Announcing the Virtual World Cup
It's been just about three months now since all of us over here in North America began quarantining at home, waiting for the COVID-19 pandemic to subside. During that time, we've still been able to enjoy a lot of spirited Scrabble competition, thanks to our quick pivot to virtual events. Under the CoCo banner, we've had five one-day tournaments already, and they've been successful, drawing around 30ish players each time. Much fun has been had.
But for many of us, not just in North America but in a handful of other places around the world, this time cooped up at home still isn't over. The pandemic still looms over us, and our quarantined time goes on.
So we figured: Why not continue with our virtual tournaments, only this time, try something a little bigger?
Here's our idea. Over these next few months, we're going to be running a team tournament that's open to the entire world. We plan to gather national teams from all the world's top Scrabbling nations and pit them against each other in a big tournament to compete for global Scrabble supremacy. We'll call it the Virtual World Cup.
Before launching this tournament, I reached out to Michael Tang to ask for his advice. After all, he's the godfather of team Scrabble tournaments - the Alchemist Cup event that he introduced in 2018 is the best-run tournament in Scrabble history, bar none, and I wanted to talk to him before attempting something similar (albeit online). Not only did he give his blessing to move forward with this event, but he also had a ton of feedback on the format I had in mind. Together, we mapped out an idea that I think the whole Scrabbling world should really enjoy.
In short, what we've got planned is a Scrabble tournament modeled after the FIFA World Cup. If you're a fan of soccer (or "football," as I hear the vast majority of the world calls it?), you can probably see where I'm going with this. The event will look a little something like this:
16 nations will compete in the Virtual World Cup. Each nation will build a team of 5 players, with a sixth player on the roster as an alternate. We'll use WESPA ratings to determine which nations qualify, as well as which players qualify for each nation’s roster.
Throughout the tournament, the national teams will play "matches" against each other - one match per team per week. Each match consists of 25 games in total - each of the 5 players on one team plays each player on the other team once. 15 minute clocks, 5-point challenge. (Ideally, all games in a match would take place in one session, over the course of 2-3 hours, but if some rescheduling is necessary at times, that can be arranged.) In each match, the first team to win 13 out of 25 games wins.
The first round of the tournament will be "pool play" - the 16 national teams will be placed into groups of 4, and each team will play a full round robin of matches against the other teams in their group. The teams will be ranked by their match records (3-0, 2-1, etc.), with individual game records as a tiebreaker. In each group, the top 2 teams after the completion of pool play will advance; the bottom 2 will be eliminated.
The 8 teams remaining will advance to the "knockout" rounds. The format here is simple - it's a single-elimination bracket. Round of 8, then round of 4, then a final match to determine the world champions.
I've spent the last week or so quietly reaching out to a few top players around the world, just to initially gauge interest in this sort of tournament. The results were pretty fantastic. A huge number of players told me they were somewhere between "probably" and "definitely" interested in playing. There's already positive feedback from players in 12 countries - the United States, Canada, England, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Nigeria, Kenya, Pakistan, South Africa, Hong Kong and the Philippines. And that's just at first pass! (Apologies if I haven't connected with you yet - I'm moving as fast as I can.) These are strong players, too - they include 23 of the world's top 100, 6 U.S. national champions and 3 world champions.
These results give us the confidence to move forward with the event. A giant bracket tournament open to the whole Scrabble world is ambitious, but it looks like it can be done. Here's the timeframe we have in mind:
June 15 - July 5: Registration. Players have 3 weeks to sign up for the tournament (and recruit their countrymen and countrywomen to join them!). On the 5th, we'll close registration and invite the top 5 rated players from the top 16 rated countries to compete.
July 6 - July 26: Pool play. Teams will play 3 matches over the course of 3 weeks.
July 27 - August 16: Knockout rounds. The top teams will compete in 3 playoff rounds over the course of 3 weeks, with the finalists going head to head over the final weekend.
This is the idea, anyway. If there are any major scheduling conflicts we need to address, we can always make modifications later, but for now, the plan is to crown our virtual world champions 9 weeks from now.
Let's get started! To enter the Virtual World Cup, all you have to do is fill out our quick registration form. And when you enter, please do spread the word to any and all potential teammates in your home country! We're hoping to build the strongest national teams possible and make this our most epic virtual Scrabble tournament yet. With you on board - yes, you - we can make that happen.