If you are playing a game with people of various skill levels it is a good thing to have a decent amount of luck involved or one person will win all the time (u

If you are playing a game with people of various skill levels it is a good thing to have a decent amount of luck involved or one person will win all the time (unless they lose on purpose). That is not enjoyable, especially for the losers. In tournament play, where you are ranked and play against similarly skilled opponents, it makes sense that upping the skill factor can increase fun, but for casual home play, not so much. My family has quite a bit of variance in skill levels in scrabble and we have different rules depending on who is playing. When the skill levels are very mixed, we allow one word lookup for free and then the next word must be in the dictionary to play (ie. no need to challenge and possibly lose your turn). We also have a list of two letter words you can consult. This works pretty well and when only the hard core players are playing we go back to the official rules.