Blaxland Fund Raiser Bonuses

• slatted
• favoured
• rebraces
• otarine
• juncate
• otaries
• eastern
• affords
• retrain

Only 9 bonuses in 8 games...not my usual average but I did manage to have some strong in between plays and get to 5 wins for a 3 point rating gain.

Blaxland Fundraising Event

Yesterday was the Blaxland fund raising tournament to assist the Phillip and John Hamilton with their expenses to travel to Malaysia for the World Youth Scrabble Championships.

There were a number of very pleasing aspects to this tournament.

1. Phillip and John organised just about the entire event. I did offer to help and did help, but to be fair there was not that much for me to do. They had most things sorted. I might also add that it was a family affair and Shelley, Ruth Hamilton also were there the whole day and assisted greatly.
2. The venue - This was the library at Blaxland High School. There was where Tony Hunt and myself did an exhibition match for the school kids in the library about 5 years ago. I remember the day well. This was the day John Hamilton became hooked on Scrabble. I wrote up the event as an article. Ellen King, the librarian was around then and was there yesterday as well offering wonderful support to the kids. Ellen has asked if I would do another exhibition match there next year.
3. There were so many youth players here...great to see. I will not name them all, but I think the count was 6 of the 32 players.
4. Also of great excitement for me was to see three players that have attended my house to play Scrabble over the last year take the plunge and play in their first tournament.

I will give more details later of wins and bonuses etc.

Would you have the stamina - Causway Scrabble

Taken from the website....

The Causeway Scrabble Challenge was conceived in 2002 as a challenge between top 10 players from Singapore versus top 10 players from Malaysia. The name Causeway was chosen as the 2 countries were separated by a causeway. Over the years, Causeway Challenge has included its neighbouring and then regional countries. The 7th Causeway Scrabble Challenge will be truly global with 50 players from 10 teams competing over 45 games in 5 days. It will be longest and probably the toughest International scrabble tournament ever held.

This is a huge event....45 games...in 5 days against the toughest opposition.

There is an excellent site to watch the progress and there will be lots of annotated games here.

This will be very exciting to watch....go Aussies!!!

Trans Tasman Event

Australia is taking on New Zealand in the regular Trans Tasman event. It is structured in this way. The top 12 available players from each country play each other in a full round robin, twice!

It is the end of day two and Australia is leading comfortably.

There are 288 games in total played so the winner will need a majority to win which is 144. After day two Australia has 117 wins.

See the results here.

Central Coast Championships

On November 22 and 23 I played at Woy Woy. The Central Coast Championships. A tournament run by my mum, Denise Smith. It was a mixed event for me. I think I was third ranked in the event.

After running 2nd place all day I lost games 11, 12 and 13 to drop to fifth spot. A bit disappointing. However with just one round left I finally got it together against Sherie Brown for a big 200 point win to jolt me back to 2nd spot with 5 other players on 9 wins from 14. Alastair Richards played outstandingly by not dropping a single game to streak away and win by 5 games.

Here are my bonuses for the 14 games on the order I played them.

• latinos
• steering
• braised
• refuting
• oreades
• packets
• linters
• irisate
• indorse
• domaine
• ligates
• bearers
• wariest
• meatier
• telling
• shunned
• marrows
• trainer
• isatine
• deathly
• service
• rootled
• adiposes
• retires

WPC Photos

Phil Robertshaw, prominent player in the UK participated in the recent WPC event in Texas.

He has posted a wonderful library of Photos of each game that he played along with a photo of each player.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=63626&l=0faac&id=543987342

8 Bonus Game at the WPC

This game had 8 bonuses played. Wonderful!!

607 Game - 5 Bonuses

Nigel Richards plays a wonderful 607 point game with 5 bonuses.

View it here.

WPC - Play has started

Play has started and there in plenty of Scrabble info to keep you interested.

http://www.worldplayerschampionship.com/2008/build/index.html

There was a very high quality game in round 8 between Australia's own David Eldar and the current word champ, Nigel Richards. There are Quackle simulations for each move. Very interesting.

View the progress of all the Australians playing.

At the end of play on day one David and Nigel are both on 7 wins. Go David!

The Prince of Wales

This is supposed to look like Prince Charles. It does work a little if you squint when viewing it.

Would you pick up that tile I dropped please?

Scrabble has now been taken to new height with two players playing Scrabble whilst sky diving.

View the full article here.

World Players Championship

The World Players Championship starts in 2 days time.

http://www.worldplayerschampionship.com/2008/

I think the plan for this tourney is to run it every year the WSC is not on.

There are nine Australians playing in Texas.

I hope there will be annotated games.