Wrapping up the inaugural year of CoCo tournaments
At the beginning of 2020, we set out with an initial goal of running nine Scrabble tournaments. We had a solid plan in place - there were nine host cities selected, nine dates on the calendar, and nine solid fields of players shaping up. We were poised for a successful run of events this calendar year.
Then COVID happened, of course. The virus caused everyone around the world to change their plans for just about everything, and that most definitely included us.
But in the end, we were able to run... well, nine Scrabble tournaments. They didn't end up being live events - instead of meeting up in Seattle or Oakland or New York or St. Louis, we all got together on our computers this year. But nine tournaments is still nine tournaments, and we're proud of the year we had as an organization. Today, let's take a moment and recap the virtual events we ran in 2020.
CURE1
The first Computer Users' Remote Event was a big leap of faith for us. Our first time directing an online-only tournament - would it even work? Turns out, the process went fairly smoothly. Twenty-four players showed up to play seven games, and it was competitive all the way. Josh Castellano won the tournament, going 6-1; a host of other strong players were nipping at his heels, including Nathan Benedict, Rasheed Balogun, Scott Jackson, and Ben Schoenbrun, all 5-2.
CURE2
We tweaked the format for the second CURE, moving from 7 rounds of 20-minute games to 8 rounds of 15. Who doesn't love more Scrabble? The faster time control was a hit - especially for Ryan Fischer, who sped his way to 7-1 and won the tournament. He had to hold off Dave Wiegand in the final round to seal the deal, and in impressive fashion, he did it. Congrats to Ryan.
CURE3
For the third CURE, we switched up the time slot in an effort to encourage more international players. Eventually three main players emerged as contenders to win Canada's Jackson Smylie, Malaysia's Cedric Lewis, and Alec Sjoholm from the U.S. Jackson just barely emerged as the victor - the final records were him at 6-2 +764, Alec at 6-2 +650, and Cedric at 6-2 +510. A super close race all the way!
CURE4
The international flavor was even stronger for the CURE4 - we hosted 34 players hailing from 9 different countries (Australia, Canada, India, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, and the U.S.). The top two players for much of the tournament were the American Jesse Day and the Australian Victor Tung, and in the final two rounds, Victor had to beat Jesse twice in a row. He got the first one, but Jesse squeaked out a 7-point win in the thrilling final game, making Jesse the champion. Congrats!
CURE5
The Americans were back in control for the CURE5, as three U.S. players - Martin DeMello, Terry Kang Rau and David Whitley - dominated for much of the day. All of them started 3-0, and then Martin eventually began pulling away from the pack. Ultimately Martin won the tournament with an impressive record of 6-1 +594, giving us our fifth different champion in five tournaments.
The Virtual World Cup
This was the big one! After running five successful 1-day tournaments, we decided to think bigger. The VWC was a long-running competition featuring national teams from the 16 top countries in the Scrabble world. The squads competed for six weeks in total - three weeks of pool play followed by a three-week bracket to determine the champion.
In the end, the race for the title came down to the United States versus India, and the U.S. team won the final in dramatic fashion. Down 12-8 after 20 of the 25 games were complete, the Americans needed to win all five in the final round to emerge as champions, and that's exactly what they did. Conrad Bassett-Bouchard, Jesse Day, Austin Shin, Will Anderson, and Dave Wiegand all emerged victorious in the final game, thus capturing the world title - by the narrowest of margins! - for the U.S.
CURE6
After a bit of a post-VWC layoff, we returned in October for the first of our three fall 1-days. It was a bit of a letdown going back to shorter tournaments, so the fall events were a little smaller, but we drew somewhere in the neighborhood of 8-12 people for each one. In the October 1-day, we had an incredibly close race for the title - Indunil Amarasinghe and Alec Sjoholm were matched up in the final round, and Indunil needed to beat Alec by 78 to win the tournament. As it turns out, he won by 81! What a clutch win. Indunil is a well-deserving champion.
CURE7
In the November 1-day, we had a milestone moment - our first woman to win a CoCo tournament! Terry Kang Rau was the heroine of the day, going 6-1 and defeating Brian Bowman in the final game to clinch the victory. She played some cool bingos along the way, too, including the nifty FLOODWAY in the final round.
CURE8
After a near-miss at his first tournament win in the November 1-day, Brian would have his revenge in the December tourney. He steamrolled the CURE8, putting up an impressive record of 6-1 +669 to win the event. Steve Ozorio and Priya Fernando were second and third, each going 5-2.
So that's a wrap! On behalf of all of us here at the CoCo, I want to say thank you to everyone who took the time to play in our events this year. A calendar packed with virtual tournaments isn't what we had planned for 2020 originally, but thanks to all of you, it turned out pretty great. And congrats to all the winners!
We hope you'll all be back for another exciting slate of tournaments next year. We've got a lot of fun things in the works for 2021, so stay tuned. No matter where we play, whether it's all over North America or in our own living rooms, we'll be ready to make next year a good one.