Situations often come up in Scrabble where the play that
leads to the best expected spread is not the play that wins 
most often.  Many people say that simulation is not useful 
in these situations, but it can be.  Maven (by which I mean 
the old, good one, not the crippled, gussied-up Hasbro 
versions) allows us to edit the board and run simulations, 
adding plays the kibitzer doesn't suggest, deleting inferior 
plays that it does suggest.  It does not directly provide
means for computing winning chances, but we can "record" the
simulation and do whatever we want with it.

I have found the AWK language to be ideal for manipulating 
Maven sims, and I recommend it to people who have interest
in analysis.  It's free and runs on just about every 
platform out there.  Search on the web for tutorials, get a 
book if you like, and you'll get started very quickly. 

Some people have told me that they "can't" use AWK.  I can
understand how it would seem scary for someone who does not
have experience in computer programming, so I put a little
package together which makes it extremely simple to at 
least sim for winning percentage.

simwin.zip
1. Unzip this file into your Maven directory (probably C:\MAVEN).
2. Open Maven and edit the board into a position you want to analyze.
   (Alter Position... from the Stuff menu)
3. Open the Kibitzer (also in the Stuff menu)
4. To remove plays from the Kibitz window, select them and go to
   Edit... Clear.
5. To add plays, put them on the board, to add exchanges, drag them
   to the tile bag.
6. Go to Simulate... in the Stuff menu.
7. Set the look ahead number to 99.
8. Check the Record the Simulation box and only that box.
9. Click ok.
10. Stop the Simulation when you like (I recommend at least 10,000 
    iterations) by hitting Escape.  It will go slowly.
11. Open a Command Prompt (also known as a dos window).
    It's probably in the Start menu somewhere.
    Or hold the Windows key and press R.
    Then type command and hit enter.
12. Type cd\maven
13. Type win and then a number which is the current player's deficit
    ie "win 0" for opening plays, "win 150" when trailing 50 to 200,
    "win -150" when leading 200 to 50.

The window should look something like this:

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\>cd\maven

C:\MAVEN>win 0

C:\MAVEN>conv simulate.log sim

C:\MAVEN>awk -f win.awk -v diff=0 sim
8H unau win 0.482575 tie 0.00361241 loss 0.513812
8H uh win 0.499575 tie 0.00531237 loss 0.495113


I do plan on making a Windows program with a nice interface
which does this and much more, but that's much more work
than writing a 30 line awk script.  I'll get around to it
in a few months probably.  People are welcome to make 
changes to the win.awk script and to share them or not.

John O'Laughlin