Witnessing world-class competition at the CURE4
For the fourth installment of this spring's virtual tournament series, we decided to do something a little different. Rather than start first thing in the morning out here in Seattle, we scheduled the CURE4 for 5:00 p.m. Pacific instead. The idea was to open the event up to Scrabblers all over the world - the 5 p.m. start time translated to 8 p.m. in New York, 8 a.m. in Singapore and 10 a.m. in Sydney. We wanted this event to be truly international.
The plan worked like a charm. We were excited to (virtually) host a field of 34 players, hailing from 9 different countries - Australia, Canada, India, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, and the United States. And the field wasn't just diverse, it was also incredibly strong. I counted seven players - Jesse Day, Peter Armstrong, Weibin Toh, Howard Warner, Esther Perrins, Austin Shin and Marlon Prudencio - who have posted top finishes at world championships. It was a thrill for me to broadcast these games, as there were world-class players to observe every round. It felt like calling a Worlds or an Alchemist Cup.
As you might expect, the aforementioned world-class players started the tournament strong. Through three rounds, we had six players at 3-0, with Jesse, Weibin and Esther among them. Jesse started to pull away, but there was one upstart player who kept pace with him - Australia's Victor Tung. After four games, they were both 4-0; in round 5, Jesse won again and Victor lost a close one. (His desperation game-winning bingo of BRICKTOP* against Rasheed Balogun didn't pan out.)
This set up a scenario where Victor had to beat Jesse twice in rounds 6 and 7 to win the tournament. Here's what happened next:
In round 6, Victor won an absolutely wild one to stay alive. It looked like the tournament was over when he gave Jesse the perfect spot for a natural double-double of SCARABEE for 98, putting him ahead 277-218 on a board that was fairly dead. But Victor pried the board open with MAJOR for 42 - and immediately drew the Q and blank he needed to play TORQUING, sextupling the Q, for 124. Suddenly a likely loss had turned into a big lead for Victor. Jesse fought back and found the ridiculous bingo of DROOGISH toward the end, but it wasn't enough. Victor won, 454-444.
Round 7 was another roller coaster. Midway through the game, Victor was up 80, but Jesse landed back-to-back big bingos with CHEVRON for 94 and OUTREACH for 78. After the second bingo, he drew an ugly rack of ABEGIIQ. He could have made a simple dump of QI, but instead he made an aggressive move to open the board, and Victor slammed him with SNORTED for 85 in the spot he opened. It was close the rest of the way, but Jesse scored well with the J in the pre-endgame, and he squeezed out just enough points at the end to win. Fittingly, the word that finished off the win for him was FINI.
It was a thrilling end to a thrilling tournament. Congrats to Jesse for winning, to Victor for coming darn close, and to everyone else at the top. Cheers also to Marc Woo, who won our theme word prize for playing the best "post-quarantine word." Marc played LIBERATE, which the players agreed was the most fitting word to describe how we'll all feel when this COVID-19 lockdown is over. (Honorable mentions go to Jeremy Jeffers for AIRLINER, Harry Wiggins for TRAVELS and Alec Sjöholm for PURIFIED. Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that Weibin played HAT.)
This was a really cool event to run. It was our biggest one yet, it was our most international one yet, and it was our most competitive as well. It was a blast getting to witness all these games. This time has of course been challenging for all of us, but it's been great to see that everyone's enthusiasm for Scrabble has continued going strong. It's been our honor to virtually host you all. We hope to see you at the next one!