I attended this year's National Scrabble Championship (23 games over 3 days in Coventry) during the last weekend in May. I was the only East Berks player attending.

 

In the main division there were 50 players. It was a strong field as usual and I was at the  bottom end ranked 37 of the 50.

 

I had a good start winning the first game with bonuses of BENITIER and TYLOSIN giving a win by 450-412. Then came 3 games against high rated players which I lost. Gambled on ZARECHS in one of those but wasn't good. Should gave played ZAS for 47 keeping CHE? which given I lost by 31 could have changed the result. However won games 5 and 6 and finished day 1 on 3 wins.

 

Then had the first of 2 bad spells losing 5 straight including the first 4 on day 2. 4 of those were lost  by over 80. I did win a close game in game 12 by 460-442 and then game 13 but in game 14 got hit with a 149 point 9 timer of PEARLITE after playing a bonus.

 

Did manage to get back on track with a few more wins to get me to 8 wins but didn't feel I got the breaks at the end where opponents drew better tiles. I did lose two close games by 9 and 3 towards the end though so with better play might have added to my tally.

 

However, enjoyed the challenge and will enter again in the future. There was a quiz after day 2 which was fun.

 

Bonus highlights were as follows;

 

Played by me - Benitier, Tylosin, Eventide, Adnation, Imposted, Uralite, Entoptic, Agrates, Minivets, Sorbitol, Outrance, Spiering

Played by opponents - Voidance, Cornute, Capriole, Whoopers, Pearlite 9x

 

---

 

Thanks Richard for the report - you had some tough games and some fantastic words played in your games.

 

Here is one of Richard's boards :