opponent’s game and disturb their plan. If you have a hard time coming up with two and three-letter words, you can always learn them! Sites like Unscrambled Words have lists of strategic and common words that you can use while playing Scrabble. If you learn just a few of these, you’ll find that you can be a much more effective Scrabble player.
Board games, especially word games such as scrabble, are extremely fun and challenging. It’s hard to get bored from a scrabble game because you are always using your mind to find the better technique and right strategy to make sure that you are not only scoring big, but you are also interrupting your opponent’s game and plan. This is why finding new ways to add to your vocab and take your game to the next level.
