Scrabble: My King's Cup 2002 Game Summary

This was my only King's Cup tournament I had competed and it was worthy of a challenge meeting the top Scrabble players in the world on this prestigious event being held at Bangkok, yearly. I had the chance to play and beat the GOAT, Nigel Richards in Round 6. I also played with Femi Awowade (the other Finalist) with a 1-1 win loss record. I had string of losses from round 7 to 9 then round 13 to 17, but came back strongly, thereafter. Too bad, I was caught up by Komol P. in the final standing with a small margin, and so I finished at 11th place. I watched the interesting Final between Nigel Richards and Femi Awowade, and learned a lot from their games. Over-all, it was a great experience!

Some games I remembered were Round 1, 6, 22, 23 and 26, as follows:

My first round opponent was Manop. I had the first rack of ENPSTUU, and chickened out by playing UP. Good thing I found PESAUNTS in my second turn. The turning point of the game was when I held this rack ??AEFIO:

Round 6 vs. Nigel Richards

I had a good start with two consecutive bingos, bETAINES and EXPIrED missing the best scoring spots, although I failed to nail down a bingo on my first rack of ?EIINSW after the initial play of BODGER from Nigel. Nigel keeping up with RUTHLESS, and later on he played TRUG forming TRUTHLESS front-hooking it. He also played a nice UNT(AM)ING thru AM. I believed I was lucky to have won this game with two blanks, 3-S and JKQXZ. You can view the complete game here.

Montien started with a bingo, WINDING and I responded with MANGOLDS one move later followed up by PRIVETS. He again bingoed on his 4th turn with MEDALING. After my WEMB and his JAPAN, the scores were 210-238, his lead, and this was the situation now:

I was having a good start in this round with two bingos, ORIGAmiS and SIEVERTS against Gil, but he came back with ISOLATES to chase me as I led, 169-104. Later, after his PUL, I was still ahead 314-231 and this was the board position with my rack of AANQRTU.

After the game, I checked QUARTAN and INDOL and found to be valid. So, I went back to the adjudicator and asked why he ticked invalid. He replied that what he had read was PUARTAN because the tail of the letter Q was longer as written by Gil. Good thing that I was able to win this game, but the spread was reduced. (After the tournament, my total spread had a big impact in the final standing as I was overtaken by Komol in the 10th spot. The moral lesson here is to always ask for a second opinion when in doubt of the adjudication.)

In the final round, I was 100 points behind (279-379) going to this board position:

That was an undeserved win for me or just being lucky with my last pickup. I did not ask Terry after the game what his rack was when he played GOAT. Assuming he held AFGORT+1 (either A or V) combination, then FORA (2k) could have won him the game based on my analysis. If he could not block my best bingo spot in column (m) in his penultimate rack, then there's nothing he could do about it. In my last turn, there was thought that I would try ARCuSES (n8) for 95 points forming other words ITAS, DINE and EDS*, but I knew the latter was invalid in SOWPODS. So, there you go. I completed the tourney with 16 wins.

Below was my score card based on my scoresheets with 16 wins at +7 spread. There was a discrepancy in spread as my final tally reads 16 wins -5 spread. Maybe, there were some sort of errors in filling out the scores in the slip in earlier rounds that were not checked by myself and my opponents before submitting it to the officials. Because once the score slip have been signed and submitted, we could no longer change it.

Final Board Layout of my Games

Round 1 vs. Manop P