Twelve players turned up for 16 rounds of Scrabble this past first weekend of October in Brattleboro, VT. We had a variety of locals, we had Texans (Becky Dyer), and we had Washingtonians (Rachel and Chris Grubb). We had players with a vast amount of experience, and we had a first-time tournament player (Niel Gan). It was just a great group of people. Maybe we'll run it back next year.

Matthew O'Connor deservedly won the tournament with a record of 13-3, +987, having led or been tied for the lead after 13 of the 16 rounds. Ben Schoenbrun and I finished second and third at 11.5-4.5, and Becky Dyer was fourth at 10-6, +169. BJ Premore - in an homage to Rasheed Balogun's performance at Word Cup - recovered from an 0-7 start to take the class prize at 7.5-8.5.

The tournament was tight at the top throughout. Matthew's 1.5-game margin of victory was the largest gap between first and second over the whole course of play. Ben jumped off to a great start at 4-0 with a ridiculous spread of +820, but Matthew was tied with him on wins at that point and went on to lead at the end of Saturday's play at 8-1, followed by me at 7.5-1.5, Tim Weiss at 7-2, and Ben at 6.5-2.5.

Matthew and I traded the tournament lead through most of Sunday, and after round 14, I had the slimmest of advantages, 11.5-2.5 to 11-3. We then played in the final two rounds and Matthew won both games, both nailbiters: 405-402 and 406-393. Meanwhile Ben won his last three games to catch me at 11.5 wins and take second place (easily) on spread. And Becky won her last three, and five of her last seven, to finish fourth at 10-6.

Place and class prizes went like this: $600 to Matthew for first, $400 to Ben for second, $250 to Becky for fourth, and a class prize of $250 to BJ.

And we also had a few ancillary prizes: The prize for the result closest to 8-8 +0 (an idea stolen from Conrad Bassett-Bouchard) went to Tim, who was 8-8 +163. The 420 prize, in honor of recent revisions to Vermont state laws, went to Niel. And Carl Durdan destroyed the field in the autumn-themed word competition by playing both CIDER and FALL (honorable mention to Chris Grubb for "exchange 3").

Playing nine games on Saturday was something of an experiment. It actually didn't work out badly, time-wise - we started a little after 9:30 a.m. and were done a little before 6:30 p.m. - but at least for me, it all kind of went by in a blur, and there wasn't much time to talk to people. But we did go out for a group dinner on Saturday evening and got to hang out together for a couple of hours. Highlights included Matthew eating an entire fish and Tim eating an entire pineapple.

This was my first time directing a tournament, and I want to thank all the players - you were great, thanks for putting up with me. Thanks also to Jennifer and Evans for their advice and information along the way, and to Becky for her CoCo expertise throughout the tournament.