THE WORLD OF COMPETITION SCRABBLE – JANUARY
The first month of the Scrabble year featured WESPA rated tournaments over 3 continents, a marathon tournament in Africa and some high scoring throughout.
It did not take long for the first tournaments to be played with the four-tournament UK Open commencing not long into 2016. Nigel Richards took out all four of the tournaments in what was a strong start to the year: he took that same Scrabble form into his next tournament soon after.
One of the premier tournaments on the Indian calendar (iGate) occurred soon after and it always guarantees a strong. Players representing countries including Australia, Singapore, The Philippines, and Kuwait amongst others joined a very competitive Indian scene to battle it out in mid January.
Over 35 games, Nigel Richards lost only 5.
Singapore’s Hubert Wee was runner-up with Marlon Prudencio finishing third.
Players from five nations attended the Northern Ireland Championship, which was taken out by the UK’s Mark Nyman. The top finishing Irish player was Kevin McMahon (3rd) with Celine McCart (5th) the top finishing Northern Ireland player.
The final WESPA Rated tournament completed at the time of writing was in the US; at the Crescent City Cup in New Orleans. Followers of Evan Berofsky on Twitter were treated to an excellent running commentary which culminated in a game between himself and Evans Clinchy for the title in the CSW division. Evans took out the game (pictured below from Evan Berofsky’s Twitter account) and thus won the tournament.
In other news around the world, Waseem Khatri took out the 6th Ranking tournament in Pakistan during January. And in Kenya, they were in the process of completing a 66 round tournament to start the year. At the time of writing Allan Oyende was leading.
Wellington Jighere’s victory at WESPAC was still the subject of much accolade in his home country with acknowledgement at Presidential level. The NSF President acknowledged the support in a delegation to Senate Minority Leader, Sen Godswill Akpabio, thanking him for "empowering many Nigerian youths (to take up) Scrabble."
There are WESPA rated tournaments commencing in late January in both Australia and the US with reports on them to be included in our February update.
We end this piece by making mention of some high scoring games through the month. Kenya had a 644 game in their month long tournament but the early mark for high game was made by the UK’s Natalie Zolty at the UK Open, with a very nice 646.
This score did not last too long on the top scoring list, however: a little over a week later, Northern Ireland’s Celine McCart became the latest member of the 700 club with a superb 702 in her game with Nicky Huitson at the Northern Ireland Championship. Her completed board photo, along with her scoresheet can be viewed on this page.
Happy Scrabbling everyone – will be back with a February report in a few weeks.