Balancing Your Rack

Rack balance is an art, just like anagramming. It relies on a strong sense of intuition combined with strategic vision. When placing a word consider the move to have two basic components. The actual score achieved and the letters (if any) remaining on the rack after the move. The value of the letters which remain is based on an evaluation of which letters will be most useful on average. In general, the letters used to form the word RETAINS are highly valued due to the number of other words which can be formed from them.

Another rule for evaluating the state of your rack is to ensure it does not contain duplicates. The only duplicate letter that has the remotest chance of working is an E. Even this should be avoided where possible, unless you are deciding between an E and an undesirable U, for example. The only time a U may prove useful is if it can be combined with an high scoring Q. Virtually every word in English that uses a Q also contains a U with a few exceptions. Some valid words with a Q and no U are QI, QAID, QADI and SHEQEL.

Apart from avoiding duplicates, it is a good idea to ensure your rack is more or less evenly balanced between vowels and consonants. Where you have an odd number of tiles in your rack, then favour an extra consonant. There will however be circumstances where this sort of thinking is not applicable such as when there are very few vowels left in the game set, as shown by the display of letters on the left of the Hotspots screen. These are all the letters yet to be distributed as well as the computer player's own rack. When there are seven or less letters displayed you know the computer's rack.

The S can be used to hook onto many other words and should be used only when scoring well. Strategically, it can be more advantageous to dump inflexible letters such as Z, W and X, even if sacrificing a few points, than it is to maximise the score by playing the high values letters from RETAINS. Computer programs have been used to provide the order of letters which are most valuable in Scrabble, though this relies on assumptions based on the points value of the letters, the dictionary in use and other variables, prior to even considering the state of the game.

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