Previewing the 6th annual Hood River Open
It's hard to believe that we're coming up on our sixth Hood River Open this weekend. It still feels like just yesterday that a small group of us Scrabblers started scouting out locations for a tournament in the Pacific Northwest and came across this quaint little cabin in the woods in rural Oregon. It turns out that, no indeed, that was not yesterday - it was all the way back in 2018. A whole U.S. Senate term has passed us by.
It's pretty cool, actually - with five Hood Rivers now under our belts, we've got a lot of fond memories to look back on. We can reflect upon five tournaments, each one featuring 20 games, each one with 20 players. As of this writing, there have been exactly 1,000 rated tournament Scrabble games played in Hood River.
In anticipation of this weekend's tournament, I thought it might be fun to take a look back at the five HOROs past. What follows is a deep dive into the event's history.
Pictured above are the Hood River standings - all of them. You get one big panoramic (no pun intended) view of all 1,000 games, dating back to that first HORO back in 2018, with a complete breakdown of who won how many of them and when.
So let's dive in! Here are a few interesting HORO historical facts...
We've had 41 different people join us to play Hood River over the years. Of those 41, only 6 can claim membership in the "All 5 Club" - Dave Wiegand, Conrad Bassett-Bouchard, Peter Armstrong, Chris Lipe, Puneet Sharma, and Randi Goldberg have played them all. We've also had 7 people play the tournament 4 times, 2 play 3 times, 10 play twice, and 16 people who joined us just the once.
In five Hood River tournaments, we've had five different champions. Dave won the inaugural HORO in '18, followed by Ben Schoenbrun, Conrad, Jesse Day, and Rob Robinsky. (I'm not gonna lie: I'm rooting for this streak to continue for as long as possible. The top seeds in this year's tournament who haven't won yet are Alec Sjöholm, Kolton Koehler, Chris Lipe, David Whitley, and Chris Grubb. One of y'all had better step up!)
Dave holds the record for the most Hood River wins ever, with 74.5 across all five tournaments. That's a ridiculous number! It means he's almost averaging a 15-5 finish each tournament, which boggles the mind. It also means that, of the 1,000 games ever played, he's won 7.45 percent of them all by himself.
Conrad ranks second in total wins, 2.5 back from Dave. What are the odds he catches him and takes over first? I'd say it's possible, but then again, it's pretty tough for anyone to finish 2.5 games ahead of Dave in a tournament. Pete and Lipe round out the top four, and there's a big dropoff after that.
Ben has the most wins of any player who's played 4 Hood Rivers, with 54. Jesse has the most among 3-timers, with 40. Rob leads 2-time players, with 29, and Kate Fukawa-Connelly is the leading one-hit wonder, having gone 13-7 last year.
As for this year's field, we've got a really interesting combination of the usual Hood River denizens and some newcomers. We've got 6 people joining us at Panorama Lodge for the first time! Shouts out to Travis Chaney, Bharath Balakrishnan, Terry Kang, Anuj Shetty, Nitya Chagti, and Eric Fox.
Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed this (admittedly extremely weird) preview blog. If you're a dork who cares way too much about numbers, as I am, you probably dug it. Otherwise, sorry.
But, fortunately: The Hood River Open is about a whole lot more than numbers. It's about getting to spend a holiday weekend in a charming house with a whole bunch of awesome Scrabble friends. We have good times, good meals, good after-hours fun, and, somewhere along the way, we sneak in some games of Scrabble.
Exactly 200 of them, that is.
I'm looking forward to 200 more this weekend. Let's get after it.