Gorham Scrabble Club 2/08/09

The second Sunday of February, and that spells Gorham Scrabble Club. This was my second time attending. The second Sunday of January was snowed out.
It was a much better turnout than my first appearance. 8 people all together, if you don't include an old confused looking man with a deerstalker cap on in the corner. I played my first game against Mary, though she preferred either Mary Lee or Mary Lou- I didn't catch it. She started slow and spent most of the game playing catch-up. I scored a bingo with LIZARDS and ended up beating her 393-302.
My second game was against Kassandra, the club organizer. I'd played her two months ago and beat her badly. It was closer this time around but I still got her by almost 100: 405-314. I played two bingos with HORRIBLY and FANCIES. I also played afronts, not sure if it had two f's, and she challenged it off the board.
My third game was not pretty. I played Sean, a guy in his 50's or 60's, who was clearly my superior. He beat me 477-264, but in fairness, I had the shittiest tiles this game. At one point I had three consecutive draws of only vowels. Sean also drew both blanks, all four S's, and the Z, X, Q, and J early enough in the game to not be stuck with them. I had a bingo with ESTEEMED late in the game, which isn't bad considering my tray was E T M E E E D. He played multiple words I hadn't heard of including LOX, CHEEP, CROZE, and LANAI. He had three bingos against me: MISSION, CROONING, and RAIDING. Had the letters been more evenly distributed, he still would have beaten me. It wouldn't have been such a crushing though. However, you won't always draw the best tiles and you have to make due with what you get. Needless to say, I didn't do that.
My last game was another against Kassandra. I walloped her again, this time 389-319. I had two bingos in this game too, both occurring within my first four turns. ADULATE and DATELINE, the latter landing on a triple word.
I am discovering that there is a gigantic gap between the skill level of players at the Gorham Scrabble Club. Sean, for example, has played against some of the best players in the world, including Matt Graham from the movie Word Wars, who at the moment is ranked 10th in the world. Other players would be considered kitchen table players, rarely scoring above 400 and not looking to expand their vocabularies through study and memorization. I think I'm somewhere in between, though probably a lot closer to the kitchen.