Day 1 of Charlotte Main Event

First game is over, I'm already in a 146 point hole. Bah. I think I played fine, but it's hard to win when your opponent draws both blanks, the q, the z, the J and three esses. AND she played them well! Bad combination for me. I think I made one mistake (challenged metering) but on the whole I made the best of the holy crap I was drawing. I am also sitting next to two kids who were playing all kinds of nonsense that my brain was starting to hurt ("wott" "habs" "omenic"- if this is what Joel goes through every Thursday watching us play at club, no wonder he's so cranky.
Onward.
Game Two:
I played the cutest little black boy you ever did see! He was 14 "from Atlanta" with braces. He was one of the two kids playing the game next to me with all the bad words, so I thought I could play phonies on him, but he busted me on stinners and then he played grok and I challenged it. Like insta challenged. What the hell is grok? 38 points and another turn for the kid, that's what.
He very impressively came back from a 96-0 deficit after exchanging on his first turn and then having me bingo with juniper. But in the end, I squeaked out a 38 point win. 1-1, spread still horribly negative.
Game 3: "You are officially my Scrabble daddy, the person that just beats me everytime." -Michael Barrett
I first played Michael in Albany, he was winning going into the last few rounds, but then hung a t in an empty lane and I was able to bingo out on him with runtiest" for the win. I then won the second game I played against him. Today's game was a sick sick one. I drew saltie plus a blank to start the game and never looked back I beat him by 169 points and now I'm positive again. It was a great game too. We BOTH bingoed three times, I had elastin, counted and overman (thanks for the -man list, Nancy!) I used the blank as an em instead of the ar he thought I was going for and drew the challenge! Woot! He had rapines, heating and inosite. But he played his bingoes alongside the triple lines and I was able to capitalize HARD! I got the x going two ways on the triple word line above heating, played jerks on the triple word square through his inosite and of two ways on the triple next to rapines. It was a very fun game. Oh he played mein on me, I didn't know it, but after he burned me with smaize at Albany I couldn't challenge.
Game Four: I won by 253 points and racked up my first back to back 500+ point games. I did let him get away with two bingo phoneys though, so I probably shoulda won by a much bigger spread...though I know how dickish that sounds. But still missing easy challenges is a bad, bad thing. Oh, and I had tories + u on my rack and it took me a RIDICULOUS five minutes to find the bingo AND then it didn't even play! Pout.
Woo! I just one 5 bucks for "high game".
Lost the first game back from lunch. I thought it was because I was too chicken to challenge her phonies, but turns out everything I would have challenged was good, so I just got regular ole beat. I did miss the bingo in this rack; tolanns? Which would have won the game for me since I only lost by 8 points.
Lost two in a row. Bad. My opening rack was waeiaas, I played aw. Then I drew a blank and an e ee?iaas, I played ae, then drew two more ees. It was ridiculous. Meanwhile he's scoring up a storm, I play off those ees and then draw a o and a zee. For realz!! He then bingoed with toadies, I played "zee" and drew uu. TWO FREAKINg YOUS!!???!!! Arrrgghh. I HATE THIS GAME AND IT'S ENDLESS STRING OF STUPID VOWELS!! I need chocolate.
Woo, got another five bucks for high game!
Finally got a post lunch W...wasn't a very interesting game though. My opponent had the Nancy Pelosi crazy eyes though, so I couldn't look at him.
My last game was with a very friendly Southern woman. She wasn't very good about hitting my clock and said that she had only played a few tournaments, so I confess I relaxed a lot. I bingoed with senarii and ashe said "oh I know that word," that made me less relaxed. I had a pretty sizeable lead and then bam she bingoes on me with an eight! What zee hell! Then I had to dump a couple of consonants And Blamo she bingoed with ANOTHER eight!!! Mozzerfocker!! I was now only ahead by 20 when I drew cleaner...there was no where to play it though, so I decided to take a shot playing "reclean"...she didn't challenge! Whew! We went back and forth for the rest of the game, when I finally had two letters left on my rack, she had six. I had my outplay all rearing to go, it was going to be close, but I would win by putting my fs next to of THEN she plays PR in front of my of And blocks my damn outplay. She was now ahead by 12. DAMMIT!! I played my ef between an e and an I for ef/if and ten points. She then played vie for 12, so I needed to score 15 points to win, but all I could find was 14 (including the two tiles on her rack) I was sooo sooo sad. You've never seen a sadder face. I play my ess next to her prof and take my stupid 14.
"Wow, one point, good game," she says.
I just can't bear it, so I did something I have NEVER done before...I ask for a recount. She agrees. Right away we find that vie was only TEN points!!! I win by one! Of course, she insists we keep recounting in case there's some mistake in her favor. There isn't! I shorted myself four more points on my bingoes and she over counted another one of her plays. Dawn wins by four!!!! Woooo....except remember how you never did see someone sadder? Yeah, that lady, totally sad. I am in fourth place going into Day Two.