Nigel Richards completes hat-trick at Scrabble Champions Tournament

Nigel Richards further cemented his place as the greatest Scrabble player in history by winning his third world champion title at the inaugural Scrabble Champions Tournament (SCT) which took place from 3-8 December 2013 in Prague. The Kiwi wordsmith added the grand prize of USD 10,000 to his impressive career winning tally.

Difficult passage of play

All was not smooth sailing for Nigel though as the defending champion had to settle for 2nd place in the 31-round pre-knockout phase, with the top spot going to last chance qualifier Sammy Okosagah of the USA in the Cinderella story of the tournament. Sammy, one of the top players in Nigeria in the 90s and now making a comeback to Scrabble after a long hiatus, was not even guaranteed a place in the competition until the eve of the tourney, making it through on the back of a solid performance in the 8 game last chance qualifier. By the end of the 31st game, he was tied on 22 wins with Nigel, but ranked ahead as a result of a far superior spread (+2052 to +1498).

In the semi-finals, Nigel faced off against the USA's Dave Wiegand while Sammy was paired with Komol Panyasophonlert of Thailand. Nigel efficiently booked his ticket to the final with a 3-0/+548 win, while Komol ended Sammy's dream run just short of the finish line with a 3-1/+136 victory.

Komol then sped to a 2-1 lead in the best-of-five final, and seemed bound for glory after opening with a bingo in game 4, but you can never count the Scrabble juggernaut that is Nigel Richards out. The wily New Zealander came storming back to take the next two games on the trot and reclaim his title for a record third time. No other player has ever been crowned World Scrabble Champion more than once.

The SCT was organized as part of the Prague Mind Sports Festival by leading events management consultancy Mind Sports International Ltd in partnership with Mattel, Inc., owners of the Scrabble brand outside North America. The elite division of the SCT takes over from the erstwhile World Scrabble Championship, which was held biennially from 1991-2011, and featured 110 of the world's best Scrabble players, invited to compete through their respective national and regional associations.

For the first time this year, a last chance qualifier was held on the eve of the tournament, allowing 4 more players to join the fray after beating out 36 other hopefuls over the course of 8 games. The move proved wildly successful, especially as the results of the main tournament unfolded, and Sammy Okosagah finished top of the table before being knocked out in the semis by Komol.

The SCT Elite was played side by side with an 18 game open tournament that was contested by 46 players with Jesse Matthews of Canada walking away with the €400 first prize with a 14-4/+525 record. Two more 6-round open tourneys were held: in the first of these, Russell Honeybun of Australia and Tony Sim of Singapore each won €150 with identical 6-0/+487 records amongst the 41 contenders, while 17 year old Muhammad Inshal Shahbaz of Pakistan triumphed at the second, immediately after having played both the last chance qualifier and the invitational. In addition, competitions for Speed Scrabble, Duplicate Scrabble, Clabbers, Norwegian/German/Polish/Czech Scrabble were held alongside (details on event director John Chew's SCT site).

One of the hallmarks of the tournament was the excellent live video streaming on MindSports TV, which once again centered on the smart RFID board that seamlessly recorded tile placement and scores of the lead game in each round. The game coverage was complemented by a number of interviews and play-by-play analyses with participants in between the games, showcasing the colourful world of top-flight Scrabble. The archived video content can be found here.

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