Last spring, when the COVID-19 pandemic first touched down in North America, we at the CoCo made a quick pivot toward hosting virtual Scrabble tournaments instead of in-person ones. We started with a series of 1-day events, then gradually worked our way up to a big, global, six-week event over the summer - the Virtual World Cup.

That was 2020. We're now a few days into 2021 and, well... so far, not much has changed. A vaccine for COVID is now out there, and a few lucky Scrabblers have received it, but for the most part, our community is still living that socially distant life. It's going to be a while longer before we can resume the in-person Scrabble events we all know and love.

So we figured... why not come back this year with an even bigger and better slate of online play?

Last week, we announced the start of CoCo virtual club sessions, which give Collins players across North America (and elsewhere) the chance to meet up on Woogles.io twice a week and play casual games. Today, we unveil our second big offering of 2021. Introducing: the World Blitz Scrabble Championship!

If you followed the Virtual World Cup last year, this event will be similar in a lot of ways. Like the VWC, the World Blitz Scrabble Championship (or BlitzChamps for short) will take place over many weeks and feature a few rounds of pool play followed by a playoff bracket. Like with the VWC, we'll try to stream as much of the event as we can on Twitch. But this time, there will be three major differences:

1. The VWC was played on the Internet Scrabble Club; this event is on Woogles.

2. The VWC was a national team competition; this event will be every man and woman competing for themselves.

3. The VWC featured 15-minute games throughout; this time around, games will be much faster!

Blitz games have been super popular during the first couple months of Woogles' launch. People have been playing speed Scrabble against bots, against their friends, and against whatever random opponents they find online. Some people play games as fast as 1 minute a side... or in some cases, even faster. "Ultra-Blitz" has been a hit.

We won't be doing anything that crazy for this event. BlitzChamps will feature 3-minute clocks in each game, and 9 games in each match. In other words, you're looking at about a 1-hour time commitment for each match. Here's the breakdown of the tournament format:

• All players are welcome to enter the World Blitz Scrabble Championship. Registration will be open for 3 weeks.

• At the end of the registration period, players will be sorted into 8 groups.

• Throughout the tournament, players will face each other in 9-game matches. Each game will be played with 3-minute clocks, plus 1 minute of overtime with a 10-point penalty.

• The winner of a match is the player who wins 5 games or more. (In the unlikely event of a 4.5-4.5 tie, players will play a 10th game to determine the winner.)

• The first round of the tournament will be "pool play" - the players will compete in a round robin against the other players in their group. Each player will play a match against each other player; matches will take place once a week. The players will be ranked within their groups by their match records, with individual game records used as a tiebreaker. In each group, the top 2 players after the completion of pool play will advance; the rest will be eliminated.

• The 16 players remaining will advance to the "knockout rounds." This will be a single elimination bracket taking place over 4 weeks - a round of 16, then a round of 8, a round of 4, then a final match.
  
  

In other words, the tournament will look very similar to the VWC. We'll have a few weeks of pool play, and whoever performs the best in the opening rounds advances to the bracket. Simple and easy!

Registration is open now. On Monday, Jan. 25, we'll announce the field, and pool play will begin later that week.

To get started, all you've got to do is fill out our quick registration form. It's easy and free, so head over to our BlitzChamps page and sign up today.