I played Nigel Richards, the Scrabble GOAT 

Nigel's far better at finding 9's and 10's than us so he probably secretly favors plays like KINO for that very reason...

I particularly enjoy that it took until 9½ minutes into the video to see ANY horizontal plays. These boys love an overlap.

After that 9 tile bingo, this game was going nowhither.

Nigel's beard supports a diverse ecological habitat and is home to a previously undiscovered species of pygmy shrew.

In my heart, Mack, you are absolutely the goat of Scrabble!

I will remember this as Nigel's Y game

i saw the 9 which makes me think i've seen this game before lol

I think Championship Player just does a many-ply sim. I looked through a few of the sim variations where Mack won after NITON (using the "log sim to file" function). In many of these, bot-Nigel leaves the ER in NOWHITHER open when it could play something like CARP, CARR, or WART to clinch or almost-clinch the game; in others, it does something like play WARM when CARR would have guaranteed victory. I would guess NITON wins less than 1% of the time. NONELITE sometimes wins when Nigel has no vowels, like Mack said, and also in some cases when Mack draws a big play in two spots and Nigel's rack is relatively clunky, like Mack draws AMOPSUW (AWMOUS) or AAACMOW (MACAW).

congratulations on 3k subs!!!!

Here from you know who's video, glad he sent us your way. Nice video. Idk i guess the only bad thing i could say is sound quality, but im 33 years old. I've heard much worse from million dollar companies, and im sure that with success, you will address the issue 🙂

I saw the rack at 15:30 and immediately thought of the bingo HITHERTO, but unfortunately that doesn't play anywhere. Oh well - still proud of spotting that.

Maybe, that KINO also sets up (OP)ERATIONS, too. Hahaha!

6:39 CROOK is a bit of a mediocre, "meh" play and Nigel just figured that ain't no such thing as halfway CROOK.

One play which can lead to sharp positions is the counterintuitive ON 13M for 16 points. If Nigel didn't draw the O or C, it is really hard for him to block that area after, so he will often make a play like (D)AWT. Then you can play L(A) or N(A) to leave one in the bag and then you will have lanes on both sides of the board. He may be able to outrun this, but I am not sure if it's a guarantee

16:33 I actually got the "hither" part of that, but couldn't see a place for it, was thinking about making the blank an S for "HITHERs"... I'll take it. (And then I realized that I could do T for tHITHER)

I'm no mathemagician, but I feel like drawing 5 specific tiles from a set of 14 isn't terribly unlikely. Math is quite often unintuitive, though, and I'm decades out from my statistics classes (and my statistics classes wouldn't have equipped me for this question anyways), so I could be way wrong on this.

The edit at 16:30 makes me think you first pronounced it as NOW-HITHER and didn't want to leave that in? But mispronouncing words is the true hallmark of a great Scrabble player 😀

nowhither is crazy, i cant imagine someone playing a word like that against me😢

Quackle's championship player often shows complete nonsense in the preendgame (simming might be a little bit better, but still far from the truth). Recently I had a 2-in-the-bag situation where it identified an "always winning play", which in reality had only 30/36 odds of winning (I manually went through all 36 possible endgames after that supposedly "always winning move"). With 7 in the bag it's much more complicated and harder to tell, but I wouldn't be surprised if those percents are off by a lot.

i didnt know nigel ever competed in nwl!

Saw this nowhither play from will's video on "AUF" but never thought the opponent is you!

perhaps quackle thought NITON was better because, if nigel didn’t have a C to begin his bottom-right blocking play, a lot of plays there would open new bingo lines as well?

What about NOIL at 15K for 17? If Nigel didn’t draw the S, it will be difficult for him to block the spot effectively, especially without emptying the bag. Even a play like AT on top still allows for -ERS words to fit, and if Nigel empties the bag and you bingo out on the left, I think it would often be enough. I do think I would have probably just played NONELITE here (which certainly is not descriptive of either of these players) :)

22:00 interesting. so you're saying that computer resources can't accurately judge the endgame even with like 14 tiles left? I would expect this is feasible at this depth.

Nonelite seems the best option.

How about TONNE down that A11 triple lane, does that just not score enough?

Are these games played on a timer like in professional chess?

I think once you get to endgame decisions against the GOAT chances of winning are slim Mack is def a great player

Wish ❤🎉

Love holding a Y. It is all the iiiiiiis which I hate. I thought TOILE may be a good move for you near the end there.

8:25 There’s no such thing as a bad bingo tile man. Especially for players with such a high scrabble vocabulary.

Woof.

first

I'm not sure I would call Mack the goat, he doesn't seem to do that well at Nationals. At least for NWL, I'd consider Josh Sokol the goat in that lexicon, the best players now are better than the best players 10 years ago, and he's the most recent champion. Jackson Smilie is probably also the GOAT. I will say while Nigel is a really good player, I don't like that we can't see any of his most recent games, mostly because he never plays in the US, and really it looks like he just hardly plays at all for years. Hardly a GOAT in my opinion.