This was a milestone weekend for Jennifer and me. We've directed quite a few tournaments together over the years - somewhere around a dozen, I think, and more than that if you count virtual ones - but it wasn't until this weekend that we finally got to run a tournament in a venue that's our very own, with our names on the deed and everything.

We became homeowners just over a year ago, in October of 2020. When we first moved into our new house, in the Ravenna neighborhood of northeast Seattle, we were reluctant to have people over to celebrate on account of, you know, the plague ravaging the world around that time. But we bided our time and prepared for a chance that we knew would come eventually: the chance to have a crowd of our favorite Scrabblers come and join us in our humble abode for a weekend tournament. This weekend, it finally happened!

The event was a blast. Everyone got to enjoy the company of great friends, endless food and drink, and lots of lively after-hours games of Anagrams and Anomia and So Clover. Oh - and I suppose at some point, some Scrabble was played. Perhaps we should talk about that.

The big winner of the weekend was Alec Sjoholm, who showed up to his first CoCo tournament and took the event by storm, securing Gibsonization after round 13 out of 14. Perhaps the other biggest story of the tournament was the performance of Ruth Hamilton, who came in as the 10th overall seed but surged all the way to the top tables!

More on that in a moment. Let's go back and start from the beginning:

• Dave Wiegand was in command of the tournament to start out - in his first five games, he posted a ridiculous record of 5-0, +1056, and it looked like he might run away with it. Alec, who lost to Dave in the very first round, was in second place at 4-1, with Peter Armstrong and myself also at 4 wins.

• After the first 5, Dave started to slide back toward the middle of the pack, with losses in each of the next 4 rounds. Meanwhile, Alec kept on winning; at the end of day 1, he was 7-1 and Pete was second at 6-2.

• Sunday morning saw Pete start to slide back down the standings, with Dave beginning to climb back up. Pete went 1-3 before lunch, while Dave went 3-1 (including a narrow win over yours truly, where he bingoed with a monster HENCOOPS for 104). All the while, Alec just kept piling up wins, moving from 7-1 to 10-2. Meanwhile, Ruth was rocketing up the standings, and notching big wins in the process! She took down me, Pete, and David Whitley back to back to back.

• Alec sealed the tournament victory with a win over Rasheed Balogun in the penultimate round, 528-420. With Alec's title locked up, the battle for second place was on, and it was Ruth against Dave. Ultimately, Dave took it down, winning 459-389 in the final round; meanwhile Pete was victorious in the third-place battle versus Chris Grubb, 460-387.

• Alec took home $475 for his dominant performance, and he's got a shiny new CoCo rating of 2047 to boot. Dave earned $325 for second, Pete $200 for third, and Ruth not only won $120 and a plaque for the class prize, but she finished fourth overall as well. Quite an impressive showing!

Congrats to Alec, Dave, Pete, and Ruth on their performances, and thanks to all 14 players who showed up and competed this weekend. And thanks also to all of you out there who followed along from home with our live coverage! It's exciting to have so much audience engagement from Scrabblers all over North America.

That's a wrap. To everyone out there who's played a CoCo tournament in 2021, thank you! On behalf of our whole team, I hope you've enjoyed being a part of the player community we're building. We're going to take a short break for the holiday season, and then we'll be back with another exciting slate of events in 2022. Check out our tournament calendar and see what we've got planned.