Portland Scrabble Club

1. On the first move of the game, avoid placing a vowel next to a double letter square. If your opponent has a high value consonant, they can get a quick 30-50 points where they normally might get 25-30.
2. If you are ahead, close up the board. If you are losing, then open it up. Keep in mind that this applies only to beginners. There are far more things to consider before an intermediate player decides to open or close up a board.
3. Never give up. If your opponent can get 100 points ahead in the first half, then you can do it in the second half. Never say die.
4. Don't waste a blank. It is far wiser to get 20 points without a blank then it is to get 35 points with it. Try not to use your blank for anything less then 50 points unless a special situation requires it.
5. Don't waste an S. An S is a very useful tile for creating bingos or squeezing into a tough spot on the board. A good rule of thumb is to keep your S if playing it only increases your score by 10-15 points more then what you would get without it.
6. If your opponent opens up a triple word score square for you and you can't use it, then you might consider opening up a second one so that there will still be one for you next turn. It's a risky move, but on average I have found that it is more beneficial then not opening it up.
7. Play better players. If you constantly play people of your own skill level you won't be learning any new techniques. You'll lose many more games, but who cares as long as you are improving.
8. Practice anagramming when you have nothing else better to do. Go out and buy a bunch of those "JUMBLE" books that have page after page of scrambled words which you must unscramble. Taking a plane trip...... bring the Jumble book. Long car ride...... take out the book. Nothing is on TV except reality shows....... Get the Jumble book out.
9. Study some Scrabble word lists. 
10. One of the best ways to get better is to go out and buy the Hasbro Scrabble CD-ROM. I don't like it for Internet play, but it can be extremely useful to learn with. Play the computer at it's highest level and when it's your turn hit the "Hint" button. It will list about 10 top moves. Try to figure out why it ranked the moves in that particular order.

Learn The Three-Letter Words
Learn all of the Three-Letter Words ........ "What's that???" ......... "Did you just tell me to learn ALL of the three-letter words?"........ Yep, I sure did.

If you want to move on to the next level, that means learning the "Threes".  All 972 of them !!!!........ ouch!!!!

Playing the word "THORAX" parallel to the word "WAKED" also makes the 3-letter words "TWO", "HAM", "OKA", "RET", and "ADO" .

Finding Bingos In Your Rack
Everyone knows that the key to finding bingos on your rack is a matter of looking at as many possible combinations of letters on your rack as possible. Unfortunately, there are 5,040 possible 7-letter combinations. It isn't possible to see all of the possible combinations in one turn. There are techniques to make it easier to see bingos without having to look through endless possibilities.

The first thing to do is to look for common endings and prefixes. For example..... If you have a rack like "LGAPNYI", you may think that you have no chance for a bingo. But if you take the letters "I", "N", and "G", which make the common ending "ING", and move them to the end of your rack, then all you have to do is unscramble the remaining 4 letters "LAPY". Since there are now only 24 possibilities rather then the original 5,040, it won't take long to find the word "PLAY" to make the bingo "PLAYING".

Below is a list of some of the most common beginnings and endings with the corresponding number of bingos possible with each one.

Beginnings # Bingos            Endings # Bingos
RE 753                         ES 2121
CO 572                         ED 2075
DE 388                         ER 1819
UN 337                         LY 541
BE 316                         IC 367
IN 275                         AL 341
EN 175                         EN 230
BI 153                         ING 1529
EX 110                         ERS 1080
OUT 181                        IER 500
PRE 128                        IES 422
MIS 113                        EST 237
PRO 105                        ILY 200
CON 97                         ISH 195
SUB 81                         INE 154
TRI 79                         AGE 126
DIS 69                         OUS 114
COM 57                         TING 201
NON 49                         TERS 173
OVER 55                        CHES 96
COMP 23                        LESS 84
ANTI 23                        IEST 84
POST 17                        LIKE 81
FORE 17                        ABLE 76
MINI 14                        NESS 42

Using The Bonus Squares
As you know, using the bonus squares is where the points are. When it becomes your turn, the bonus squares which are adjacent to words already on the board is where you want to concentrate your attention on. A parallel play used in conjuction with a bonus square can be worth quite a lot of points as shown in the game board shown earlier.

The big points can be found by combining 2 bonus squares in one play. There are so many places where you can do this that there is no point in talking about each and every possible combination. On a given board there won't be too many of those situations where they can occur, so be sure to check out every single one, before looking at other places to place a word.

There is a book by Joe Edley called "Everything Scrabble" which has fantastic visuals and puzzles for you to view if you need to get into more details about crossing two bonus squares.

Rack Balancing
Rack balancing is the beginning stages of rack management. There comes a point in the learning stages of Scrabble where a person has learned a ton of words, can find words in their rack with ease, can find the ideal place to put a word AND they aren't improving any longer. They feel like they have hit a wall. They constantly use phrases like the following........

"I always draw the worse tiles"
"You are the luckiest person on Earth"
"I never get the good draws like you do"
"My racks always suck"
"You get the good letters all the time"
"I always get stuck with all vowels or all consonants".

Those same people will then show me their tiles and say "Let's see YOU find a good play with these tiles."..... as if to prove that their luck is bad.  Well, after looking at their tiles I will undoubtedly say "You're right, that rack is terrible and I can't find a good play, but I didn't create that rack.... you did." Of course they think I am crazy since they are convinced that the letters in their rack are based on the luck of the draw............ And that is why they are no longer improving.

One of the main reasons people get to a point where they don't improve any longer is because they think that each move in Scrabble is independent of every other move. They only worry about the move in front of them and not the next move or the move after that. Rack management is the key to becoming an expert. Let me make this perfectly clear..... "WITHOUT RACK MANAGEMENT YOU WILL NOT BECOME AN EXPERT !!!!"
This may be very hard for you to get used to, but you will have to learn to not always play the highest scoring word. The letters you leave on your rack are just as important, if not more so, then the tiles you place on the board. The very first stage of rack management is to learn how to balance your rack.  Try to keep as many vowels as consonants in your rack. Don't give up a big play to accomplish this, But DO give it some weight in your decision as to what to play.

Attitude
I hate to put this into my tips for the intermediate player, since it doesn't really have to do with strategy or techniques. But I feel I must include it because a person's attitude has more of an impact on their score then you might imagine.

A Negative Attitude Hurts
If you go into a game thinking that you are going to lose, then you probably will. The minute you believe that you can't win is the minute you stop trying to win. You'll start making quick decisions and playing any old move just to get the game over with. You'll stop looking for that "bingo" 30 seconds earlier then normal. You won't rearrange your tiles as often because you are soooooo certain that the rack is so terrible that nothing good could ever come out of it. The list goes on and on. If you want to win.......... then think that you can....... even when down 150 points.

Blaming Bad Luck
If you want to be able to win at Scrabble, then you first have to believe that You are what decides the outcome. If you find yourself blaming "luck" for your losses, then that's the same as blaming "luck" for your wins. If you don't believe that You are responsible for your wins and losses, then you won't try to improve yourself at the game. What's the point in improving yourself if you don't believe that You are the reason for its outcome. It's that simple.
Besides....... there is nothing more annoying then playing someone who always blames their losses on luck. It's as if they are saying that their opponent did not earn their win.

Don't Be Cocky
While having a negative attitude can be harmful to your game, the other extreme can be just as harmful. Going into a game thinking you are invincible has the same effect on your game as thinking you will lose. You might make quick moves thinking "if there was a bingo in my rack I would have spotted it immediately." A player who acts cocky is just begging for their opponent to play better then they normally would. Nothing infuses an opponent with the desire to beat you more then acting overconfident.