Scrabble Fans Find Home in Syosset

Matt Styczynski was walking around on Jericho Turnpike one day when he noticed a large group of people engaged a game he vividly remembered playing with his aunt and uncle in his childhood.

The 30-year-old from Syosset saw a group of about 20-30 people playing the game of Scrabble, deep in thought and focused on coming up with a new word at every turn. 

The group gets together every week and plays the game in a tournament style. The games are competitive yet friendly. The focus is on improving vocabulary but also making new friends and enjoying one-another's company. 

"I got beaten unmercifully," Styczynski remembered of his first game at Borders. "But it brought out the competitive side in me."

The group, headed by Bob Krause, of Queens, has played the game at Borders for the past 10 years and only started pre-gaming at the across the street about a year ago.

The Starbucks and Borders provides the group a great central location for its members, which come from throughout Long Island and Queens.  It also provides them with a great place to relax and socialize, and play a game they have come to appreciate and understand much more. 

"We start here, then we head to Borders later on in the evening," said Krause, who said the group started playing in Commack before they moved to Syosset for the more central location. "We have beginners to higher-level members. It's just friendly competition, and you learn a lot."

Though Krause said it's always a friendly contest, they do keep score. They also have their ratings posted on a website which keeps track of all members' performance on a 1,000-point scale. 

All members start out with the 1,000 rating, and their ratings are influenced by each week's performance. The higher the rating, the better the player. Styczynski leads the group with a score of 1,486 -- impressive. But it didn't happen overnight. Sometimes you have to learn to walk before you can run. 

"I played about 30 or 40 times before I beat Bob [Krause]," he admitted. "You can't get discouraged with losing."

Thinking of joining? Great, but don't expect to win anytime soon. Styczynski said that new players should not get discouraged based on that fact, but rather focus their energy on getting better individually and having fun. 

"You just have to be patient," Styczynski said. "There is endless room for improvement in this game."

Even though Styczynski didn't win much in the beginning, he said he still got a lot out of playing with the group, and thinks that new members would, too. 

"I'm surprised with all the friends I've made - I'm friends with people in their 50's, 60's," he said. 

On the outside, Scrabble may appear to just be putting words together, counting on one's own grasp of vocabulary to win. But Styczynski said there is much more to the game than that, something that he has learned from his time playing with the group.

"There are nine A's, six R's," he explained. "As you make each play, you're reducing what's in the bag. It's mathematical and word knowledge, but there's much more strategy than people think."

Though the group already has more than enough members to play, they still encourage new people to join, regardless of age, gender, experience or any other factor. It all starts with heading down to the Starbucks on Jericho Turnpike on a Tuesday afternoon and asking "Hey. What are you guys playing?"

"We stopped advertising because it got too crowded!" Krauss said. "But we can always manage a couple of more people."