Share your WSC experience: Aaron Chong
Climbing from the Pits, By Aaron Chong, Malaysia
I suck.
That was what went through my mind after losing to fellow Malaysian Ker Jen Ho on the 15th round of Day 2. I plummeted back to the bottom of the pit at 102nd place and I could imagine the other Malaysians back at home pulling their hairs at how abysmal Henry and I performed so far.
Before the tournament
I arrived at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam at around 6.30am on Monday. I went straight to the gate to board the next KLM flight out to Warsaw and met Jim Kramer and Wajid Iqbal. Cheah soon arrived and he was going to be my roommate at the Ibis Hotel in Warsaw. Thirty minutes before our departure, we were joined by Dean Saldanha and Tony Leah, and then we're off to Warsaw.
After our arrival at Warsaw and checking in at our hotel, Cheah and I went out for a quick lunch and to shop for groceries at the nearby Carrefour. Our first impression of Warsaw was quite dreary due to the dull Communist buildings and apartments lining the main street and the language barrier we faced when we ordered our food. We bought some biscuits, a bottle of milk and three bottles of drinking water. When we drank our water, we were rudely surprised that the water turned out to be sparkling. Nonetheless, we were not the only ones facing the problem as the same complaint was also made by the New Zealand team (Howard Warner, Lynne Butler, Joanne Craig and Blue Thorogood) and Shakir Reshamwala.
On Tuesday before registration, I joined the New Zealanders on a tour around Warsaw, where we visited Lazienski Park, the Jewish Ghetto and Stare Miasto. The park and Stare Miasto were picturesque and charming and the city center seemed lively and posh. It turned out that Warsaw wasn't a bad place at all!
During the reception after registration at the Hilton, I caught up with Sherwin and we talked about how our meeting in Mumbai didn't materialize when I was there on a business trip. I had a sneak peak of the playing room, which looked rather small in my opinion at that time. Despite the wonderful company I had, I was rather disappointed that canapés were served instead of a hearty buffet dinner, especially since I came with an empty stomach.
Day 1
It was a rather chilly morning when I walked about five minutes to the Hilton from the Ibis. I had breakfast with the Singaporeans the St Honore cafe. Ricky informed me that I would be paired with Gerry Carter in the first round and then Naomi Landau in the second round. I was quite nervous to be paired up against Gerry as he had beaten me a couple of times before. I haven't been in the WSC since 2003 and would certainly like to do better than my previous finish at 57th place. Besides, there were people who expected Henry and I to do better than the travesty the Malaysian team had back in 2009.
After a brief opening ceremony, the games began and I had to admit that my first game against Gerry was a big screw up on my part. Despite Gerry's earlier phony of AGOTIZES*, he managed to lay down KINGSIDE after my play of LaXITY for 60 points. My rack became ABEISTU and the first word I saw was TAUBIES*... wait a minute, is TAUBIES good? Shouldn't it be TAUBE, TAUPIES? Despite my instincts telling me not to play it, I went on to play it. Gerry immediately challenged it off and this resulted into a deserving loss.
In the second game against Naomi Landau, I was very lucky with the tiles as I played SOCIETY, NERVATE, CAPONIER and ZENAIDAs on the first four turns. I also had WHERE for 60 points and got the second blank for REdLINER later in the game. In the end I beat Naomi by 382 points, which was the highest tournament game spread I had achieved so far.
However, in a horrific turn of events, my big win against Naomi translated into a string of losses against Weibin, David Delicata, Evan Cohen, Neil Green and Ricky. The phonies that I played were FUNBOX*, SOCAGING* and KEFFIYAS*; all successfully challenged off by my opponents. I finished the day at 99th place with negative spread and felt embarrassed at how stupidly I played so far. Sherwin consoled me that I could make a comeback since there were plenty of games left.
Later in the evening, I had dinner with Henry, Cheah, the Singaporean team and Odette at a restaurant called GOSPODA. There I had my first taste of SLIVOVIC (Polish vodka) and shared a platter of wild boar steak, venison, deer sausages and PIEROGIES with Henry and Ricky, while Cheah tried some KVASS (a drink made from fermented bread).
When Hubert Wee took off his jacket, a G tile fell on the floor and it was an awkward surprise for the rest of us at the dinner table. We would soon learn after the tournament that this had something to do with the 'missing G tile scandal' that would very soon be sensationalized by the press.
Day 2
Although I managed to stop playing phonies, my string of losses continued as I was taken down by Keiichiro Hirai and Joanne Craig. My game against Joanne became a cynosure among the Polish spectators as she started off with GROSZ, the Polish coin, and followed with BARONNE (along with GROSZE), ENTAYLEs, FUSArOLE, ENTREATY and SNOTTED, while I had FIMBRIAE, EQUATION and played the V front hook of ENTAYLES to form VENTAYLES.
I eventually sunk deep enough to play against the Czech and Slovak players, Tomas Rodr and Ivan Pastucha, who played phonies such as EXOT*, FEWS*, FEWT* and ATEISTS* while I managed to play TRISTFUL, something I recently learned from my cardboxing exercise.
I then took down Marie Fernandes to win my third game in a row, but the ball stopped rolling for me when I made a strategic error against Bradley Whitmarsh that eventually cost me the game. In the next game, I was paired up against Bartosz Pieta from Poland, who surprisingly turned out to be quite formidable as he effortlessly played OPTIONEE and AUREOLE to win the game.
When I played with Ker Jen Ho in the very next game, there was no hope for a win as I had rubbish consistently throughout the game. That brought me the 3rd loss in a row and the 11th loss of the tournament after fifteen games of hell.
It was disheartening to see myself at the leaderboard, displayed on a jumbo plasma TV screen, fallen to 102nd place, while Hubert, Sherwin, Stewart, Ed Martin, Chollapat and Thacha stayed at the top of the pack and Mikki, Komol, Joanne and Tony Sim made their comebacks. Being at the bottom of the pack, Henry and I were in a somber mood as we were in grave danger of losing an allocation.
For the last game of the day, I beat Ben Berger from Germany so that I could move up by three places to 99th. Ben had to fill in at the last minute for Gan Yi En, a fellow Malaysian player who couldn't to make it to the tournament under the German flag due to chicken pox.
Day 3
I had a large bowl of muesli served with yogurt for breakfast. It was the same breakfast that Howard Warner had the day before and subsequently performed very well on the second day. That had to be the breakfast of champions as I won all my games against Gunnar Anderson, Herve Bohbot, Zbiniew Wieckowski and Joshua Otieno Manase before lunchtime.
After lunch, I continued to beat Marty Gabriel but my winning streak was ended by a loss to Lakshan in the very next round. After that, I was stunned to learn that in the next game I would be paired up against a more formidable (former) Sri Lankan player: Naween Fernando.
Fortunately, I had better tiles against Naween as I played READDICT, cURPELS and FRIArIES. Although he tried to make a comeback with ISCHIAL and ARILLODE late in the game, it wasn't enough as I was already ahead and I won the game by a substantial margin.
In the last two games of the day, I was paired up against Rodney Romany and Orlet Bullock, both I discovered to be highly aggressive Caribbean players. I beat Rodney by a slim margin of 19 points with cHAINMAN, OUTGIvE and REVISALS against his GAUSSIAN, ZOEA (69) and ENTIRELY. I also had a slim victory against Orlet, who had FUsILEER and FILANDER while I had a nine-timer UPSTaNDS for 149+5 points.
After beating both Caribbean players, I was dizzy from adrenalin rush as I went to the leaderboard to find that I had jumped from 99th to 40th position and gained a healthy amount of spread. I was also ahead of Theresa Brousson and Chollapat, who had crashed all the way to the bottom despite having their good runs on the first two days. Henry managed to climb to 49th position after winning his last game against Naween. Odette gave me a hug and Ker Jen Ho's father was ecstatic that we kept the 'Malaysia Boleh' spirit alive.
Day 4
It was the final day of the tournament, but Henry and I were not completely out of the woods yet as we could still lose a spot if we played terribly.
I started the day with a victory against Steve Gruzd with BARITOnE, INDOORS and ADESPOTA. Then I was paired up against former world champ, Joel Sherman. I was nervous at first, but I was in my element as I had JaVELIN, LIVIERs and AFREETS down. After playing AFREETS, I emptied the bag. Both of us were shocked that my final rack was BUXOMER.
After defeating Joel Sherman, I continued to beat Mark Kenas and then pipped Thacha in a tricky endgame. I therefore won all four games before lunch, garnered more than 1000 points worth of spread and landed in 18th position while Henry was not far behind.
In the next round, I found myself playing at one of the single tables against Paul Gallen. From then on, the way Scrabble was played was far more superior than the games I had played beforehand. It was a tight race, but I made a screw up by taking a leap of faith with BLAGUED*, thinking that I didn't had a chance of winning since I was more than fifty points behind and there was a high possibility of Paul having a bingo rack with the final S, which in fact he didn't.
I continued to stay on the single tables and defeated Sam Rosin, followed by two losses against Alastair Richards and Mohammad Sulaiman. In the final game of the tournament, I was paired up against Peter Kougi while Henry was paired up against Edward Okulicz, who happened to be his roommate at the Platinum Residence.
I started off the game against Peter with PORTENT, followed by ABLUENTS, while he had SIDAlCEA through the D. Later, I had XYTONER on my rack. I saw OXY through the floating O at first but quickly realized that I could extend it into OXYTONE for 72 points. I also made my first pass in the tournament when there was one tile left in the bag and both V's unseen.
I eventually finished my tournament run at 24th position after defeating Peter. Henry however lost to Edward O and fell to 45th position. But we were still ahead of India and Singapore. After Henry made a quick calculation of the final team rankings, he told me in exasperation that we had unofficially earned Malaysia the third spot. We then celebrated our success at a five-star restaurant called Sekret at Stare Miasto, along with Ricky, Cheah, Odette and Joel Sherman. I had BIGOS and pork ribs and there were plenty of free bread and cheese. Consequently, I returned to the hotel feeling extremely sick from overeating, but extremely happy over how well Henry and I had performed.
Best-of-five finals and end of tournament
I was actually pulling for Nigel to win since he's half-Malaysian, but rooting for Andrew as well as he played remarkably well in the second and fourth game. The fifth game however became a lost cause when Andrew played POTAE instead of APO (which I favored) allowing Nigel to play REGRANTS and subsequently picked up IIEFMNO for OMNIFIED in the next turn. The crowd went dead silent as Nigel's picked up both blanks and another Nigellian victory was inevitable. I enjoyed the finals immensely and in my opinion it was the most exciting WSC finals ever.
All in all, I agreed with Philip Nelkon that Poland was an excellent venue for the WSC, despite the initial hiccups of having tiles that do not fit the board, timing issues and sometimes the lack of protein during the lunch buffet. This is a WSC that I shall never forget and I'm grateful that there were more games played in this year's WSC, since it allowed Henry and me to climb from the pits.