1st Thomas Reinke continued his recent trend of simply being better at Scrabble than everybody else by finishing 4-1 +324. However, it certainly didn't seem like he was simply better at Scrabble than everybody else when he lost his first game to Mark Kenas, 440-477. Mark took full advantage of the Collins dictionary with ROKIEST# and UNFANNED#; Thomas played SHORTER, NAEVOID, and AMBERINA. That loss was offset by a concurrent win against James Rollins, 371-313, where Thomas won despite not playing a bingo. Followthing that was a stifling 421-296 win over Steve Hartsman, where Steve's sole bingo of SURICATE failed to stand up against Thomas' ALIENLY and INTITULE. In a rematch against Mark, Thomas prevailed 446-344, his 90-point OVERHEAP allowing him to...uh...overheap points on his prone and defenseless opponent...or something. The bingos continued to get overheaped as Thomas deployed ERODENT, STINTERS, HARDENS, and VINTAGED* (just VINTAGER for some reason) to beat Andy Bohnsack 485-409.

2nd James Rollins played a personal-best nine bingos across four games (inching ever-closer to a double-digit bingo count) and wound up with a 3-1 +86 record. A 313-371 loss to Thomas Reinke wasn't the way he wanted to start things off, but at least he got two bingos out of it: GLARIER and HOARIEST. Realizing that two bingos might not be enough, he decided to play three bingos against Richard Lauder (HEARTIES, MELANIST, TOILERS), and this strategy was rewarded with a 402-380 victory. Richard's bingo of SLITHERS was the only bingo played against James the entire night. At this point fully addicted to the sensation of bingoing (it is, to be fair, quite addictive), James picked up a 385-330 win against Lynda Finn with FURLESS and ENTOILS. The night ended with a 405-338 win against Steve Hartsman where James found OVERNEAT and DECENTLY.

3rd Charles Reinke went 3-2 +145. He worked hard for a first-round win against Dave Kinzer, countering Dave's SLINGED and LATTICE with GLEANER and OPALESCE for a 409-373 win. Switching to the Collins lexicon, Charles used the extra words to dominate Mark Kenas 536-321, finding AEGROTAT, LEISURED, and VAWNTIER#. Round three saw Charles split his two-on-one set; his game against Andy Bohnsack was a scorcher, tying a club record with eight combined bingos (four each), including a stylish LAKEFILL from Charles, and finishing 521-446 in Charles' favor. However, the other half of the set did not go so smoothly, as Charles was upset by Helen "Giant Killer" Flores, 416-351. Helen used bingos of TROAKED and SECONDS to inflict maximum (and ultimately fatal) damage. Wounded and demoralized, Charles trudged into his final game against Mark Kenas and got walloped, 385-501, thanks to some neat bingos from Mark's end: INCHOATE, QUOTABLE, and TURGENCY.

We welcomed visiting player Chani Katz, and while she didn't win a game, she put up a good fight in all of them, and we do hope she will return soon to try to rectify that "didn't win a game" situation.