PLAYING ONLINE COMPETITIVE MOBILE GAMES
Scrambling the Scammers in Scrabble Go
Trying to get a scammer to play a full game on the app is a chore but well worth it
I don’t know if you know this about me, but I’m a very skilled player at Scrabble in real life, and I’ve found that to translate well on the app for the Play Store as well. I had the app previously installed on my phone but I got bored and deleted it. Then I had a friend from Medium of all places get me back into the game.
After weeks of playing the game and moving up in levels, I’m almost near the top of the game’s tiers now. I’m five tiers away from the very top league which excites me greatly. One thing that doesn’t excite me is that I’ve had to do all of this competition mainly with bot characters built into the game and not actual players.
Don’t get me wrong. Some of these bots they’ve come up with are very good at Scrabble. I’m just that much better. I’m top 5% in both Scrabble overall score and average word score. Since I haven’t been playing as long as some on the app, I’m still shy of 500 total wins on the app. Many of those wins have come against bots but many of them have also come from scammers.
Yeah! Who would’ve thought it? Scammers playing on an app against real players.
Let’s just say it’s not clearly obvious from the request that they are scammers so it’s hard to parse that which is why I’ve found myself in this situation so many times now. It’s almost comical. I’ll get these players, mostly female, but also some male, with either one or another con game as the game progresses. For many of the recent ones I’ve run into, it’s a crypto scam. For some, it’s a dating scam.
I brought up the bots initially because these scammers feel like I’m just playing more bots, more characters. The games feel very transactional and I get nothing more satisfying out of it than winning. Also, if you don’t work at their pace or respond to them almost immediately, many of them can get impatient.
You have to figure out how to handle them so that they won’t stop playing with you but some of them just need a little nudging. I’m the one who gets to do the nudging and the pacing with these particular players. They’ll tell me their deal and I’ll sound all excited, even coming up with fake details about my financial situation and my life to make me sound more appealing to these people looking to target some poor sucker into giving them their money.
This is one of those few times that I feel lucky to be so cash-poor. I don’t have to worry about falling for any of these scams. I’m too smart to anyway. And why do they think of playing with elite players in a game of skill? Don’t they know many of us are the least likely to fall for any of these scams?
So, what do I do when I’m presented with a suspicious person or a straight scammer? Why, beat them in the game, that’s what.
I string them along in conversation telling them I’ll give them whatever they are requesting, once the game is finished. Many of them have asked for my phone number, an email, a request to chat on Telegram, WhatsApp, or other chatting platforms to talk more deeply. I know they only have to do this because players can get banned for doing that kind of seedy activity on the app itself as the Scrabble Go app has rules of conduct in chat. Many times, unsolicited chats are ignored by players. I just can’t help myself, I guess.
I go in there and call and even raise their bluff at times. Anything to get them to play until the end until I’m tired of playing with them anymore and go on to the next game. I get these players to finish, something I’ve always been good at in life and in games. All joking aside, I think that my method and strategy to advance in the game, even at the risk of getting a scammer on my radar, is clever and helps me win more often than not.
Not all the scammers are bad players, either. When I first started, I was actually getting hustled and whooped by a few of them. Lately, I’ve handled all comers in that regard and have fared quite well the longer I’ve played them. I’m currently in a match with three of them and I’m leading by a sizable margin in all three games. I even promised each and every one of them some contact information when we’re done with our game, just to ignore any new requests once the game is completed.
You see, my mission isn’t to actually give them what they want but to do what you’re supposed to do when you’re playing on a mobile app designed for competition. That is, to play the actual game. I haven’t looked to see if this has pissed any of them off. I don’t honestly care. It’s not like it seems like they’re that organized anyway.
I still constantly get requests for games from random people that I can easily spot as suspicious. Sometimes, like in the cases I’ve mentioned, I play them, but sometimes, I’m not in the mood to scramble brains that day and just decline those requests.
When I’m in that zone though, I’m unstoppable at both winning and cracking the formula on how to get these people to comply with what I want and not the other way around. I think at some point, I may just get tired of doing this consistently. Honestly, when I reach the top league in the game, which should happen in the next couple of months, I might just be tired of the game altogether.
For now, though, I’ll enjoy winning tons of games and having a ton of fun stringing along these not-so-good people. I think it’s fair game to play their game when it comes to competition. After all, they’re competing with each other for victims. Doesn’t sound much different than me picking out victims out of them to defeat while playing one of my favorite games.
Do you think my approach is meaningful, strategic, or just straight dumb and a waste of time? What would you do differently with these scammers? Would you even engage?
