Best Move?The best move at any one time is difficult to know, but achieving rack balance is important virtually all of the time, as long as you do not sacrifice too many points. Rack balancing can be done with or without precise knowledge of the letters that are left in the game, but knowledge of this is clearly beneficial. You may be holding onto the last S. Tracking which letters have been played allows informed decisions to be made. As an example of rack balance, imagine your rack is BXARTES. Depending on the points available and having considered all the moves you can think of you might play off the B and X leaving AERST. The letters AERST are good building blocks for the next move, mainly because there are more words having the common letters of AERST than words having a B or an X. A leave of EARST gives you an atttractive balance of vowels and consonants that are different. If the letters left in the game contains other common letters such as an I and an L and your luck is in, you will be able to form words such as RETAILS on the next move or if there is an N floating around on the board you might see the word, LATRINES. Generally words do not repeat letters very often so having duplicates on a rack is unhelpful and skilful players seek to avoid this. |