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About the Committee Members:

Elie Dangoor

Elie, from London, England is a real estate director. He plays backgammon, chess and bridge, but concentrates on Scrabble as he finds it the most enjoyable. He has played in Thailand, India, Germany and Ireland as well as all over the UK, and has won several tournaments including the prestigious Easter Matchplay and the recent London League Tournament.

As well as being on the ABSP Committee, he has recently taken over as Chairman of WESPA and has been busy encouraging national associations to join, and also undertaking a review of all the committees.

His aim is to have all WSC nations as members, so that they can have a say in the future development of English Language Scrabble all over the world, as well as vote in the Biennial General Meeting to be held at this year's WSC.


Cheah Siu Hean

Cheah is 45 and works for Apex Healthcare, a Malaysian drug manufacturer and distributor. Since the age of 10 he has owned at least 2 dozen Scrabble sets. He first encountered the then-word list at his university Scrabble club, which was headed at the time by Peter Gilliver and then by Harvey Freeman.

He is concurrently president of the Singapore Scrabble Association and secretary of WESPA. He won Singapore's national championship in 2007, and the Australian championship in 2002 and 2004, Penang Open in 2002, and represented Singapore the 2001, 2005 and 2007 WorldScrabble Championships. Although he cannot claim any credit for this, he regards the most positive development in Singapore Scrabble during his tenure to have been the dramatic fall in the average age of the top-ranked players.


Andrew Fisher

A chartered accountant and auditor by profession, Andrew has been actively involved with club and tournament Scrabble for over two decades. He is an experienced international and has competed in all World Scrabble Championships to date except for 1993, his best placing to date being fifth (in both 1999 and 2001). Originally hailing from the UK, he has competed for Australia since 2002.

Andrew acts as honorary treasurer for a number of non-profit bodies other than WESPA, including ASPA Vic (the Victorian state Scrabble association); in the past he has also served as UK ratings officer and ABSP auditor, and has organised a number of tournaments including instigating the Australian Masters and State Challenge. His WESPA duties include financial control and accounting, and liaison with other foreign-language international federations.


Stewart Holden

Stewart is 29 and originally from Oxford, England but now lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland with his partner Sarah-Jane who is chairperson of the Northern Ireland Scrabble Players Association.

Stewart's greatest Scrabble achievement has been to make it into the England team for the 2003 World Championships, which took place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. His UK tournament successes so far have included winning the top group of the Nottingham Nomads tournament twice and the ABSP Festival of Scrabble and Isle of Wight events. He also won the 2004 series of the Channel 4 quiz show Countdown and still gets old ladies stopping him in the street to talk about it.

He is also a regular computer operator at events around the country and devised the UK's game library Centre Star which features extensive coverage of many tournaments. In his spare time Stewart likes drinking Guinness, playing darts and pool, struggling with cryptic crosswords and odd sessions of experimental cookery. Nobody has been poisoned yet, but some say it can only be a matter of time.


Michael Tang

A media executive since 1992, Michael has been actively involved in organising Scrabble tournaments in Singapore and Malaysia. He organised the one and only Channel NewsAsia World Scrabble Masters in 1999 which was won by Naweeen Fernando with a prize money of US$25,000. He has also been organising the annual Causeway Scrabble Challenge since 2002 and hosted the WSC 2009 and WYSC 2009 in Johor Bahru. He is a regular Scrabble player in International tournaments and has competed in 1999 and 2001 WSC.


Chief Toke Aka

A civil engineer, Chief Toke is president of both the Nigeria Scrabble Federation (NSF) (since 2001) and Pan-Africa Scrabble Association (PASA) since 2002. In addition, he's associated with other Scrabble groups, such as the Rivers State Scrabble Association which he has chaired since 2001. He is a chairman of the tournament committee of the World English-language Scrabble Players Association (WESPA).

In December 2003, the government of Nigeria cited him for exemplary leadership of sporting federations; and the Kenya Amateur Scrabble Association presented him a leadership award the following year.

He has been instrumental in setting up an e-mail group for the Nigerian Scrabble players and also the NSF website www.nigerianscrabble.com.

Through Chief Toke's initiatives, computerised tournament pairings, adjudication and national ratings were introduced. Over the past years, he has enabled Nigerian delegations to compete in all major world and African championships.


Jojo Delia

Aged 55, married with 3 children, conservation architect. Played Scrabble since 1996 and Malta WSC representative 2005,2007. Past President and Treasurer of the Malta Scrabble Club 2000-2007. WESPA committee member since 2005.

Seeking to establish Malta on the International Scrabble scene despite small population of 400k.