THE WORLD OF COMPETITION SCRABBLE – APRIL
April featured one of the most hectic months to date on the Scrabble calendar (and may end up one of the busiest for 2016.
WESPA related tournament news this month comes from 8 countries over three continents.
The German English Scrabble Nationals starts off our reports this month; an event won by Charles Micallef from Malta. Malta features in our report later in the piece as this time of year sees many Scrabble players make the trip to this beautiful location to take part in their annual triple feature of tournaments. It was a Malta/Poland/England trifecta to start the month in Germany.
We move next to Malaysia, where ASCI 2016 featured over 500 participants, mostly young players: there was also a hotly contested Open Division that featured some of the best players in the region (and the World). It was a Singapore Trifecta in the Open, with the event taken out by Goutham Jayaraman from Toh Weibin and Michael Tang. World Number 1, Nigel Richards, was 5th.
Media coverage of any Scrabble event is always welcomed and ASCI was the subject of this article from Malaysia.
Staying in Asia for the time being, Hong Kong featured one its first National tournament, which commenced on the weekend of the 23rd ending with a finals format played out in the following weekend. The Hong Kong Scrabble Players Association maintains a strong Facebook presence and were providing updates to avid fans. The finals weekend was a tightly fought affair and ended with Carson Ip being crowned the FIRST EVER Hong Kong Champion.
Earlier in the month, Singapore’s 1st Alchemist Cup saw Marlon Prudencio emerge the winner from Jeremy Khoo and Michael Tang.
We move to Africa shortly with a short stop off in Dubai: The Dubai Scrabble Open commenced around the same time as Hong Kong. Adebola Samuel (Nigeria) won from Paul Richards (Australia).
Dubai was not the only tournament to witness a Nigerian victory. Nigeria recently launched a media campaign in their online media to grow the game with a focus on youth. This month also saw their National Championships play out in Abuja. Adebola had a notable win on the first day against the WESPAC Champion, Wellington Jighere but it was Olatunde Oduwole who emerged victorious at the end of the event!
At the time of compilation, Kenya were in the process of a Labour Day tournament.- Scrabble Kenya maintain a regular Twitter account and you can follow updates for any events there.
Twitter is a fascinating place to find news on Scrabble. The same Kenyan tournament featured a board photo of a 10 letter play (produced below). Coincidentally, it also provided some other highlights from our final tournament in focus this month: Niagara Falls.
Avid Twitter followers would have been able to follow winner Evan Berofsky through the tournament with his usual summary of games. But they would also have seen some great plays by Dave Koenig, who ended up 5th. Pictured below are his boards featuring the exquisite play of SEAPIECES and his final 1000+ game with Tony Leah, ending 640-380.
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Next month we feature events in Malta and Kenya that are completing as we write. May also sees WESPA tournaments in India and Ireland.
Until then, happy Scrabbling!