What we’re about
The group is a place for Scrabblers in Hong Kong to meet for face-to-face social games of Scrabble (which is still much better than playing online).
Our main venue is the Foreign Correspondents' Club. We meet there for relaxed social play, normally once a month and generally on Sunday afternoons.
Players of all ages and levels are welcome at our meetups, but please note that Scrabble is NOT a good way for you to improve your English. If that is your objective then one of the language exchange meetup groups would be better.
Note: If you sign up for an event, please remember to change your RSVP if you subsequently change your mind so that we don't unnecessarily hold extra seats at the venue. People who no-show (i.e. don't turn up when their RSVP is yes) twice will generally be removed from the group. We also regularly purge the membership list of people who have not logged in to the Scrabble Meetup for many months in order to reduce unwanted emails.
Style of play
We play standard Scrabble rules (with the exception that we play tournament rules for challenges), generally with 4 player games initially, filling boards in the order people turn up. After that we try to swap people around between groups so that everyone gets to meet everyone else. We generally end up with some 2- and 3-player games as well, but we ask that people be flexible - the idea of the meetups is to be sociable, not overly competitive. Some people come for one or two games each time, and some stay for hours. It is rare for a meetup to last less than 5 hours.
We have members from all over the world, so we play to the most inclusive dictionary, which is now CSW19.
Players in a game sometimes agree to not use the "forfeit of turn on challenge" rule, particularly in games with less experienced participants. In general, if a game is to be more serious and to have strict forfeits then this should be agreed by all players up-front.
We don't normally play with timers, and we are relaxed about assistance to beginners. However, there are one or two more experienced players (you know who you are!) who do sometimes get asked to play to a timer when they get painfully slow.
