Share your WSC experience: Stewart Holden
Let us not allow one overreported incident to detract from what was an
amazing week of Scrabble. Hopefully we will see reports on everything
that was good in Warsaw start to appear over the next few days. Having
already shared 190 or so photos with brief details of each game I'm
not going to repeat all that here, but will mention a few highlights
both on and off the board. In no particular order...
The overall organisation of the event was impeccable. The rounds ran
roughly to time and the lunches provided were very good. The ongoing
supply of mineral water was also nice. Slightly more seating area
outside the playing room and in the lunch area would have been useful
but otherwise all the facilities were excellent.
The huge display screens were great and I enjoyed playing my first
paperless event, simply following the scoreboard to see everything I
needed for the next round. As with many other things, John Chew leads
the way and others will follow.
A wide selection of very enjoyable local eateries; I made two trips to
the Bombay Massala, two to the Folk Gospoda complete with live music
the second time and one trip to the legendary Old Inn Under The Red
Hog visited by just about everybody at some point. The 5L beer tubes
(that's nine pints if you're a Brit) were a sight to behold! The
service everywhere was very good and every local person I spoke to was
friendly and chatty, not a bad experience to be had anywhere.
Had breakfast every morning in the local cafe rather than paying the
extortionate Hilton rates; this was a good chance to catch up with KC
Hirai, Aaron Chong and Mihai Pantis on most mornings. Throughout the
week I meet a couple of dozen players who had previously been just
names, and as with every other event this is what really makes it
worthwhile travelling to major internationals, the people.
The standard at the top end was phenomenal and I feel lucky to have
been in the top 30 for the whole week. I played 17 of the final top 20
finishers and managed several scalps along the way, although slipped
at the end by losing 3 of the final 4 games to finish 28th of 106.
Nonetheless a better placement than I had expected and together with
teammate Paul Gallen who secured a well-deserved 8th place, Northern
Ireland picked up the trophy for best performing country. An easier
achievement for a country with a small number of representatives,
perhaps, but satisfying nonetheless.
It was nice to meet representatives from new countries, although the
standard of one or two of them was disastrously below WSC level and it
is noticable from http://50.63.8.131/2011/tsh/total_teams-034.html
that the bottom 13 places all went to single-representative nations.
The new player I encountered in an early round wasn't tile tracking
and failed to spot a high-probability bonus from his final rack,
instead opting to open the board up when the bag was empty and I held
a previously unplayable EIMORST. Over such a large number of games the
extra spread is unlikely to affect the final result too greatly but
nonetheless it is not what one expects to encounter at the World
Championships.
Scoring 694 against Paul Allan was quite ridiculous, especially given
that all seven bonuses were fairly straightforward. I feel that the
majority of players in the room could have achieved the same score
with those tiles and although it was pleasing that such good fortune
should choose to come up at the World Championships, I had other more
satisfying wins throughout the week. I want to mention that Paul was a
complete gentleman throughout and simply said "That's just Scrabble!"
when the game was over, when I'm sure others would have been far less
gracious in the face of such outrageous luck.
Regarding the Dundas-Sulaiman game that ended with negative scores,
which has also been debated at some length, I share most people's
bafflement at how it could have happened with the rack(s) in question
but I don't believe anybody should be calling foul play. However I
don't believe this kind of result is the kind of thing the WESPA Rules
should make possible and I would encourage the Rules committee to look
at some way to prevent this in version 3, whenever they start work on
it. We go to tournaments to play Scrabble, not to have games cancelled
before a word is played on the board due to an unfortunate
idiosyncrasy of the tournament rules.
I was thrilled to see Andrew Fisher make it to the final, a right
nobody could deny him after so many previous top 10 finishes. To be at
the top of one's game for more than 20 years is quite some achievement
in itself. It was clear from the spectators room that he was the crowd
favourite, but in the end the final wasn't a classic and the blank
distribution spoke for itself. However it was well-presented to the
audience and a fun affair to be a part of. All credit to Andrew who
played solidly in the face of adversity. I won't deny I'd rather have
seen someone more media-friendly holding the title for the next two
years and Andrew would have made a publicity-friendly ambassador for
competitive Scrabble in a way that Nigel never will, but then Nigel is
undeniably the best player in the world and if anyone deserves a
second WSC title then it is him.
Overall the atmosphere was incredible and the emotional comedown from
having to return to work soon afterwards was a pretty hard blow; I'm
quite sure nearly everyone would have preferred to just fly back to
Warsaw and do it all over again!