A good vocabulary or good placement?

I’ve played Scrabble for years but stopped when I married a French lady and moved to France. No one would play with me in English so finally I plucked up courage and started to try in French and surprise, surprise could get 300/400 scores. That means that it is not vocabulary only that can win games. I’d say its 40% vocabulary and 60% placement.

There are plays that are really not worth playing and the more I play the more I see how some players really think about placement before placing a word. (Lots of plays there!)

Example: Note the juxtaposition of the TW squares and the TL squares two rows in or the TW squares and the TL squares four places away on the same line.  Placing say a W on the TL with the word over the TW that W gets 36 points alone If it was a Q or Z etc then that gets 90 points on its own. So leaving your opponent the possibility of doing that will negate the score from the word you placed before. Equally dangerous is playing a word that falls between the 2 DW squares on the nearly outer line. This gives a player the chance to hit 2x DW or 4 times the word.

Equally and a beginners error is playing an S on its own. An S should nearly always be used to hang (join) two words together. The main point is do not give an opening to your opponent unless you cannot help it.

Most good players will play a closed game or at least not make it easy for you to use premium squares.