Recapping the Halloween Spooky Scrabble Spectacle virtual tournament
It was my pleasure this past Saturday to help Jennifer Clinchy direct the latest Collins Coalition one-day online tournament, the Halloween Spooky Scrabble Spectacle!
Many thanks to Woogles.io for providing the platform for playing, and to Josh Sokol-Rubenstein for providing superbly entertaining, nonstop streaming of the event on Twitch! Check out his streams and give him a follow at twitch.tv/axcertypo.
Twelve players representing eight countries from all over the globe competed in this free 8-game event - competitors from Ghana, Hong Kong, India, Kenya, Kuwait, and Nigeria were all present, in addition to the United States and Canada.
Brian Po was in the lead most of the day, but there was suspense throughout, as he was chased by Matt Larocque. Both were undefeated, in fact, all the way through Round 6. Then the drama heightened in Round 7, as Brian lost a game to Mark Francillon and Matt was still undefeated, meaning he seized control of the top spot.
The final round was a dramatic showdown between Brian and Matt. With Brian holding a huge spread advantage, it was winner take all. The game went Brian's way, but not without a few twists and turns. Or one twist, anyway. Brian tried to hook IMBRAST onto AGOG forming AGOGS* - Matt wasn't going to let that go unchallenged. But on Brian's next turn, there was another spot for IMBRAST, hooking a G to make GI. Shortly after that, he hooked an E onto AGOG making AGOGE and EMULATOR, which drew a challenge, giving him an extra 5 points. Later, with both blanks, he played EUCAINE. Brian also had ZEPS for 41. He ended up hogging all the bingos, and ultimately it wasn't a close one.
In the end, Brian finished at 7-1 +1132. Matt settled for a second place finish at 7-1 +327. Great job by both players! And congratulations also to Mark Francillon for finishing third, at 6-2 +285.
Notable plays:
Roland Oppey opened his game in round 3 against Brian with WEBPAGE - and drew a challenge as well, for a total of 87 points. He ultimately lost the game, but by the narrow margin of 385-377, and against an opponent rated almost 500 points higher.
Brian Leavitt played a beautiful 9-letter bingo, ASPHALTED - there was general agreement that this was the awesomest play of the tournament. However, Rohaina Tanveer played two bingos (SORRELS, VAULTED) to his one in the game, and she won by 8 points.
Here's something we bet you've never seen before and probably never will again: a game that ended in a tie score, and the final word played to secure the tie was TIE. This was played by Rod Weis in his game versus Roland Oppey:
Fun facts:
Twitch viewers numbered in the 20s and 30s all day long - double or almost triple the number of players in the tournament.
This was the CoCo's 11th virtual one-day tournament, and the 11th to be exactly even in regard to turnout - so far the available evener has never been needed. This is not statistically impossible, but it's highly unlikely - somebody do the math on that!
The high win was a 581 by Zachary Dang - nice job, Zach!
Brian, our champion, was the 2019 Hong Kong Scrabble Champion, and was the first youth player to win this competition. Very impressive!
We gave special recognition to the "best Halloween-themed word," as judged by the directors. It turned out there were several to choose from. The winner was SPOOKY - played by Rod when he hooked the word ST onto POOKY*. (So what if POOKY* isn't a word? SPOOKY is, so it counts.)
Honorable mention to the other great Halloween words: TREATING by Brian, CAROMEL by Matt, and EERIE by Rohaina.
Overall, a fun time was had by all, and the games proceeded very smoothly. The day was best summed up by Jennifer when she told me:
"Wow, this is simply a great group of players! A pleasure to direct."