Recapping the first weekend of the Virtual World Cup
When we first hatched the idea to hold this Virtual World Cup event a few weeks ago, the reasoning behind it was simple - in a word, it was isolation. Especially here in the United States, where we've frankly done an awful job of containing the COVID-19 pandemic, we've been forced to quarantine ourselves for the long haul, and we've been sadly cut off from the community we love so dearly. Jennifer and I haven't seen another Scrabble player in person in nearly five months. As for in-person tournament play, forget about it. We won't be playing Scrabble over the board for quite a while. So we set out to hold this event with a clear goal in mind: to bring the Scrabble world together.
I'm thrilled to say, though the tournament only kicked off this past weekend, that our mission has already been accomplished. It's been a joy to see all the exciting new developments that have come about as this event has gotten underway - national teams are gathering together in Facebook chats and Whatsapp groups, they're watching each other's games around the clock, and they're bonding over their shared love for Scrabble. A couple of our matches this weekend had upwards of 100 viewers on Twitch. And it's not just players in these 16 countries that are getting engaged, either - in the weeks since we announced the tournament, this website has received 3,500 unique visitors from 44 different countries.
The bonding with the community has been great. And, hey - the Scrabble hasn't been half-bad, either. With one weekend in the books, each team has now played exactly one match, which means we've got eight teams sitting pretty at 1-0 and eight now playing from behind at 0-1. And it hasn't been straight "chalk," either - in fact, two of the four No. 1 seeds were upset by No. 4 seeds, and the same for No. 2 seeds against No. 3's. Parity was a major theme this weekend, as even some of the world's best players proved mortal. In a field this strong, anyone can beat anyone.
Here's a quick recap of all the action we witnessed this weekend:
In group A, we saw a major upset special, as bottom seed Thailand notched a surprisingly lopsided win over the top-seeded United Kingdom, 15.5 to 9.5. Napat Vatjaranurathorn was the star of the show for the Thais, winning all five of his games against the UK contingent. The No. 3 seed also beat the No. 2 in this group, as India topped Malaysia, 15-10. This means that after one round, the standings are upside down! The No. 4 seeded team is in first place, followed by 3, 2 and 1 in that order. The top teams will have some work to do if they want to battle back into playoff position. Only two teams can advance.
In group B, the top seed took care of business, but it wasn't easy. Australia is one of the strongest teams in the whole tournament, but South Africa gave them a run for their money, keeping it close to the end and eventually falling short, 14-11. In the 2 vs. 3 matchup, Pakistan had a very strong day, upsetting the Nigerian team, also by a final score of 14-11. The Pakistanis have had a very successful run of team matches in 2020, and it'll be interesting to see if they can keep up this momentum when they face the Aussies next week.
In group C, there was plenty of drama! Ghana got out to a very strong start against Canada, winning 7 of their first 9 games, and it looked like they were cruising to a blowout win. Then the tables turned, and the Canadians went 11-5 in their next 16! It was a dramatic comeback victory for Canada, 13-12. Then in the other matchup, we saw another 13-12 match, and it was the bottom-seeded Kenyans upsetting top-seeded Singapore! Singapore is a very strong team, and they could still make the knockout stage, but they'll need to fight back with a big showing against the Ghanaians next week.
In group D, we had the two most lopsided matches in the tournament so far, as two teams came in loaded with star power, and their stars did not disappoint. For the United States, Will Anderson, Jesse Day and Conrad Bassett-Bouchard went a combined 13-2 against their opponents from the Philippines, and their team cruised to the win, 18-7. Ireland similarly enjoyed a big performance from their top players - Kevin McMahon and Paul Gallen were a combined 9-1 against New Zealand, and the Irish squad prevailed by a 16-9 final. It'll definitely be a clash of the titans when the U.S. and Ireland do battle in two weeks.
There were all sorts of fireworks throughout the weekend. Evan Berofsky of Canada had the biggest win of the weekend, as he put up a downright absurd score of 714 against Charles Tachie Menson of Ghana. The highest combined score was 1,035, with Howard Warner beating Rik Kennedy 589-446 in the New Zealand/Ireland match. And the award for most entertaining play of the weekend goes to Odette Rio of the Philippines, who spotted that Conrad had an open triple-triple and blocked the spot by playing... DACRON, which is Conrad's username.
(Note: If you just can't get enough info on these Virtual World Cup games, I'd highly recommend checking out the Tournament Statistics Kit (TSK), brought to you by Singapore's Weibin Toh! It's a bottomless treasure trove of tourney data.)
In closing: Phew! That was a lot of Scrabble. I'm exhausted just from watching it. All in all, we saw 200 games in just the last 48 hours, and come next weekend, we're going to do it all again with 200 more. This tournament is going to be a wild ride, and we're so happy to have you all on board for it. We'll be back in just a few days with more Virtual World Cup action - check out the link below for all the details.