Any strategies? When your opponent plays the 2 letter words to his gain, thus making any unplayable board? My sibling does this, and I have encountered in tournament-EH, MU, NU etc. No words, and I fear opening the board, only to have it slammed shut again.
I watched Word Wars and I think those players would beat your sibling to a bloody pulp. It’s my understanding that getting ‘bingos’ (50 point bonus for using all 7 letters) is the only way to win against good players.
My family likes to play online scrabble during trivia games and we have encountered defensive players. Our strategy is to mirror them with defensive moves but look hard for a high point-move that will open up the board. They they will have to either open up their game with a high-point move, in which case they are no longer playing their kind of game but ours, or play catch-up as two-letter defensive plays typically don’t make as many points as the longer words.
Pretty much what Evil Captor said. I play defensively back until I see an opportunity for a word (not neccessarily high scoring) that will open up at least two, preferably more, potential plays.
Edited to add that if this is an online game I don’t ask for or accept a followup game.
Playing defensive Scrabble like that part of the time can be an effective strategy. For instance, it’s nearly always worthwhile to take or block a triple word score every chance you get because their potential value to your opponent is so high. Likewise, it’s often wise to avoid opening up the triple word score unless you have a particularly good play. However, it sounds like you’re playing against people who do this to such an extreme that they often won’t score many points, so if you can maintain even a moderate score, you’ll be fine.
Try to learn as many 2 and 3 letter words as you can. If you spell a 2 letter word and then play a longer word off of that 2 letter word, you’ll help to neutralize their ability to close the board. If you know more 2 and 3 letter words, you’ll have more opportunities to do this. It looks like a giant impenetrable list of nonsense words, but there are tricks: all Greek letters (mu, nu, chi, tau, and so on) and all musical notes (do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti) are legal, for instance.
Dont forget qi and za can both be pluralized. Za can be turned into zax which has saved my butt more than once.
Allow me to recommend this book for those who haven’t read it yet. A funny, interesting account of the offbeat subculture of competitive Scrabble: http://www.amazon.ca/Word-Freak-Stefan-Fatsis/dp/0142002267/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1294160914&sr=1-1
This is the way I play. It drives people nuts, but it works against the average scrabble player.