Scrabble pt 6

Club and tournament play
Tens of thousands play club and tournament Scrabble worldwide. The intensity of play, obscurity of words, and stratospheric scores in tournament games may come as a shock to many parlor players. All tournament (and most club) games are played with a game clock and a set time control. Almost all tournament games involve only 2 players; typically, each has 25 minutes in which to make all of his or her plays. For each minute by which a player oversteps the time control, a penalty of 10 points is assessed. The number of minutes is rounded up, so that if a player oversteps time control by two minutes and five seconds, the penalty is 30 points. In addition, the players use special tiles called Protiles which, unlike wooden tiles, are not engraved thereby eliminating the potential for a cheating player to "Braille" (feel for particular tiles, especially blanks, in the bag).

Players are allowed "tracking sheets", preprinted with the letters in the initial pool, from which tiles can be crossed off as they are played. Tracking tiles is an important aid to strategy, especially during the endgame, when no tiles remain to be drawn and each player can determine exactly what is on the opponent's rack.

The most prestigious (regularly held) tournaments include:
The World Scrabble Championship: held in odd years, the last was in Johor Bahru, Malaysia in 2009.
The National Scrabble Championship: an open event attracting several hundred players, held around July/August every year or two, most recently in Dallas, Texas on August 7–11, 2010.
The Brand's Crossword Game King's Cup: the largest tournament in the World. Held annually around the end of June or beginning of July.

Other important tournaments include:
The World Youth Scrabble Championships: entry by country qualification, restricted to under 18 years old. Held annually since 2006.
The National School Scrabble Championship: entry open to North American school students. Held annually since 2003.
The Canadian Scrabble Championship: entry by invitation only to the top fifty Canadian players. Held every two to three years.
Clubs in North America typically meet one day a week for three or four hours and some charge a small admission fee to cover their expenses and prizes. Clubs also typically hold at least one open tournament per year. Tournaments are usually held on weekends, and between six and nine games are played each day. Detailed statistics on tournaments and players in North America can be found at www.cross-tables.com.

There are also clubs in the UK and many other countries. A list of internationally rated SOWPODS tournaments can be found on the web.

During off hours at tournaments, many players socialize by playing consultation (team) Scrabble, Clabbers, Anagrams, Boggle and other games.

Computer players
Maven is a computer opponent for the game, created by Brian Sheppard. The official Scrabble computer game in North America uses a version of Maven as its artificial intelligence and is released by Atari. Outside of North America, the official Scrabble computer game is released by Ubisoft. Quackle is an open-source alternative to Maven of comparable strength.

Console and computer video game versions
Several computer and video game versions of Scrabble have been released for various platforms, including PC, Mac, Amiga, Commodore 64, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, iPod, iPad, Game.com, Palm OS, Amstrad CPC, Xbox 360, Kindle and mobile phones.

The Nintendo DS version of Scrabble 2007 Edition made news when parents became angry over the game's AI using coarse language during gameplay.

Scrabble on the Internet
A number of sites offer the possibility to play Scrabble online against other users. The game is available to play for free at www.pogo.com, part of Electronic Arts. The Internet Scrabble Club (ISC) "www.isc.ro" , which is free of charge, is frequented continuously by thousands of players, including many of the game's most renowned experts. The social networking site Facebook had offered an online variation of Scrabble called Scrabulous as a third-party application add-on. On January 15, 2008, it was reported that Hasbro and Mattel were in the process of suing the creators of Scrabulous for copyright infringement. On July 24, 2008, Hasbro filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the creators of Scrabulous. On July 28, 2008 the Scrabulous Facebook application was disabled for users in North America, eventually re-appearing as "Lexulous" in September 2008, with changes made to distinguish it from Scrabble. On December 20, 2008 Hasbro withdrew their lawsuit against RJ Softwares.

Mattel launched its official version of online Scrabble, Scrabble by Mattel on Facebook in late March 2008. The application was developed by Gamehouse, a division of RealNetworks who has been licensed by Mattel.[18] However since Hasbro controls the copyright for North America with the copyright for the rest of the world belonging Mattel, the Facebook application is available only to players outside the United States and Canada. Ownership of the rights to Scrabble by multiple companies is limiting the introduction of the game to Facebook[18] and, between its launch date and April 6, 2008, fewer than 2000 users had registered, compared with 600,000 registered Scrabulous users.

As of November 3, 2008, the official Facebook Scrabble game has 203,644 monthly active users. The new "official" application has been heavily criticised in Facebook reviews, particularly by former users of the Scrabulous application which allowed American and Canadian users to play opponents in other countries, which is no longer possible: the Scrabble Beta application is only available in the USA and Canada, whereas Scrabble Worldwide is only available to other countries.

Some have complained that they have been unable to use the new application due to technical bugs and glitches, and many have criticized Hasbro for failing to reach an agreement with Scrabulous developers. In addition, the Facebook version only allows automatic verification of words, making it impossible to play invalid words, and making challenges redundant.

RealNetworks has stated that the application is currently in its beta stage and there have been reports of a number of bugs and limitations. The Original Scrabble now exists on Facebook, and was developed by Electronic Arts.