Previewing the inaugural Austin Tile X-Words (ATX) tournament

This weekend brings the eighth in-person CoCo tournament since our inception back in late 2019, and it's the one for which I'm - maybe, just maybe - most excited of all.

Come Saturday, a horde of Scrabblers will descend upon Austin, Texas, for a 2-day event. I've had this one circled on my calendar for a long time, and I somehow doubt that I'm alone.

Austin Tile X-Words (ATX) will feature 20 players duking it out over 14 games, and it should be nothing short of epic. How so, you ask? I don't even know where to begin! Let's do our best to count the ways:

The top-notch directors

This event will have a dream team of talented people at the helm. This will be the in-person directorial debut for Becky Dyer, CoCo board member and virtual club director and deputy webmaster and all-around organizational MVP. Becky has been working hard on planning this tournament for a year now, and she is more than ready to put on a marquee event.

Also directing a CoCo event for the first time: none other than James Curley, an icon of the Scrabble streaming world (and the proud recipient of the 2021-22 President's Associates Teaching Excellence Award at the University of Texas)! James has also been doing great work to get this event ready to roll.

This tournament is your chance to meet these two Scrabble celebrities in the flesh - and to see them direct the event of the year. How can you possibly miss out on that?

The awesome city

Austin is great. In addition to being the capital of Texas, it's also a mecca of American culture (look no further than the iconic South by Southwest film festival that just wrapped up last week) and one of the biggest and most vibrant college towns in the world (the University of Texas boasts an enrollment of 50,000-plus).

There's also tons of great food - just ask Becky, who's compiled a list of delectable eateries near the tournament (including one Taiwanese coffee and tea spot that happens to be called CoCo's Cafe, I kid you not). Allegedly Austin is an epicenter of great beer brewing as well - so says local player Matt Canik, though I'll have to personally do some research this weekend to look into the veracity of Matt's claims.

The elite competition

I mean... just look at this field! This is a ridiculously stacked division, loaded with national champions and others of that caliber. The headliners are Dave Wiegand, Jesse Day, and Conrad Bassett-Bouchard, who have consistently been the three strongest performers in CoCo events thus far, but there's an incredible depth of strong players even after that.

You've got a former Worlds runner-up seeded fifth (Chris Lipe) and a former Nationals runner-up sixth (Geoff Thevenot). Your humble blog author is slotted ninth out of 20 in the field, just praying he'll be able to scrape out a .500 record this weekend.

If you care about competing with the best of the best in Scrabble, there are few tournaments in America better than this one.

The big prizes

A few months ago, we received a very generous anonymous CoCo donation - a check for $1,342 to cover the entire cost of renting the venue for this tournament. As a result, we're able to give a full 100% of tournament funds back to the players in the form of prizes! That means some serious moolah for those who perform well.

Becky and James have estimated that they'll shell out $850 for first place this weekend, $550 for second, $400 for third, and $240 for fourth. And it's not just the elite experts who will get paid, either - there are also hefty class prizes for lower-rated players who exceed expectations. All in all, six of the 20 players will go home with a sizable paycheck for their efforts this weekend.

The streaming!

An elite Scrabble tournament wouldn't be complete without multimedia live coverage! And for that, we have James to thank, with an assist from our resident technology expert Vince "Wince" Castellano. James has been working hard these last few weeks to set up a rig using Vince's equipment, so he'll be able to point cameras at the board and racks on Table 1 this weekend. He's also putting together a team of commentators to offer their analysis of the top games.

If you tune in to the CoCo Twitch channel this weekend, you should get a chance to witness some first-rate Scrabble. This is a first for the CoCo - we did plenty of work to stream virtual tournament games during the pandemic, but this will be our inaugural stream of an in-person event. James has been working hard to make it happen, and I'm so excited to see the work that he and his team produce.

Lots more live coverage as well

In addition to the Twitch broadcast, there will be plenty more ways to follow all the happenings at ATX. As with every CoCo tournament, you can watch the pairings, results, and standings refresh in real time on our Live Coverage web page - and in addition, we'll do our best to update our social media feeds (Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter) with photos and other updates on what's going on.

In short, we're looking forward to getting one of the marquee Scrabble events in North America off the ground this weekend. If you're playing, I can't wait to see you there; if you're missing out, don't you worry. We'll have more than enough content online to give you a virtual front-row seat. Get ready!