The Previous Combined High Scoring Game Totaling to 1,157 between Phillip Edwin-Mugisha and Vannitha Balasingam Revisited

 This wordsmith guy who called himself the "Phenomenon" ecstatic about his Scrabble achievement after beating Vannitha Balasingam of Malaysia at the 10th World Scrabble Championship 2009 in Johor Bahru, Malaysia, Phillip Edwin-Mugisha who hails from Uganda smashed two nine timers ADENINeS (131) and AERIFIES (183) in this game, including two more bingos REBUILT (74) and READIEST (63), while Vannitha had three bingos, DEMOING (71), GETABLE (70) and rEENACTS (80) coupled with high scoring moves as you would witness in their record-breaking combined high scoring game, at that time!

This 1,157 combined scores stood nearly one decade as number 1 before, until it was broken by David Webb and Bob Violett according to WESPA Rated Tournament Records. There was another record of 1,210 points set in Australia in 2014 but their organizer did not apply to WESPA for their tournament to be rated, so it was not included in the WESPA list.

(Apparently, this game between Vannitha and Phillip appeared in John Chew's poslfit website, but when you click on the game itself, it is no longer available now. Good thing that yours truly was able to save that game, and I am sharing it for us to see once again this memorable game in our lifetime.)

Peter Morris vs. Nigel Richards at Round 1 of 2010 Tournament of Champions

 

Pakorn Salvaged a Draw against Howard Warner at Causeway 2009

There comes a time that a 5-point or 10-point penalty challenge rule becomes an escape to the jaws of defeat in an endgame battle. For instance, a player bingoed out using a plausible nonword, then the scores are tied and the situation is that the opponent has to choose between the two:

1. To challenge the word and if it is valid, then he/she loses the game due to point penalty rule; or
2. Not 100% sure about the validity of the word/s, and just let it go, but would result to a draw.

This happened to a game between Pakorn Nemitrmansuk (Thailand) and Howard Warner (New Zealand) in Round 32 at the Causeway Scrabble Challenge 2009 in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. This used a CSW07 lexicon.

This was the board position after Howard's 12th turn of VENINS at n6:

Pakorn's 12th Rack: EGIOPRR
Score: Howard 434, Pakorn 338
Unseen: AA

Find out what was the play of Pakorn here:

Comments by Joel Wapnick: "I would have liked to see Howard's reaction after Pakorn played this phony (PROGERIAL). The play works only because it is a good gamble on Pakorn's part that Howard doesn't know the eight-to-make-nine cold; and when the dust clears, the game will result in a tie unless Howard challenges. Had this play led to a one-point win for Pakorn, the challenge would have been automatic. And if had resulted in one- to ten-point loss for Pakorn, Howard would lose nothing but some spread by not challenging. Great heads-up thinking by Pakorn! Howard chose to take the guaranteed half point. A stunning ending to an entertaining game."

Comments by David Boys: "Pakorn phonies out to tie the game! Outplays are the only time where the point-penalty challenge rule (in this event 10 points per word) is more onerous than loss of turn. Pakorn takes advantage with this perfectly plausible nonword. I can't imagine more than half a dozen players in the entire field challenging this off."


Sidenote: In Causeway Scrabble Challenge 2008, David Eldar used this desperate endgame attempt against Helen Gipson, bingoed out RETANGLES*. Helen decided not to challenge and the game ended in a draw!

My GST 2011 Game Summary

Round	Opponent	Scores		Margin	Wins	Cum. Margin
1	Ricardo Gonzalez	390	426	-36	0	-36
2	Salah Salih	487	390	97	1	61
3	Rekha Balaji	401	377	24	2	85
4	Ralph Lobo	513	337	176	3	261
5	Wone Mamadou	431	384	47	4	308
6	Eric Kinderman	464	368	96	5	404
7	Selwyn Lobo	477	532	-55	5	349
8	Marie Fernandes	382	356	26	6	375
9	Mohammed Sulaiman	320	301	19	7	394
10	Mangala Bhandarkar	372	377	-5	7	389
11	Sanath Hemachandra	383	348	35	8	424
12	Cecil Fernandes	376	371	5	9	429
13	Mohammed Sulaiman	409	451	-42	9	387
14	Salah Salih	375	474	-99	9	288
15	Eric Kinderman	360	416	-56	9	232
16	Ricardo Gonzalez	343	396	-53	9	179

Click Ronald Credo for his full Stats and Score Card in WESPA Website

Round 1 vs. Ricardo Gonzalez

Round 2 vs Salah Salih

Round 3 vs Rekha Balaji

Round 4 vs Ralph Lobo

Round 5 vs Wone Mamadou

Round 6 vs Eric Kinderman

Round 7 vs Selwyn Lobo

Round 8 vs Marie Fernandes

Round 9 vs Mohammed Sulaiman

Round 10 vs Mangala Bhandarkar

Round 11 vs Sanath Hemachandra

Round 12 vs Cecil Fernandes

Round 13 vs Mohammed Sulaiman (repeat)

Round 14 vs Salah Salih (repeat)

Round 15 vs Eric Kinderman (repeat)

Round 16 vs Ricardo Gonzalez (repeat)

Asad Ul-haq, a regular UAE player came here to watch only

Oman Team in Yellow Uniform (Day 1)

Oman Team in White Uniform (Day 2)

Ricky Gonzalez, the first and last round 'Silent Assasin' of tiger2002

Winners: 3rd from left, Salih (Saudi), Nikhil (UAE), Mohd Sulaiman (Gulf Champ), Eric (UAE) and Irfan (Bahrain) with Sponsors

Results of GST 2011 held in Dubai

GST 2011 CHAMPIONSHIP
Etisalat Academy, Dubai, UAE
Organized by Nikhil Soneja

Results from Round 16

Rank	Player	Wins	Margin
1	Mohammad Sulaiman	13	982
2	Nikhil Soneja	11	917
3	Salah Salih	11	632
4	Irfan Siddiqui	10	803
5	Eric Kinderman	10	536
6	Ralph Lobo	10	382
7	Ricardo Gonzalez	10	200
8	Marie Fernandes	10	-84
9	Mangala Bhandarkar	10	-114
10	Selwyn Lobo	9	490
11	Wone Mamadou	9	470
12	Sanath Hemachandra	9	453
13	Ronald Credo	9	179
14	Rekha Balaji	9	45
15	Usha Menon	9	-152
16	Cecil Fernandes	8.5	959
17	KV Chidambaram	8	476
18	Shakir Reshamwala	8	289
19	Susan Ensor	8	17
20	Amitha D'Souza	8	-78
21	Dylan D'Souza	8	-101
22	Madhu Soneja	8	-159
23	Roy D'Souza	8	-447
24	Kishore Vaidyanathan	8	-835
25	Uzma Saeed	7	134
26	Mahboob Khan	7	111
27	Sonny Hemachandra	7	-226
28	Pandian Srinivasan	7	-241
29	Zahid Sachak	7	-394
30	Meraj Khan	7	-581
31	Rohaina Tanveer	6.5	442
32	Batul Kaizar	6	-357
33	Pranav Rao	6	-487
34	Kartik Adinarayanan	6	-542
35	Mohammed Firdhouse	6	-873
36	Imran Nasim	5	-1024
37	Manas George	3	-1822
HG	Nikhil Soneja	622
HW		0