In two of my games I had guaranteed wins if only I made a different final play. I lost all three so my record stands now at 4-5:
441-449 against Alex. I played four bingos: RUiNOUS (64), PERILOUS (70), REVOICE (79) and RESTAGE (66). Alex played NOTAtED (86) and JOWL (66). My mistake was playing my final bingo instead of its anagram ERGATES. RESTAGE gave Alex the snapback play of MONTH (59), underlapping -AGE starting from the bottom centre TWS. Had I played ERGATES (for the same points), the highest Alex could have scored would be 48 for MOTH underlapping -ATES. Under those circumstances, his score would have advanced to 438. I still would have been able to play out to go to 437, and I would have gained 6 points from the INR left on his rack.
307-424 against Zev. I opened with cELOSIA (62) and Zev used my blank c to reply with ARcHIVEs (74). He also played TERRAPIN (74).
406-423 against Crayne. I had such a lead in this game, where at the beginning the score was 228-49. I opened with BaNDORE (74) and also played TANNEsT (75, which Crayne unsuccessfully challenged). Crayne played SIXTIES (86) and went out with DISCOVER (101), earning 28 points from my rack to win. My fatal play was slotting a V on the bottom TWS row. I still believe that was, in theory, the safer move to make, as the alternative was to score 7 more by making a move that slotted a D on the TWS row. I could see from the remaining ten tiles that the D would be much easier to bingo to versus using the V to bingo through. Yet as it turned out, all the anagrams fit as well, even CODRIVES and DIVORCES, so Crayne was rolling in it.