World English-Language Scrabble Players Association

October in the World of Competitive Scrabble

The Monthly Report

Scrabble news across four continents are featured in our report this month into the World of Competitive Scrabble. As players consider their travel itineraries for 2017, there continues to be enough action in 2016 to sate the most enthusiastic of players.

The action starts in Australia, where the state of NSW held its annual State Championships. 48 players competed in the 3 day, 24 game event, ending with Esther Perrins being victorious, (winning 18 of the 24 games) from Rod Talbot (also 18 games) and Tony Hunt (17.5 games). This is not the last state to have its State Championships for 2016; in actuality, there are 18 tournaments remaining for the domestic Australian calendar so there is plenty of games on offer for those down under!

Waseem Khatri kept up his winning record in Pakistan tournaments when he won the 3rd Signature Ranking Tournament in mid October. Victory in this 9 game tournament was not secured until the final game, according to newspaper reports as a victory over 2013 WYSC Champion, Moizullah Baig secured the win. The remaining three divisions were keenly fought as well with excellent coverage, as always, on the Pakistan Scrabble Association’s Facebook page.

On the topic of Facebook, the Trinidad and Tobago Association posted coverage of its school tournaments, featuring photos of many students involved in game play.

The big tournament news from the UK in October would have to be the victory of Phil Robertshaw (pictured left) in the ABSP National Scrabble Championship (NSC), a victory we featured in an article earlier in the month. The field of 52 players featured two former World Champions (Mark Nyman and Craig Beevers) and three players in the WESPA World top 10 (Australian Number 1 David Eldar, 2015 WESPAC runner-up Lewis Mackay and Allan Simmons). Phil’s victory featured in the newspapers and included spots on BBC radio, a video spot from BBC Radio Bristol shared on the British Scrabble Facebook page. .

The Twin Cities Collins Open, organized by Rob Robinsky was a CSW tournament held in the US during October. This tournament was won by Geoff Thevenot, who had to win the last four games to secure the win, with other results being favorable. The runner up was Rob (by half a game), whose 665 was the noted high game score of this tournament. You can view that game on Rob’s Instagram page.

October also saw the 4th leg of the WESPAC 2017 qualifiers in Kenya held at the Parkside Villa Hotel. Thirty two players vied for the victory here, with it finally being secured by Gitonga Nderitu from Allan Oyende.

There were two 600+ individual game scores here and whilst you could follow the coverage via a webpage, avid followers of the game in Africa would have been treated to very entertaining coverage on Twitter.

Players from Scrabble Kenya and Scrabble Uganda tweeted photos and updates throughout the weekend, occasionally getting into some friendly banter amongst all the photos. All vowel racks and being caught with 25 on a rack featured amongst all the board and player pics. The prize winners were tweeted by Scrabble Kenya, the photo of which is reproduced here.

Next Month

November promises to be a huge one for Scrabble around the world. Scrabble Uganda hosts Scrabble on the Nile, Wexford in Ireland hosts the 25th anniversary of their annual tournament, the UK hosts its Winter MatchPlay and Thailand has Princess Cup scheduled. In addition, The Singapore Open, which we featured earlier in October, will be played and the World Seniors Championship will occur toward the end of November.

And, then there is Causeway - a festival of Scrabble which promises some of the best Scrabble you will see this year!

With that, we conclude our October report.

Happy Scrabbling!