LONDON LEAGUE NEWS

Chester 27th-29th January. Kathy Rush's annual event attracted 54 players including five London League members. After 16 rounds of the 17 game round-robin format players rated 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 went to form and played each other in the final round! Lewis Mackay beat Helen Gipson by 21 points to win Division A. His 15 wins scored a 2307 spread against Helen's 15 wins and 1865 spread. Wyane Kelly beat Phil Robertshaw in the last round by two points to finish third with 11 wins and 569 spread. Phil came fourth ahead of spread from Allan Simmons, Steve Perry and Jackie McLeod. Moira Conway won her last game to finish 11th with 8 wins. David Shenkin with five wins finshed lower down.     Mike Evans won Division B with 13 wins and 1187 spread from Nicky Huitson and Chris Davies on 12 wins each and 1284 and 304 spread respectively. Minor positions for League members Jake Berliner and Heather Laird who finished on 8 and 6 wins respectively.     Division C was won by Christine Tudge with 13 wins and 723 spread from Viv Beckmann on 12 wins and 646 spread in second and Joy Lloyd with 11 wins and 664 spread in third. Philippa Morris scored 9½ wins and finished 8th.

Northern Ireland Championship 2012 21st-22nd January . . When this tournament started six years it was just another minor tournament. Six years on thirty four players attended from eight different countries making this a viable WESPA rated event over fifteen rounds. Six of the competitors had played in the WSC in Poland last year. Only Elie Dangoor of the London Scrabble League along with many former London League members and known English players were in attendance. In the end it came down to a head-to-head between Paul Gallen from Northern Ireland and Kevin McMahon from the Republic of Ireland. Paul's victory 449-354 gave Paul a fourth victory in six years in this event with 12 wins and 1106 spread. Stewart Holden took third place when he defeated Wiebin Toh 433-320 in the final game to finish with 11 wins and 719 spread 341 ponts behind second placed Kevin. Other finishers included Brett Smitheram in 6th, Terry Kirk in 9th, Mike Whiteoak and Rachelle Winer in 15th and 16th, Peter Thomas in 21st and Elie Dangoor in 22nd.     The weekend was memorable for one round five game between Weibin Toh and Rik Kennedy. Former WYSC winner Toh scored two nine-timers including 275 for BEAUXITE. With the spread set at 591 just about broke every ABSP ther is going. Weibin, who will now be known as Mr 850, started very slowly with VIM for 16 points in reply to Rik tile change opening move. Both players exchanged further tiles, and the scores 16-14 in Weibin's favor, Weibin averaged over 100 points per move in his next six moves! Starting with VOGUIEST off the V of VIM for 64 and ANAPHOR off of Rik's N of REQUIN for 78, he completed his hattirck of bonuses with the nine-timer ALLiGATE for 122 off the T of VOGUIEST. On his next move Weibin covered the middle triple word square with FORKIER for 42 before opening up another nine-timer spot with ACEtATE! BEAUXITE was played through the first A of ACEtATE, his second nine-timer, for a staggering 275. Weibin now led 668-151 and Rik could not believe what had happened. With not many tiles left in the bag Weibin still found the outplay of REMAILED for 63 to win 850-259.     Stats are available here. The 850 game is available on cross-tables here.

West Berkshire 21st January. 72 players attended the event this year. Three divisions and seven rounds. Ten London League members took their boards and played! Andy Cook won Division A from Philip Nelkon with 6 wins and 587 spread. Philip had beaten leader going into the last round David Sutton 386-378 to finish with 6 wins and 366 spread but Andy's thumping of Bob Berry by 474-352 menat he overtook Philip on spread. Vince Boyle came fourth with 5 wins and 421 spread with Graham Bonham in 6th with 4 wins and 226 spread. Graham was followed by Sandie Simonis, Bob Berry and Ben Tarlow who had also notched up four wins.     Evelyn Wallace safely won all seven games to finish top of Division B with 284 spread. She was followed by Terry Jones, Len Edwards and Nova Willimas who all scored five wins. Andy Gray, Janet Bonham and Reeyaaz Goolamhossen finished 12th 20th and 21st repspectively.     Division C was won by Fran Burling who also had a clean sweep by winning all her games. Fran's defeat of Audrey Mehurst by 374-366 demoted Audrey to third. Elizabeth Terry's six wins and 357 was enough to gain second place. Elizabeth's co New Malden Drive organiser Susan Thorne scored five wins and finished in 5th place. Dan Smith was found in 10th place with four wins.     Stats are available here

Pitlochry 15th-18th and 18th-20th January Not normally reported as very few London League members venture as far north as Scotland. In fact none actually attended but it is was reported by ratings officer John Grayson on the UK-Scrabble mailing list of Sheila Anderson's achievment. Sheila, who is from Romford, narrowly failed to equal Mark Nyman's ABSP record of 27 consecutive wins. After winning all 15 games in Divison B of the Janaury 15-18 2012 Pitlochry tournament she won her first 6 games in Division B of the January 18-20 2012 Pitlochry tournament, a sequence of 21 wins. Sheila's previous rated event was the Mountnessing Christmas Invitational on December 19th 2011, where her 7-game results were LWWWWDW, giving her a 27-game record of 26 wins and a draw. If she had scored one more point to win the drawn game, she would have now equalled Mark Nyman's ABSP record of 27 consecutive wins. Her first loss at Pitlochry, to end her 21 game winning sequence there, was by only 5 points!     Winners of the first tournament were Margaret Armstrong edging out Trish Matthews in Division A. Sheila Anderson winning B with 15 wins and 1193 and, incidentally, ahead of friend Jo Holland with 12 wins and 1082 spread. The second tournament; Division A was won by Caroline Atkins with 9 wins and 505 spread. And Division B won by Sheila Anderson with 8 wins and 491 spread.

The 24th Hockley Invitational Sunday 15th January.     Kevin Synnott and Evelyn Wallace brought together 38 players for their event. Calum Edwards had won his last three tournaments but on the day was beaten into third place by Rachelle Winer and Diane Pratesi. Rachelle's victory was with 8 wins from nine rounds with a 473 spread. Diane a win behind with 7 and 557 spread. Calum came third with 6 wins and 516 spread. Vince Boyle, Sandie Simonis and Victoria Kingham also played in the A diviison. Division B was won by David Shenkin on spread from Ann Golding. Both had scored 7 wins. Martin Leverton came third edging out Len Edwards on spread after both players finished on six wins. Jo Ramjane won Division C winning eight of her nine games and scored 910 spread. Dan Smith was the highest finishing League member in C with 4 wins in sixth place. Top three positions only: Division A wins spd | Division B wins spd | Division C wins spd Rachelle Winer 8 473 | David Shenkin 7 483 | Jo Ramjane 8 910 Diane Pratesi 7 577 | Ann Golding 7 106 | Damian O'Malley 6 877 Calum Edwards 6 516 | Martin Leverton 6 433 | Sue Ball 6 763

UK Open - main event Coventry, 5th-8th January The Quality Hotel in Coventry played host to the UK Open tournament which boasted the largest prize money tournament in the histiry of British Scrabble. The World Champion had flown over from Malaysia especially for the event, alongside a wide range of ABSP grandmasters and experts and many foreign competitors made up the 64 players who braved a four day event playing a total of 38 rounds. This was no problem for World champion Nigel Richards who won 34 of them in winning Division A with a spread of 3657. Six games behind were the rest of the field led by Phil Robertshaw with 28 wins and 2100 spread in second and Weibin Toh with 27 wins and 2735 spread in third. Former and current NSC champions Craig Beevers and Wayne Kelly came 4th and 5th.     Theresa Scallan was another run away winner. With 27 wins and 1149 spread she was clear winner of Division B. Tom Wilson was second with 24 wins and 968 spread and Eileen Meghen third with 23 wins and 652 spread. Andy Gray was one of only three London League memebrs competing. He scored 19 wins and finished 9th in a 18 strong division.     Division C was a more closely fought affair. London League member Ted Lewis fought Bred O'Brien twice in the last two rounds to win the division by half a win. Breda took the first game 361-310 to lead going into the last round but Ted reversed the result to win 383-331 and won the division with 25 wins and 1424 spread. Dave Hoskisson also reversed the result when he faced Ovidiu Tamas twice. Dave won 450-358 to finish third and demoted Ovidiu to fourth by having a better spread. Both scored 24 wins. The final London League member competing, Caroline Elliott, was also in action and scored 17 wins and finished 11th.     Full results are available on the Centre Star website if you click here.

UK Open - warm-up event, Coventry, 3rd-4th January 52 players attended the warm-up event. Split into five divisions of 10 with A hosting the extra two players. Eighteen rounds were played. New Zealander Nigel Richards unpredictably lost five in a row early on and was always chasing the leaders. The leaders being Bob Linn and Calum Edwards who had scored 11 wins each by round 17 and faced off in the final round. Calum's victory by 442-424 saw Calum take top prize ahead of Nigel Richards and Bob Linn. Further down the table were Phil Robertshaw, Wayne Kelly and Alec Webb.     No such problem for Sandie Simonis in winning Division B. In her last nine games she scored nine straight wins in the double round-robin format. This enable her to finish four wins in front of Peter Thomas, Nuala O'Rourke and Beverley Calder who finished on 11 wins each.     League members Andy Gray, Ted Lewis and Caroline Elliott were the only other League members playing in C, D and E respectivly. All finished mid table; Andy in 6th, Ted in 7th and Caroline in 5th. Winners of C, D and E were Kim Hands and Len Moir both scoring 13 wins and Barbara Lukey in E with 12 wins.     Full results are available on the Centre Star website if you click here.

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Twixmas 29th-30th December . 46 players attended this annual end of year event held at Staverton Park, Daventry. Seven London League members participated. All played a total of fifteen rounds.     Barbara Morris was the star of the show in Division C and won with two rounds to go. Barbara got to 11 wins by round 13 having won 9 out of ten games. She lost the final two rounds and was already 1½ wins ahead of second placed Dave Hoskinsson. But Dave had already lost three in a row and had put himself out of contention. Although Dave defeated Barbara 432-234 in the last round Dave just confirmed second place. Barbara Lukey beat Fay Madeley in the last round to finish in third place with nine wins. Caroline Eliott finished with seven wins and finished mid table.     Former League member Jackie McLeod edged out Anne Ashmore to win A. With five players on 9 wins, and none of them played each other, going into the last round. Half the field was in contention to win the Division! Elie Dangoor and Alec Webb led the Division, both on nine wins going into the final round, both having spreads of over 700! They were followed by John Ashmore, Jackie McLeod and Anne Ashmore again with 9 wins but with inferior spreads. Final round results went like this: Wayne Kelly stopped Elie 457-379. Paloma Raychbart thumped Alec 452-329. Barry Grossman downed John Ashmore 382-291. That left Jackie to wallop Vince Boyle 533-384 and Anne to squeak past Nuala O'Rourke 420-417. Following these results Jackie emerged top with 10 wins and 561 spread with Anne in second place with 10 wins and -130. Elie and Alec dropped to third and fourth respectively.     Ginny Dixon finished one win ahead of Margaret Harkness to win B. Ginny was leading by one win from Margaret going into the final round. Both won their final round robin games to maintain their one and two. Ted Lewis scored seven wins in this Division and finished mid table.     Full results are available here.

The 24th Southend Invitational (Goodmayes in Ilford) Sunday 27th December.     Organsied by regulars Kevin Synnott and Evelyn Wallace invited 12 players per group to play a curtailled round robin. 13 London League members took part including Vince Boyle, Sandie Simonis in A, Karen Game, Kim Phipps in B, Dan Smith and Viv Bishop in C. Winner of A was Calum Edwards who won five out of five games in the afternoon to win the group. Top three in each division: Division A wins spd | Division B wins spd | Division C wins spd Calum Edwards 6½ +186 | Ann Golding 7 +633 | Martin Bloomberg 7 +709 Mike Whiteoak 6 + 58 | Evelyn Wallace 6 +480 | Phyllis Fernandez 7 +177 Mike Chappell 6 + 50 | Carmen Toscano 6 +341 | Damian O'Malley 6 +430

Mountnessing Christmas Event 10th December     This was Calum Edwards' first time as Tournament Director. Fixing malfunctioning clocks was the most pressing of his duties. Calum also supplied the results. Straight forward five divisions of eight players played to a round robin format. Eight London League members participated. Top three in each division: Division A wins spd | Division B wins spd | Division C wins spd Vince Boyle 6 +672 | Len Edwards 7 +716 | Marian Hamer 5 +360 Phil Kelly 6 +454 | Evelyn Wallace 4 +591 | Sue Ball 5 +117 Victoria Kingham 4 -140 | Chrystal Rose 4 +106 | Phyllis Fernandez 4 +246 Division D wins spd | Division E wins spd Sheila Anderson 5½ +157 | Hilda Bennet 6 +388 Adrian Noller 4 +150 | Cindy Hollyer 5 + 36 Peter Ernest 4 +137 | Jacqui White 4 +272

World Youth Scrabble Tournament 6th-8th December Johor Bahru, Malaysia. 84 players competed, but no Nigerians (they didn't get their visas in time). 32 adults (including Diane Pratesi) competed the side, progressive round-robin tournament which was won wihtout fuss by the world champion Nigel Richards.     After seven games Eden Choo from Singapore was on maximum wins. The UK's Joe Knapper and Oliver Garner were in 4th and 5th on six wins respectively, Jessica Pratesi was 17th with five wins and Natasha Pratesi somewhere near the bottom with two wins. But it's a marathon not a race so plenty of time to show some mettle. Jessica managed to win five games on the trot to be one away from the leader by round 12! Of the eight players behind the leader Australian Anand Bharadwaj, Oliver Garner and Jessica Pratesi were on nine wins each but with a low spread difference from the other seven on nine wins! Both won game 13 (Jess went up to 4th) but both lost games 14 and 15 and were still behind Annad Bharadwaj. Natasha Pratesi meanwhile put three wins together but was languishing in 64th on 7 wins and behind ten year old Jack Durand and Joe Knapper, Joe had had a disasterous time and had won just once in eight games and dropped from 4th to 54th!     It was pouring with torrential rain in Johor Bahru so it is keeping the temperature down. Diane had to use the hairdryer to dry out wet shoes after a breif spell outside for food! At the end of Day 2/Round 18 there were two Australians in first and second (Anand Bharadwaj first, Michael McKenna the second), In 7th and 8th we found Jessica and Oliver with 12 wins each. They will start the last day comprising of six games having to play each other! They are still three games behind the Australian Anand in pole and it looks a fair bet that either Anand or fellow Australian Michael will be there at the end of the tournament.     Jessica and Oliver were hopeful to finish in the top five but it was not a forgone conclusion. Jessica has a poor recent record against Oliver having lost the last four encounters! Could Jessica have a Thursday steamer winning lots of games as Jessica is used to playing long tournaments but Oliver not so. The rest of the UK contingent were holding their own with Shrinidhi in 51st with nine wins and Joe and Natasha in 61st and 62nd respectively with eight wins each. Joe and Natasha got to start day three's proceedings paired against each other! FORMATES for 158 was the highest single word score played and 625 the highest single game score achieved.     Day 3/Round 19 saw Michael McKenna defeat Anand Bharadwaj 426-397 to briefly take the lead on spread. Oliver continued his dominance over Jessica beating her 436-328!! This dropped Jessica to 13th. Jessica none too happy at this stage. Sadly Jessica lost again... and again before finishing with two straight wins, and with results going her way, climbed from 20th to 9th to finish with 15 wins and 654 spread. She hoped for a top five place this year but confirmed she is still 9th best youth in the world (as she was last year)! Roll on Birmingham 2012!     After two initial losses Anand Bharadwaj won his last four games to win the title, his last game was the defeat of Oliver Garner to secure the championship with 19 wins and a massive 1322 spread. Oliver had helped Anand on the way by defeating leader Michael McKenna 467-395 in the penultimate round, a further loss by Michael in the last round dropped Michael into third overall with second place going to Victor Gwee from Singapore. Oliver finished top Brit with 16 wins and 505 spread in sixth and with it the award for the best newcomer to finish the highest. Congrats to Anand Bharadwaj from Australia, the new 2011 WYSC champion. Anand means happiness. Anand still has SEVEN years' eligibility left to compete in WYSC.     Of the other UK representatives. Joe Knapper beat fellow Brit Natasha 364-353 in the opening game of the final day. Bit of a blip for Tasha but this was her only loss in the last EIGHT games!!! Tasha defeated fellow Brit Shrinidhi 397-334 in the last game and finished third top Brit in 34th with a +17 spread! Yeah Natasha!! 34th in the World!! Shrinidhi finished 47th. Jack Durand and Joe Knapper finished with 11 wins in 54th and 57th place respectively, Tim Butcher way behind in 62th on 10 wins.     Some pictures can be found here You may need to be logged onto Facebook to view them.     Full results are available here.

Causeway 30th November - 4th December     Prior to the WYSC Michael Tang hosted his 12th and final Causeway event with over 200 contestants eventing over three days with many players from all over the world competing including England's Steve Perry and Nicky Huitson. There were three divisons: Premier, Masters and Open all played a massive 45 games over five days of competition. This was a tournament World Champion Nigel Richards did not win but came second, two wins behind former World Champion Pakorn Nemitrmansuk!     Every thing you want to know including full results are available on Barry Harridge's site if you click here.

The 23rd Hockley (Goodmayes in Ilford) Invitational Sunday 27th November.     Organsied by stalwarts Kevin Synnott and Evelyn Wallace invited 12 players per group to play a curtailled round robin. 13 were London League members which included Vince Boyle, Mike Chappell, Victoria Kingham and Sandie Simonis in A, Kim Phipps, Marian Hamer, Phyllis Fernandez in B, Viv Bishop, Colin St Hill, Dan Smith in C. Top three in each division: Division A wins spd | Division B wins spd | Division C wins spd Cecil Muscat 6½ +441 | Noel Barnes 7 +197 | Jo Ramjane 8 +211 David Holmes 6 +226 | Stephen Wintle 6 +233 | Sheila Anderson 7 +348 Mike Whiteoak 6 + 4 | Len Edwards 5 +274 | Ron Bucknell 6 +394

Milton Keynes 19-20th November     Also known as the Winter Matchplay there were 32 players in Division A and 16 players in Divisions B, C and D. Canadian Adam Logan graced Division A along with former WYSC champion Weibin Toh and a host of other Experts and Grandmasters such as Paul Gallen from Northern Ireland, Craig Beevers, Elie Dangoor, Femi Awowade and Harshan Lamabadasuriya. Somewhere spread out in the divisions were 11 London League members. Moira Conway, David Shenkin, Victoria Kingham and Sandie Simonis could not upset the big boys in A! Graham Bonham came sixth in Division B with eight wins and 449 spread. Janet Bonham came fourth in C followed by Reeyaaz Goolamhossen in sixth both scored nine wins. Philippa Morris held off Jacquie Aldous to win division D, Caroline Elliott was just ousted into fourth on spread. Top three in each division: Division A wins spd | Division B wins spd Adam Logan 11 +1190 | Maureen Chamberlain 12 +638 Adekoyejo Adegbesan 11 +160 | Yvonne Eade 10 +445 Paul Gallen 10 +781 | Graham Maker 10 +149 Division C wins spd | Division D wins spd Rosalind Wilson 10 +624 | Philippa Morris 11 +727 Esther Kaskett 10 +296 | Jacquie Aldous 11 +628 Barbara Lukey 10 +268 | Sheila Anderson 10½ +718

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Lincoln Round Robin 5th November. This was a progressive round robin in rounds 1-7 with king-of-the-hill last round. Two divisions of 16 each with Ben Wilson running and organising proceedings. No London League members participated. Division A was won by Andrew Goodwin with 7 wins and 576 spread from Jason Carney, Paul Allan and Even Simpson all on six wins. Division B was won by Marjorie Struggles. She won all eight games amassing a massive 854 spread. Linda Barrett and Tim Butcher were second and third respectively with six wins each.

Cheadle 5th-6th November This was played over 15 rounds and was a strict round robin. Two division comprised of 16 players in each. Moira Metcalf was the only League member in attendance. Division A was won by Howard Wilde with 13 wins and 1421 spread ahead of Steve Perry with 12 wins and 753 spread. Another former League member, Neil Darbyshire finished sixth with 9 wins and 41 spread. Sylvia Swaney won the B Division with 13 wins and 692 spread. Peter Ashurst came second with 12 wins and 829 spread. Joe Knapper, Viv Beckmann and Moira Metcalf all found themselves at the bottom end of the table.

Luton Saturday 12th November . . . 72 players arrived at the big hall at the back of St Luke's Church along Leagrave High Street for seven rounds of Scrabble. Last minute cancellations required a juggling of divisional placings so that A had 20 players, B and D had 18 and C had 16. Current London Scrabble League players numbered 18. Diane Pratesi got off to a superb winning start winning the first five game which included a round five win of 403-374 against top rated Paul Allan. Sadly Diane could do no more and lost to Rachelle Winer and Calum Edwards in the final two games. Fortunately it was still enough to finish third with five wins and 202 spread. Calum's triumph over Diane in the last round by 406-282 enabled him to finished second also with five wins but with a superior spread of 423. Undettered by his defeat against Diane, Paul Allan went on to beat Mike Whiteoak 460-317 to lead going into the last round and finally thumped Cecil Muscat 427-248 to finish top with six wins and a 648 spread and with it the Lloyds Bank Shield to keep for a year.     Jessica Pratesi, who had lost her opening two games, suddenly found some form to win five games on the trot which culminated in the defeat of Rachelle Winer in the last round by 376-250 to secure the ratings prize and fourth place with five wins and 235 spread. SANTIMI was one of her played words worth a mention. Bottom rated player Graham Bonham outperformed his rating and finished fifth with 4 wins and 408 spread ahead of Mike, Cecil and Rachelle who were also on four wins. Of the other League members David Shenkin, Sandie Simonis and Victoria Kingham - they did not do as well as Graham!     In Divison B it was Mick Healy and Nicky Huitson who shared the top two places throughout the day! Mick led the first two rounds and Nicky the next three. Mick dropped a game against Abidun Adeyemi 409-428 to go one win behind Nicky. Then in round six in the clash of the two Mick beat Nicky 470-382 to retake the lead. They now had five wins each but with Mick ahead by a slender 29 spread. In the final round Nicky faced Carol Arthurton and Mick faced Len Edwards. Mick downed Len 462-412 but Nicky trounced Carol 504-318. Nicky won the Division with six wins and 583 spread from Mick with six wins and 476 spread. Phil Aldous beat Abidun Adeyemi 415-354 to finish third while slightly behind Phil in sixth and seventh were League members Andy Gray and Barbara Dein.     Janet Bonham had been leading Division C until Phyllis Fernandez knocked her off top spot in round six having beaten her 401-264. Phyllis and Janet now had five wins along with Peter Bailey, who had just defeated Jacquie Aldous, to find himself sandwiched in between them. In the final round Janet faced off with Peter while Phyllis entertained Ken Bird. Janet triumphed majorly 442-234 to put pressure on Phyllis. But Phyllis just did enough and won 405-369 to beat Janet for the Division C title by a mere 29 points of spread. Peter hung onto third place being the sole player to finish with five wins. This was because Jacquie Aldous beat Pat Friend 405-361 to overtake Pat and Ken to finish in fourth! Other League members of note in this division were: Ena McNamara, Helen Sandler, Jenny Clifford and Pam Vahed. Ten year old Jack Durand made his Division C début.     In Division D it was the Peter, Viv and Natasha show. The lead changed hands many time they virtually occupied the top three positions throughout the day. Natasha Pratesi had the early lead until a defeat by Viv Bishop 271-418 was surrendered to Viv. Viv then lost to Peter Terry 308-388 in round six but still remained top by a 115 margin with Natasha doggedly right behind them and all of them sharing five wins! Viv floated down to play Malcolm Davis who lay in fourth. Natasha looked worried at the prospect of playing Peter in the final game. A bit of psycho-analysis went through her mind. If Viv could beat Malcolm then the next player who could possibly overtake Natasha was Jenny Harris 107 point behind on spread but a win behind. Both Malcom and Jenny would have to win by large margins and Natasha to lose by a similar defecit. "Yeah, yeah, yeah," her dad told her "just beat Peter!" "A small losing margin will be enough to give me third place." she concluded. As the results crawled in Viv had beaten Malcolm, 397-347, to win the division with six wins and 424 spread. Peter narrowly beat Natasha 342-315 to finish second also with six wins and 286 spread. Finally Doreen Clayton downed Jenny by 345-325 to confirm Natasha finished in third place with five wins and 178 spread and ahead of Doreen who finished fourth with five wins and 11 spread. 9-year-old Shrinidhi Prakash finished with 3½ wins behind Renée Gilbert in tenth. Division A Averages. Division A Scorecard. Division A Standings. Division A Total Scores. Division A Wallchart. Division B Averages. Division B Scorecard. Division B Standings. Division B Total Scores. Division B Wallchart. Division C Averages. Division C Scorecard. Division C Standings. Division C Total Scores. Division C Wallchart. Division D Averages. Division D Scorecard. Division D Standings. Division D Total Scores. Division D Wallchart. Stats. More Luton pictures of the winners on Facebook CentreStar here then scroll down to the 2011 winners.

4 Nations Tournament Belfast, 12th-13th November Twelve brave 'souls'; four from England, four from Scotland and four from England, ventured across the Irish Sea for this annual event. Kevin McMahon, Fergal Weatherhead, Paul Gallen and Stewart Holden comprised Team Ireland who won the title on their eighth attempt with a round to spare. They amassed 33 wins between them with a combined spread of 1560 points. England, with Terry Kirk in the squad, came second with 24 wins and 1286 spread. Scotland, with Allan Simmons in their team, were third with 23½ and 219 spread. Wales ended up with the wooden spoon amassing only 15½ wins.     Kevin McMahon finished on top of the individual standings with 10 wins and 849 spread. Lewis Mackay (Eng) was steaming ahead all weekend, he won his first 8 games with an amazing spread of over 1500 but then he lost his last 4 games against the Irish Team and ended on 8 wins, two behind Kevin. Full 4 Nations stats are available on CentreStar here

BEST Final 12th-13th November     Mikki Nicholson travelled to play at Brett Smitheram's place in their, slightly delayed, 19 game BEST final. An exhilirating match ensued over the two days which went down to the last game. Mikki came back from 8-5 down overnight on the Saturday to grab take the BEST 2011 title in the decider. Aparantly Mikki came from behind in every match of the tournament: losing the first game against Teresa Lyes, first two against Andy Goodwin and came from three behind against Kevin and Helen, as well as Brett!     Mikki had just won 495-356 to tie the match at 8 games apiece. Mikki won game 17 by 471 to 407 thanks to UNRIPELY for 65+5 to lead 9-8. Brett won game 18 by 475 to 412 with a neatly spotted APERCUS for 78. It now was 9-all with Mikki well ahead on spread. Although Brett held an early lead in the opening moves of game 19, Mikki managed three bonuses (REWIDEN 79, qUIETING 70 and SUrFACES for 98) to go a hundred points in front. Once seven tiles were left in the bag with the scores 387-301 and Brett realised he could not score enough to win, he resigned and congratulated the new BEST champion.     Brett was gracious in defeat despite his obvious disappointment. Mikki now joins a notable list of BEST champions. Winning BEST became Mikki's greatest Scrabble achievement on home soil; more so than the National Scrabble Championship he won last year. Ed Martin and Evan Simpson are to be congratulated having organised such a gruelingly challenging contest. Mikki takes home first prize of £500 and Brett £250 for the runner up spot. Losing semi-finalists Helen Gipson and Lewis Mackay take home £125 each and the four losing quarter finalists get £50 each. In addition eight ratings prizes of £25 will be awarded. (Adapted from Mikki Nicholson post on UK-Scrabble). Full BEST details are available here

Project WYSC Sunday 13th November . . Tournament Organiser Diane Pratesi had such a late interest in this tournament. From being half full, with three weeks to go, she went to a waiting list of six! A further seventh expressed interest on the eve of the event on Facebook when she got home from the Luton Tournament. So from the advertised 14 players per division as stated per the entry form, Diane stretched it to 16 players for all three divisions. This increased the prize money yet still allowed £200 in fund raising to help pay Jessica and Natasha Pratesi's trip to the WYSC in Malaysia in December. Toh Weibin, 2007 WYSC champion from Singapore had entered; along with fifteen current London League members; and five of the 'youngsters' already booked to represent the UK in Malaysia. The anticipated arrrival from Nigeria sadly failed to get his visa approved but only informed Diane 45 minutes before the start of play by email. Unfortunately the was no internet access available at the time. Jessica Pratesi was the stand-by player. Jessica and sister Natasha had already been exhausted from the Luton tournament the previous day, so how would the youngsters cope along with Jack Durand and Shrinidhi Prakash? In setting up the hall the caretaker had informed us all the small tables had been stolen so the computer and adjudication tables were set out on the larger ones. With all the preliminaries over, all the quiz sheets handed out and all the outstanding entry fees collected, we were ready to play Scrabble. Eight games at twenty minutes per player on the clock. "Has eveybody got clocks, boards, tiles, opponents? We do! Let's commence play!"     Steve Perry was the early leader in Division A. Steve lost to Barry Grossman in round four by one point (421-420). This gave Barry the lead. He then held the lead until round seven when Toh Weibin literally walloped him 620-295! Toh and Barry were now six wins each with Toh's spread 940 to Barry's 69! With two spot prizes per round it was no surprise to find Barry the winner of the 'Lucky Stiff' prize in round five. 'Lucky Stiff' was the person/s who had won three games with the smallest margin from the first five rounds' results. In the final round Toh and Barry faced off in a repeat pairing. This time the spoils went to Barry 482-356 and with it, won Division A. Toh finished second with Bob Violett third. Bob beat Ebi Sosseh 362-351 to finish with six wins and 545 spread but still way behind Toh on spread. Not so good for youth players Oliver Garner and Jessica Pratesi, and League members Mike Chappell, Sandie Simonis and David Shenkin. They occupied five of the bottom seven places!     Sadly the divisional split meant some good A players had to play in B. This happened to Kevin Synnott. He only dropped ½ a win. This was the draw against Karen Game. Kevin demolished the rest of the field and won with 7½ wins and 745 spread from the day's play. Victoria Kingham pushed him all the way and may well have bested him in the last round. Victoria lost 364-371 but still finished second on six wins and 365 spread. Evelyn Wallace dented Valery Morris's hopes of finishing in the prizes by beating her 437-338 in the last round thus demoting Valery to sixth and elevating Evelyn to third. Evelyn finished with five wins and 325 spread. Ruth MacInerney came fourth with the same number of wins as Evelyn and Valery, but only eight points behind Evelyn on spread. Phyllis Fernandez, Ted Lewis, Priscilla Encarnacion and Karen Game were the quartet of League members who finished together in mid-table.     Four players came from the Swindon area. One of them, Anne Darby, won her first six games in Division C. In the end she bravely held onto third place. She had lost to Colin St Hill and Nick Stone respctively in the last two rounds. Jack Durand also played a key role in determining the top two when he too also lost to Nick Stone and Colin St Hill in the last rounds! Nick had downed Colin 442-298 in round six and he had already lost to Anne in round five 407-440 but was able to overcome Anne in the repeat pairing by 446-309 which made him the winner of Division C with seven wins and 515 spread. Colin's 433-343 win over Jack gave him six wins and 336 spread and second place. Anne with six wins was unlikely to drop below third at this stage. Dan Smith was the sole player on five wins. His last round victory by 336 to 269 assured him fourth place. Dan was followed in the final standings by Caroline Elliott, Jack Durand, Shrinidhi Prakash and Valery Jansen. All four finished with four wins apiece.     There had been a lot of discussion about keeping boards/racks/tiles/racks/clocks at one table throughout the day. Players have had problems in locating their equipment at the end of the day becasue items had become disassociated with each other at some point during the day and their owners have had to extensively search other tables to find their missing items. In an effort to alleviate this, Diane and Mauro experimented by keeping four players in each division at the same table to make sure at least some people played with their own stuff. It was noted that none of the twelve players chosen finished up in the top places. Division A Averages. Division A Scorecard. Division A Standings. Division A Total Scores. Division A Wallchart. Division B Averages. Division B Scorecard. Division B Standings. Division B Total Scores. Division B Wallchart. Division C Averages. Division C Scorecard. Division C Standings. Division C Total Scores. Division C Wallchart. Stats. More WYSC pictures of the winners here. For the "Eyes Quiz" click here.

Glasgow Saturday 12th November Thirty players played seven round of Scrabble split into two divisions. One League member that was absent at Luton was found in Glasgow and he came top! Vince Boyle won six of his seven games and finished one win ahead of the field with a 523 spread. Ross Mackenzie came second with five wins and Marion Keatings finished third. In the twelve player Division B, four players finished at the top with five wins each. Caroline Foy edged out Julie Tate on spread by a mere 52 points.

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. . The two finalists had played 14 games in the Leeds Semi-final a couple of months ago with the two who finished first and second played a best of five match at the Baker Suite of the Hallam Conference Centre in the West End of London. The moves were relayed to an audience in the auditorium and online via a live internet feed. Wayne Kelly from Warrington and Gary Oliver from Southampton, were locked in a narrow room with just four people in attendance. Rick Blakeway was in charge of the live internet feed. Jessica Pratesi dealt with visualisation, Natasha Pratesi annotated Wayne and Mauro Pratesi annotated Oliver. It was Natasha's and Mauro's task to write down the moves, positions on the board, time elapsed, and fresh rack, who then handed them, discretly, to Jessica who fed the images to the auditorium. Top expert Brett Smitheram went through the moves on a giant board in front of an audience of fifty, middle aged, very polite people.     A new twist this year was the fact that there was u-stream coverage live on the internet of the main auditorium. Via an earpiece Jessica was able to follow the discussion in the auditorium and able to process the moves a lot quicker. This included all the snippets of information about the players/moves/clock Jessica would write down for Brett to pass onto the audience.     Gary won the first game. Wayne had caught up with RERAISED for 86 to put him 412-420 behind but Gary went out with INDURATE for 66 to win 494-404. Wayne took game 2, 526-324. Wayne had nine of the eleven power tiles including both blanks and blew Gary away with TISANES, UNITIZER and PREMIUM. Gary nudged back in front after lunch winning game 3, 392-375. Wayne's RIGATONI gave him an early lead. VARVETS* was disallowed for Gary but two bonuses in succession for 68 each, DABSTER and SNITCHED gave Gary a 199-187 lead half way through the game. With the scores 368-365 Gary played out first to lead 2-1.     Game 4: RAINOUTS gave Wayne an early lead 149-59. OSTINATI and EBONISED pulled Gary's score to 247 but steady a 37, 35, 42 and 28 kept Wayne in front. Gray played OE allowing a bonus play off the middle top triple word square (H1) which Wayne gobbled up with TRUDGER for 89. As Gary played out with SETTING/TRUDGERS for 107 it wasn't enough to win. Wayne had won 463-439 and tied the match at 2-2. At this stage the Sam-Timer decided to stop working. Wayne proceded to check the batteries with Mauro's pocket screwdriver but it still proved non-effective. Then Philip Nelkon provided the solution by pressing just one of the black buttons!     Game 5: at this point all the games had been won by the player who went first. Gary started with two 'YOU's, Wayne responded with TRAVAILS for 74. HEADINGS for 73 by Gary maintained his advantage. All of a sudden fortune favoured Wayne. SAPIENT/WAIFTS for 95 and CAROMEL for 69 gave Wayne a 425-279 lead. Gary responded with another 107 score with ERGOTIZE but Gary was still 386-425 behind. Wayne extended EXO to FLEXO for 45 with the game and match under Wayne's control. As Gary played the final move SUET the game had finished 486-428 in Wayne's favour and at 3-2 won the plaudits from an appreciative audience and those following on the Internet. Play through the games here, pictures are available here.

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LONDON SCRABBLE LEAGUE 40th ANNIVERSARY TOURNAMENT - 30th October

. . ..     Kent House is a wonderful venue situated in Knightsbridge and overlooks London's Hyde Park (although you couldn't see it from the sumptuous playing room). The 40th anniversary was going to be a special occassion so wouldn't it be great to have something similar if we are still going in 2021?!! The event was subsidised by the League and the owners of the venue allowed us to have it at a rate we could 'afford'. If it were to be used again the League certainly wouldn't be able to cope without a huge hike in membership fees. The venue itself was pretty amazing for a one-day tourney. The extra touches went down well - collages of Scrabble pictures of members collected over the years, collages/info of news events from 1971, members providing home made cakes & more, souvenir pens & personalised rack covers as well as yummy food. *All* the Committee members helped to get the 40th to a deserved success. Computer, cakes, flags, table numbers, stepping in or stepping out (reserves!), baking cakes, taking photos, finding & negotiating for the venue, providing coin prizes, sorting the balloons, doing the registration, moving stuff, setting up high score Scrabble boards, in fact anything that was needed.     We already had three cancellations on the morning of the tourney one only minutes before the start time. One person’s train was cancelled and 2 were ill. Then London Scrabble League Membership Secretary Janet Bonham was taken ill almost on arrival. An ambulance was called and Janet was taken to hospital accompanied by son Graham. We were all most concerned about her and were so glad to hear later in the day that she was stable. Janet has since made a speedy recovery and so sorry Janet and Graham missed the day... Janet's cake went down a treat!     A worrying start which made us half an hour later than scheduled. Helper Steve Thomas was also present, but he too was suffering pains and had to leave to go home at lunchtime. We were now one runner short. At the same time a Division B player disappeared! Mauro Pratesi stepped in to play the remaining four rounds to save a sit out. Mauro *had been* helping daughter Jessica on the computer, chased up incomplete score sheets Jessica couldn't process and stepped in with runner duties when Shelby (Brenda Young's daughter) and Director/organiser Sandie Simonis dealt with other matters/adjudications/problems. For the rest of the afternoon Jessica handled inputting scores and producing and posting pairings and tables all by herself. We had a second disappearance at tea-time! This time it was a Division C player. This was after round 5. Barbara Morris made a timely arrival. She was asked if she could step in and play the last two games. She accepted to save another sit out!     Two items provided discussion and comment after the last tile was played. A large majority of scoresheets were incorrectly filled in and players had to be chased up to confirm the correct score/spread/player numbers. As early as round two one scoresheet was keyed in correctly but the player codes had been reversed. This was not picked up until the new ratings had been posted on the UK-Scabble mailing list 24 hours later! Starting the final 7th game director Sandie Simonis realised about 10 tables had no equipment! People had been reluctant to lend stuff all day long but by the 7th game they had quietly packed up 'their stuff' and assumed that miraculously people could play the final game without sets. Thankfully, after stern words from Sandie, sets/racks/tiles/clocks were found and the last round was able to proceed as normal.     So what of the tournament itself? Of the original 103 entries only 98 players were in competition. Seven rounds were played with no repeats in the final round. Many London League members attended including six unrated players which included a few well established League members making their tournament débuts. Even ex-members Bob Violett, Robert Richland, Chris Keeley, Jackie McLeod, Elisabeth Jardine, Mike Willis and Philip Nelkon all came down for the occassion. Sadly former members Allan Simmons, Darryl Francis and Phil Appleby were unable to make it. Austin Shin, who wasn't even born when the League started, won all seven games to win Division A with 7 wins and a 784 spread averaging 463 per game. Austin also took home the Ivor Freedman Memorial Trophy to keep for a year. Nick Ascroft came second with 6 wins and 208 spread ahead of six players on five wins. Elie Dangoor and Danny Bekhor were third equal having finished with the same spread of 496! Former WYSC Champion Weibin Toh, Ireland's Rik Kennedy and former LSL chairmen Terry Kirk and Barry Grossman were the other four players on five wins.     Joe Bridal won Division B with 6 wins and 523 spread, Evelyn Wallace came second having scored 6 wins and 448 spread. Kathy Suddick had led the division on spread going into the last round from Joe and Evelyn, all on five wins. Joe beat Kathy 386-291 in the final game. Evelyn also won her last game but it was not enough to overtake Joe. Kathy dropped to sixth surrounded by London League players all on five wins! Sanmi Odelana finished third from Sharon Landau, Priscilla Encarnacion, Kathy, Barbara Allen and Martin Leverton.     Jack Durand was the winner of Division C with 6 wins 675 spread. Rob Kaczmarek came second with 6 wins 220 spread. Rob was leading by one clear win going into the last round when Jack 'wolfed' him 448-351 to win the division! (As in Woflman Jack... it was Hallowe'en time!) Susan Thorne won five and drew one came third, with six players on five wins each. They were, in spread order: Ayaz Kazi, Elizabeth Terry, Adrian Noller, Viv Bishop, Mabel Choularton and Ena McNamara.     Jenny Clifford was the winner of the best word associated with 40th/anniversary - MAROONER. Sadly there was nothing submitted that was even close enough. Viv Bishop's taxi had arrived and would have been on her way home but had to come back into the playing room to find her handbag she'd forgotten. It was then she discovered she was the winner of the best overall performance above their rating. Viv finished 7th with 5 wins and 232 spread. More pictures are available here. Some statistics below - click a link. Division A Averages. Division A Standings. Division A Scorecard. Division A Total Scores. Division A Wallchart. Division B Averages. Division B Standings. Division B Scorecard. Division B Total Scores. Division B Wallchart. Division C Averages. Division C Standings. Division C Scorecard. Division C Total Scores. Division C Wallchart. Stats.

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Moira Conway provided the following report . . . . . It's over!! Now is the time to plan your assault on the top of the Autumn season’s league table and topple Vince. Once again he finishes top closely followed by Mike Chappell – but it wasn’t as close as last season. Reg Lever Cup 1 17.45 453.76 22 Vincent Boyle 2 17.24 442.49 23 Sandie Simonis 3 17.18 443.33 17 David Holmes 4 16.79 448.20 17 Di Dennis Billie Gray Memorial Trophy The player whose average points has increased by the greatest margin compared to last season and has played at least ten official fixtures in both seasons is awarded the Billie Gray Trophy. No-one can win it twice. The winner this season is.... Moira Metcalf with an improvement of 3.89. Surprisingly two members had the same average points this season as last – Caroline Elliott (8.97) and Christopher Howe (8.24). Moira Metcalf 3.89 Clive Whichelow 2.91 Jenny Clifford 2.57 Barbara Whittle 2.49 Josephine Colman 2.47 Sharon Landau 2.36 Reg Dendy 2.23 High Word Scrolls Sixty-nine moves scoring over 100 (if you include OUTSIZE which had no player mentioned) and no word was repeated. Three members had three high scoring moves this season Moira Conway, Lee Graham and Cody McCormick. Scrolls were won by:- Pam Vahed SQUANDERED 194 Gold Malcolm Shaw TOUCHIER 194 Gold Baldip Kaur FLINGERS 167 Silver Cody McCormick BELOVING 167 Silver Charles Gale SNIGGERS 163 Bronze High Game Scores High game scrolls are won when a player scores 450+ (bronze), 550+ (silver) and 650+ (gold) for the first time. Tim Knight 662 Gold Shirley Cave 562 Silver Pana Pugalia 499 Bronze Syed Raza 489 Bronze Jennifer Turovski 480 Bronze Jonathan De Souza 454 Bronze David Holmes was 4 points short of a gold scroll while Charles Gale, Lee Graham, Carol Joahill and Joel Stanley just missed out on a silver scroll. Well done to all winners The full results can found here

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Nailsea 23rd October 61 players split into three equal divisions played 7 rounds but no London League members attended. Grandmaster Gareth Williams won the tournament with six wins and 537 spread from four players on four wins each which included Phil Robertshaw in second and Wayne Kelly in fifth. Tom Sharp and Paul Grimshaw shared six wins each at the top of Division B with Paul having the inferior spread. Jim Ducker came top of Division C with six wins and 441 spread from four players that finished on five wins headed by Philip Bowden.

Coventry Triple Tournament 11th-13th October Three divisions ten players in each. After 9 and 18 games the bottom two players in A and B were replaced by the top two finishers in Division B and C. Three London League members started in Division A; Ruth MacInerney, David Shenkin and Victoria Kingham, alongside former member Paloma Raychbart.     In the Tuesday 11th session David Shenkin wcame top with seven wins and 323 spread from Victoria Kingham in second with six wins and 435 spread. Nicky Huitson won Division B with seven wins and 112 spread and Paul Cartman won Division C with eight wins and 798 spread.     On Wednesday 12th Division A was won by Janet Phillips with 7 wins and 617 spread from Paloma Raychbart. B was won by Ann Golding, who narrowly avoided relegation to C on Tuesday, with seven wins and 393 spread. Promoted pair Paul Cartman and Brid Ui Bhriain btoh came bottom and would return to C in Thursday's session. Division C was won by Steve Balment with seven wins and 685 spread. Steve was relegated to C the day before!     Paloma Raychbart who finished third on Tuesday, second on Wednesday, finished first on Thursday 13th! She won eight times with a 1115 spread and finished miles ahead of promoted Ann Golding on five wins in second. Ruth MacInerney maintained a steady average in Division A having finshed no worse than sixth and no better than fifth throughout the three day tournament. Victoria Kingham, too, had two days of maintaining her position in Division A. Sue Bowman won Division B with eight wins and 502 spread from David Shenkin in second on seven wins and 466 spread. Paul Cartman scored seven wins and finished top on his return to Division C. Had Brid Ui Bhriain won her last round match she would have overtaken Paul in the final count-up but her loss made her finish third with six wins.

Hove Actually 9th October Ten players in each of the three divisions played 9 rounds in a strict round robin. 2011 UK youth Champion Oliver Garner starred in A, League members Karen Game entertained in B and Phyllis Fernandez and Colin St Hill paraded their skills in C.     In almost a reversal of the Bournemouth results James Rossiter, Rahn McKeown and Ed Rossiter all finished with seven wins. James having won on spread with 708 from Rahn's 643 and Ed's 204. Oliver Garner came seventh with three wins. Timothy Lawrence won Division B with six wins and 262 spread. Essex player Kevin Synnott came third with five wins and 83 spread. Karen Game finished sixth with four wins. Peter Bailey and Carmen Dolan scored seven wins each and topped Division C with Peter in top spot on spread. Phyllis Fernandez finished fifth with five wins and Colin St Hill came seventh with three wins.

Phyllis' 80th Birthday Tournament (played at Goodmayes in Ilford) 9th October Based on Kevin Synnott original report. The tournament was a memorable occasion, attended by 40 people, played in six divisions and seven rounds. Division A finished with four players tied on five wins each. London League members Mike Chappell (+433), Vincent Boyle (+392) and David Holmes (-37) finished in first, second and fourth. Sandwiched in between in third was Jessica Pratesi. Division B was won by Noel Barnes from Carmen Toscano on spread. Both scored six wins each. League member Karen Game came third with five wins and 352 spread.     There players finished with five wins in Division C with Mark Bradley finishing top on spread from Carmen Dolan and Damian O'Malley. Marian Hamer finally received her Bille Gray Trophy finished in fifth half a win in front of Birthday girl Phyllis! League member Cody McCormick won the D Division two wins ahead of Priscilla Munday (4 wins) and Stella Magnus (3 wins). Oddly enough Colin St Hill also had three wins but finished eighth out of eight!     In Division E Natasha had already won the division with five wins with one round left as all the rest had either 3 and 2 wins. Natasha lost the final match but still won top prize. Jacqui White came second heading four players on four wins. Sandra Richard won the F Division half a win in front of Keith Woodruff. Alison Stilwell and Cindy Hollyer were one win behind with four wins each.     To say that the tourney was played in extra good humour because it was as much a celebration of Phyllis' birthday as it was a serious rated event. It is interesting too that Alfred Butts, the inventor of Scrabble, shares the same birthday. We had slight chaos caused by a player taking tiles from the wrong bag. The tiles being very similar, it looked as though both games had started with the wrong tiles, so they were allowed to continue. But one game finished three tiles short, and the other had three extra tiles including a (third) V and a (second) X.     WESPA rules now allow a player to redesignate a blank which has not been recorded on the challenge sheet by an opponent earlier. Though the player sportingly removed their word, their opponent also sportingly allowed them to play another instead. Although resolved amicably, the incident underlines the importance of ensuring the blanks are designated when they are played.     A third incident occurred at the end of a game where 10 penalty points were deducted when one player went over on time by just a few seconds. This turned a narrow victory into a narrow defeat. The loser felt that her opponent should have told her sooner that she had left her clock ticking after playing what would have been a winning move. The winner said that she had pointed out the error as soon as she had noticed it and had done the same thing twice earlier in the same game. TD Kevin Synnott ruled that the result should stand. Whatever you feel when you lose a game this way, politeness really doesn’t come into it!

Cock of the North 7th-9th October 26 players attended this three day event. They were split in two division and played 22 rounds. League member Martin Leverton played in Division A and Ted Lewis and Caroline Elliott played in Division B.     Alastair Richards outpaced Wayne Kelly to win Division A with 18 wins and 2190 spread. Wayne finished two wins behind with 16 wins and 664 spread. Two wins behind Wayne was Steve Perry with 14 wins and 648 spread. Martin Leverton scored 9½ wins and finished tenth.     Sue Bowman took the honours in Division B with 15 wins and 1075 spread. Ireland's Brid Ui Bhriain was second with 14 wins and 463 narrowly ahead of Ted Lewis and Nucky Huitson who had spreads of 454 and 411 respectively. Caroline Elliott scored six wins and also scored a four figure spread, albeit a minus one!     Tournament statistics can be found here.

World Scrabble Championships 12th-15th October with best of five final on Sunday 16 October . . . . 106 players converged in Warsaw Poland. 44 Countries represented of which seven had won the World Championship before. 10 players represented England, two from Wales, four from Scotland and two from Northern Ireland. A lack of middle African countries were down to visa being unobtainable by Nigerian and Ghanain players. The event itself was amazing, and the Polish hosts were extremely welcoming.     At one point in the tournament we had five Home Country players in the top ten and dearly hoped Craig Beevers, Mikki Nicholson or Brett Smitheram could snatch one of the two final places at the end of 34 rounds! New Zealander Nigel Richards had already secured a three game lead over the field and was Gibsonised in the final rounds. By round 33 three players were vying for the other final spot. Dave Wiegand form the USA, Andrew Fisher an expat from England now resident in Australia and another Australian Chris May. Andrew (3rd) got to play Dave (2nd) while Chris got Thailand's Pakorn Nemitrmansuk (4th) who was one win behind. Nigel afforded a loss 430-493 while Andrew bested Dave 459-380 and Pakorn subdued Chris 582-369.     So it was Nigel Richards and Andrew Fisher in the final. Pakorn Nemitrmansuk finished in 3rd with Brett Smitheram the highest placed English player in 6th place.     Nigel and Andrew's previous encounters were in rounds 18 and 23. Andrew won on both occassions by 384-378 and 470-347. But it was all diferent in the final with all the games going to the player playing first. Nigel Richards won the first game 484-427. Andrew Fisher won the second 520-406. Nigel edged back in front 459-359 in the third. Andrew equalised 562-420 in the fourth. Finally, in the deciding game Nigel won 477-334. In doing so he scored 95 points with the word 'omnified' and became the first ever two-time World Champion. His last win came in 2007. Commiserations to Andrew Fisher who fought hard but was outplayed and outpicked by the man nobody could deny is the greatest player of all time. Nigel won £12,000 in prize money. Richards' acceptance speech was much shorter, when he just responded: "Nice. There's no secret, I just play the game!"     Sadly the press in England were more interested in a Thai player wanting to strip search an English player because a G had gone missing as the game approached the endgame and the Thai accused the Englishman of hiding the G. As it happened all the tiles needed to be present for the Englishman to win the game. The Tournament Director replaced the G from another set and it was added to opponent's last rack. If it had continued to be missing, opponent would have won by 3 instead of losing by 1.     Sanmi Odelana sums it all up: What a final! Nerve-gripping stuff! I ended up missing today's Sunday Drive opting to follow the live finals instead. Congrats to Nigel for winning and also making history.     WSC website to commentary and photos round per round here.

Bournemouth Sunday 2nd October 74 players attended the annual tournament. Players were split into three divisions and played six rounds. No London League member turned up although Sunday Swiss Cottage Drive regular Mel Maltz played in C. Romford dweller Ron Bucknell played in Division B. Lucille and Peter Terry entertained in C while Gary Oliver made his first tournament outing following his qualification for the NSC final.     Gary Oliver finished with four wins and finished in fifth place. Ed Rossiter fronted Gary on spread while the ½ win gained by Penny Downer enabled the Isle of Wight Expert to finish third. James Rossiter kept it in the family when his five wins and 544 spread gave him second spot. But out in front with maximum 6 wins and 729 spread was Stewart Houten.     In Division B there were four players who finished on five wins. Topping Rita Todd in second, Mark Smith in third and Alan Childs in fourth, with 401 spread, was Ian Burn.     It was similar in Division C where four players also tied with five wins. Mel Maltz finished third with 192 spread, Scott Bowman finished second with 427 spread but winning with 473 spread was Alan Everitt.

BEST semi finals Todheugh/Cambridge Lewis Mackay's flat in Cambridge saw the first semi final played out. Brett Smitheram won it convincingly nine games to five with a +228 soread. He will play the winner of Helen Gipson and Mikki Nicholson in the BEST 2011 Final. Things went down to the wire in the other semi at Helen Gipson's place in Scotland where current NSC champion Mikki Nicholson was the opponent. The tie went into the last 17th game and Mikki led 8½ -7½ on wins and on spread by 168 points. Helen needed to win the final game by 169 points to win the match. No idea what would have happened if there was a 168 point win.     Based on Mikki's original game report on UK-S: Game 17 was a remarkably similar situation to one he found himself in the BEST a few years ago when Allan Simmons needed to wallop him to win in the final game. For the first six moves the result appeared to be heading the same way; Helen had erased 163 pts of her deficit with plays of ESTANCIA 70, IDEATED 77, IRONIZeS 82, YEX 63. Mikki had been able to do little more than burn tiles to at least get the game nearer to its conclusion. Helen then ran out of vowels and when the final blank found its way onto Mikki's rack he was able to get it out immediately with BELOvED for 79. Helen did have a couple more esses as ammunition but Mikki was able to play out safely enough so that even another bonus wouldn't have been enough. Final score MN: 354 HG: 457. With scores level 8½-8½, Mikki won on spread by +65. On another day, the result would easily have been reversed.

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HB Holidays - Leamington Spa 23rd-25th September     Twenty four players attended the Leamington Spa event and were split into three divisions of eight with 14 rounds and the usual double round-robin. League members Moira Conway startred in A while Philippa Morris and Barbara Allen entertained Division B. Barbara Goodban finished top of Division A with 13 wins and 653 spread. Moira came second with ten wins and 718 spread. Division B was won by another Barbara, Barbara Lukey with 9½ wins half a win ahead of Anne Darby. Barbara Allen and Philippa Morris scored eight wins each and finished third and fourth respectively. Rosina Cornelius won Division C with 13 wins and 1047 spread ahead of yet another Barbara, Barbara Haggett with 12 wins and 1092 spread.

Norwich, Sunday 25th September     This Norwich event attracted 24 players and was played over seven rounds. There were four current London League members. Division A contained one grandmaster and two experts with the ratings of the players ranging from 188 to 133. There was a worry when the organiser Carol Smith was struggling for entrants and there was a possibility of the event being cancelled. Obviously the fine home-made cakes on offer ranging from flapjacks to lemon drizzle cake, anzac cookies to sultana and apricot cake was more than enough for the players to feast on!     It was no surprise grandmaster Paul Allen won the event winning all seven games with a 798 spread. Paul had been gibsonised in the last round and had his toughest match winning by only 11 points against Rosalind Wilson. Angela Burke just beat John Ahsmore on spread for second place after both finished with five wins. Victoira Kingham finished fifth with four wins while Karen Game and Lou Brundell were playing for their ratings.     Geoff Cooper had won five games at yesterday's National Scrabble Championship's Teams event in Bradford and consolidated his strong performance by winning Division B by dropping only one game on his way to victory with six wins and 464. Gill Thomspon came second on spread having had six wins as well. League member Alison Stilwell finished half way with three wins.

National Scrabble Championship Teams Final - Bradford 24th September     Eight teams of three players competed in the NSCT Final. Everyone played seven games with concurrent round robins, with one player from each team group, based on rating. The South East regional winners were the OAP's consisting of Jackie McLeod, Di Dennis and Ian Gucklhorn and were flying the flag for London. Ian was unable to play and was substituted by Terry Kirk. The Southampton Saints consisting of NSC finalist Gary Oliver, Ed Rossiter and Brian Jones won four, six and five respectively to finish the day winners with 15 wins and 693 spread. Terry Kirk came second to Wale Fashina on spread in the top rated division with five wins. With Terry's five added to Jackie McLeods and Di Dennis' three wins each, the OAP's finished fourth.

The 22nd Hockley (Goodmayes in Ilford) Invitational organised by Kevin Synnott and Evelyn Wallace.      On Sunday 11th September, 34 invited players split into one division of 10 and two divisions of 12 played 9 games to 25 minutes per player. Nine London League members were present along with regular local and ex-members. Phyllis Fernandez's Nursery in Barley Lane in Goodmayes was the venue.     A hat-trick of London League members come top! David Holmes won A, Karen Game won B and Caroline Elliott won C..

National Scrabble Championship semi final . .     Of the 62 original qualifiers only six were unable to make the 14 round tournament held at the Hilton Hotel in Leeds over the weekend of 10th-11th September for two places in the National Scrabble Championships final in London on Sunday 6th November. Eleven Grandmasters and twelve experts were on show. Ten ladies qualified. Three London League members qualified.     At the end of the first day after seven games three peopel led the way with 6 wins: Two experts Austin Shin, Phil Robertshaw and non expert John Ashmore. In fact only three grandmasters were in the top ten. No one would have thought that the players in 20th and 22nd positions were to end up first and second. Last year's finalists, Mikki Nicholson and Mark Nyman, had poor starts and were just behind in 23rd and 24th places respectively.     The second day saw the lead change hands many times. John Ashmore, Lewis Mackay and Paul Allan all had the lead at one point with Helen Gipson and Phil Robertshaw in hot pursuit and slowly creeping up, Gary Oliver and Mikki Nicholson. We arrived at round eleven of fourteen with eight people on eight wins. Paul Allan was in the lead with plus 838 and bringing up the rear (in eighth place) was Howard Wilde with plus 226. Wins for Paul, Gary, Helen and John put them in the lead after round twelve with nine wins each. At this stage there were so many permutations as to who could finish where that the computer program spouted out fixtures in such a way that everybody had a chance to finish in the top two with an added bonus of no repeat pairings!     Going into the last round Gary Oliver, with seven straight wins, was the sole leader with ten wins. Seven players followed with nine wins each, Paul Allan leading them. Gary knew he could lose his last game against Helen Gipson by no more than 144 to secure a final place. Wayne had to face Paul Allan, a player Wayne has not a good record against. Howard Wilde had to face Lewis Mackay while John Ashmore faced off against last year's finalist Mikki Nicholson. Wayne beat Paul 481-440. Wayne's win by 41 meant Helen needed to beat Gary by over 25 to finish in the top two. Helen looked hard for a place to play out to increase her spread but the final score was 440-421 to Helen. Howard bettered Lewis by 485-334 and Mikki bested John 471-424. And it really needed a hell of a measuring stick to sort out the top five players that finished with ten wins. Mikki, coming from nowhere, finished fifth with 425 spread, Howard finished fourth with 436 spread. Third was Helen with 557 spread and five points ahead of Helen was Wayne! Gary way in front with 802 final spread. Gary and Wayne contest the final in London. Wayne normally deals with the internet live feed at the finals, but as he will on the other side of the board on this occassion and the role of internet feed will be taken by Rick Blakeway. Brett Smitheram will be presenting proceedings on the big stage. Full NSC semi final results, pictures and annotated games are available here.

HB Holidays - Morecambe 9th-11th September     Thirty four players attended and were split into three divisions of eight and one of ten with 14 rounds. None of our regular duo of Moira Conway and Philippa Morris attended so there was no London League representation. Finishing top of Division A was Tony Davis with 11 wins and 398 spread from Jayne MacKenzie and Peter Thomas. Division B was won by Jill Bright with 10 wins from Juliet Green who was also on 10 wins but 24 points behind on spread. Kenneth Lovell won Division C with 10 wins from Irene Atkinson, Peter Ernest and Paula Davenport all with eight wins. Mavis Ernest was the runaway winner of Division D with 12 wins from four players on nine wins.

UK Youth Scrabble Fest 2nd-4th September. . . In a full programme crammed with coaching, tournaments, more coaching and the UK Youth Championship comprising of eight games, it was amazing everything got squeezed into three days! At the end of the day nothing replaces studying words and getting into the right mental and physical state to be a winner at Scrabble. If it is good for athletes then it is good for Scrabble players. So it is best to start them young. Do you know all the OTARINE + 1 combinations?     The Saturday afternoon/early evening competition was an "All-in" event where young players faced adult opposition. The three divisions all had six players each and played to a simple round robin format. Division A was won by one of the two teachers for the event, Australian Alastair Richards. Alastair and his mum Karen stayed over from the BMSC to help run and organise this event along with the new ABSP Youth Scrabble co-ordinator Paula Davenport who helped from this side of the pond. Alastair won all his five games with Karen and Diane Pratesi in second and third with three wins respectively. Jack Durand won Division B from Christine Cartman on spread both had four wins each. Natalie Zolty, who apparently plays a lot of Scrabble on-line but as yet to play tournament Scrabble and was unrated, won the C Division with five wins from Paula Davenport in second with four wins. Paul Cartman was playing in A and scored 203 for REQUIRES.     On the Sunday the main tournament to decide the 2011 UK Youth champion was played. Basically all seven qualifiers for the World Scrabble Championships to be held in Malaysia competed in the A Division. They played 8 games - a straight round robin with king-of-the-hill final round. The other four youngsters competed in a special recreational division and played a double round robin of only six rounds. Once top two rated players Jessica Pratesi and Oliver Garner lost their opening matches to Jack Durand and Shrinidhi Prakash respectively we knew it was going to be a tough tournament. Further losses for Jessica and Oliver didn't help their situation and it was Tim Butcher who led the tournament going into the final rounds. For Jessica to retain her title she had to hope Oliver could beat Tim and Natasha Pratesi could beat Joe Knappper. Jessica was the sit out for that round and due to play Oliver in the last of the round robin pairings. Oliver did beat Tim and Natasha did beat Joe. In round seven Oliver bested Jessica 365-335 while Tim lost to Joe 395-401, which set up Tim and Oliver to battle it out for the championship. Oliver got off to a bonus start with AFFORDS for 76. TELAMONS for 70 through Tim's BEEPERS made the game safe for Oliver. Finishing with the impressive RAOULIA Oliver beat Tim 503-297 to become UK Youth Champion with five wins and 586 spread. Jessica beat Joe 448-371 to finish second with four wins and 438 spread.     There were very few high scoring games and very few high scoring words. Jessica topped both with the highest game score of 509 and the highest word score of 106 for EVINCES and won trophies for both achievements, altough Jessica kindly gave up her high score trophy to sister Natasha who had the next two highest word scores of 91 for RUSTING/PRIZES and 90 for TOWNIER/JAR. In the "All-in" Natasha had scored 92 for WINGERS/NETS. Kiran Pal won a trophy for the highest performance above their rating.     Full tsh ratings and standings here. More photos can be found on Facebook here.

Havering, Saturday 3rd September     Kelvedon Hatch saw the annual Havering event which attracted 50 players who played 7 rounds, twelve of which were current London League members. Division A was won by Austin Shin with six wins and 893 spread. This was due to two hefty wins of 499-284 in the first round and 596-345 in the last round. Recipients of their drubbing may not want to be named but they were David Shenkin and Calum Edwards respectively. Danny Bekhor came second with five wins and 308 spread, having gone through a patch of winning two games - then losing one - winning two games and losing one. Although David Shenkin suffered those two early defeats his five match winning run lifted his position from zero wins and -230 spread to third place with five wins and 56 spread. Calum Edwards, who had qualified for the WSC last week, was sandwiched between Victoria Kingham in fifth and Vince Boyle in seventh!     Nick Jenkins won Division B with six wins and 443 spread. Nick momentarily lost the lead to Derek Bower when Derek defeated him 373-357 but held on to defeat Phyllis Fernandez in the last round 394-379 to win the division. Mark Bradley bested Derek Bower 442-348 in the last round to finish second with five wins and 321 which made Derek slip to third, also with five wins but a 246 spread. Reeyaaz Goolamhossen, despite a weakish start, finished in fourth with five wins and 117 spread. He disposed of Richard Woodward in the last round 457-392. Phyllis Fernandez was top with four wins and occupied sixth place.     In Division C Peter Terry and Nick Stone came first and second with 5 wins each and 552 and 456 spread respectively after both players had lost their first two games! They were two of four players to finish on five wins. Dan Smith, who came third, copied Danny Bekhor's performance in A of two wins-one loss, while fourth place Sheila Anderson won her first four games before Dan Smith crunched her 392-313 three rounds from the end and Nick Stone crunched her some more in the final round 355-323 knocking her down to fourth. Division A Averages. Division A Standings. Division A Scorecard. Division A Total Scores. Division A Wallchart. Division B Averages. Division B Standings. Division B Scorecard. Division B Total Scores. Division B Wallchart. Division C Averages. Division C Standings. Division C Scorecard. Division C Total Scores. Division C Wallchart. Stats.

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British Matchplay Scrabble Championship . . . This was meant to be Allan Simmons' final BMSC as organiser (at the AGM he would have been standing down from the ABSP committee). Sadly an injury the week beforehand made him unable to attend and he had to follow the whole event on the Internet from the live weblink set up by Jared Robinson on Centre Star. The playing schedule was reduced to 21 rounds to allow for a 22 player Divisions C and D. Only one of the players who played in the Ladies event did not play in the main event. This was Natasha Pratesi, who along with Ben Wilson annotated 21 games each for the main event which were published on the CentreStar website. The Open A Division comprised 64 players; there were 28 in the B Division and 22 each in the two round robin divisions. Amy Byrne was TD and always started each round with the phrase "Let's play Scrabble!" Everybody turned up on time with the exception of two players so no last minute juggling of divisions was necessary. London League member Vince Boyle was one of the late arrivals who had left early enough but took five hours to get to Yarnfield due to bad traffic. Vince missed his first game but responded brilliantly by winning his second game 601-426 against Phil Robertshaw!     Division A was won by Lewis Mackay from 63 other competing 'wannabees'! The prize for the highest 'wannabee' was a place in Poland for the forthcoming World Scrabble Championships. Six of the seven already qualifed were Grandmasters so it needed something exceptional from the rest. Players who were not in contention because of where they did not live in the UK were Alastair and Karen Richards from Australia, Anand Buddhdev and Suzanne Dundas from The Netherlands, JoJo Delia and Theresa Brousson from Malta and Jin Chor Tan from Malaysia. This was a very international array of talent indeed. Missing were many regulars including Mark Nyman, Helen Gipson and Allan Simmons. The qualifying place went to Calum Edwards who finished 8th with 13 wins and 1022 spread, Brian Sugar finished higher than Calum in 6th but declined his place.     Brett Smitheram had put together a twelve game winning streak and was leading by the end of Day two. Day three was a day of repeats and Brett's first game was a repeat against Phil Robertshaw. Brett had beaten Phil in the final game of day two but day three was to be unlucky for Brett. Phil inflicted the first of a four game losing run which virtually put him out of contention. Lewis Mackay had clawed his way back into the frame having beaten both Brett and Phil and, along with Paul Gallen, had an equal number of wins. Paul having defeated Brett and Lewis in between time. Going into the final round Paul was leading on spread from Lewis. Both had 15 wins, they played off for the Championship while Phil and Brett played off for third and fourth places. Lewis triumphed 424-328 to become 2011 champion. Paul finished second. Brett overcame Phil 416-355 in their fourth repeat pairing but it was not enough to overtake Paul's spread so Brett finished in third.     Other snippets from Division A. John Ashmore played SQUINTER for 203. Terry Kirk scored 149 for MINGIEST in his 656 game. Paloma Raychbart played five vowels for 167 in her nine-timer IDEATIVE. Other nine-timers included NEGATING for 131 by Chris Davis and AREOLATE for the same score by Steve Perry. David Eldar is no doubt one of Australia's top players but because it was his first tournament in the UK he had to start unrated and was designated as a C player. At the start of day two David was due to play Austin Shin in a rematch of the first World Youth final, but he arrived ten minutes late. But even with that disadvantage on the clock he still thumped Austin 533-339! Phil Kelly made the biggest "WHOOP" of the day when trailing Anand Buddhdev tried the word CHOREMEN to win the game. When it was found to be acceptable he leapt and punched the air in true football fashion. Amy as TD warned Phil to keep his celebration on the football field. Two games went to a recount, allowed under WESPA rules when the scores are within ten. The recounts did nothing to alter the results. And finally the most amusing incident. A definite beeping sound came from the centre of the room. Many players commented to Amy and Mauro but a search to locate the sound was fruitless. When eventually the sound had transfered to the foyer area it was discovered that Player A's phone had mysteriously turned itself on and was playing games. The moral of the story is that when a player complains about a noise, ask them to check their pockets! It may just be coming from them!!     Division B was won by Moira Conway. It has been a tradition that no one player has won this trophy twice in the 22-year history of the BMSC. Moira's last win of this competition was in 1990 but before the Ivy Edmunds Memorial Trophy was inaugurated. So it would have been nice to have kept the Trophy in London and having a London League member win it, as Ivy Edmunds was a London League member so long ago. The current holder, Jessica Pratesi, could have taken a bus ride to Wood Green to give it to her instead of lugging Ivy all the way to Yarnfield! Moira was in pole position but had been clawed back by Naomi Landau to be equal on 14 wins going into the last round. The final round pairing was to have been their third tournament encounter with both a win apiece. In the closest of tussles Moira emerged the victory by 429-425 and with it took the Ivy Edmunds Trophy by one clear win. Naomi slipped to third and was overtaken by Stephen Balment who secured second place with a 456-356 victory over Ian Coventry. Yvonne Eade got a hat-trick of high scoring words with FRITZES for 99 (on day one), SQUINTER for 102 (on day two) and REALISTS for 131 (on day three)!     In Division C Peter Ashurst and Marlene Skinner had 15 wins each going into the last round. Peter had a 657 spread to Marlene's 162. They did not play each other in the final round. One and a half wins behind them was Ted Lewis with Ian Kendall half a win behind Ted. Peter lost 357-366 to Viv Beckmann. Marlene also lost. Geoff Cooper beat her 475-346. No change between the top two. Ted beat Val Hoskings to finish third. The match betwen Heather Laird and Juliet Green deserves a mention. The result was -8 for Heather and -26 for Juliet, giving a win for Heather by +18. This is how the game went: Heather went first and changed several Juliet passed having no vowels and not a SH or NY in sight Heather changed one Juliet again passed Heather changed one again Juliet changed Heather changed Juliet picked up a vowel but passed Heather changed a fifth time Juliet knew something was wrong and called the TD Result: [WESPA Rules] play stopped after three scores of 0. Racks deducted. Win for Heather.     In Division D Paul Cartman led going into the last round with 16 wins. One win behind Paul was Joe Knapper. One win behind Joe was Christine Tudge. Half a win behind Christine was Julie Tate. Paul needed to avoid a heavy defeat at the hands of Peggy Fehily. Joe's opponent was Jacquie Aldous. Christine faced Mavis Ernest and Julie played Mavis' husband Peter. Paul beat Peggy 388-368. Christine beat Mavis 364-352. Joe lost to Jacquie 373-395 and Julie lost to Peter. Paul won Division D by two clear wins with 17 wins and 1048 spread. While Christine finished equal 15 wins with Joe but did not overtake him on spread. 808 for Joe and 765 for Christine.     Before the penultimate round a team of willing helpers (mainly ABSP Committee) handed out the customary momento of this years' event. We all went home with a lovely Scrabble themed mug (they came in four colours). Full BMSC 2011 results are available here More BMSC 2011 pictures are available here

BMSC Warm-up events Ladies and Mens. .      On Friday 26th August the Ladies and Mens tournaments started the BMSC four-day event . This was the seventh year running the Yarnfield Conference Centre near Stone played host to the event. The facilities had been upgraded so that this year all the contestants played in one big room. Coffees, teas and juice were available on tap from the new self service area in the foyer. Wayne Kelly had ordered some sticky white paper which when placed on the noticeboard you actually could place single sheets of fixtures and table standings without the use of pins, blu-tac, plastic folders or sellotape. Seeing was believing! There were 42 ladies and 32 men playing in the warm-up events who played a total of six rounds for the Kay Thorne and John Rusted perpetual trophies. Alec Webb stood in as Tournament Director in place of Allan Simmons. There was only one key note of improper action and that was "players should *not* use the self adjudication computers to check combinations or missed words". One particular computer had the default set to Collins 2012 and a misadjudication happened because of it. Alec had to announce a stern reminder to the players.     Pauline Johnson was there to defend the trophy along with former winners, but it was Australian Karen Richards in round 5 who defeated her 488-380 and Pauline was no longer able to defend her title. That win for Karen put her second along with Amy Byrne in third with four wins each. Out in front, having won all her five games, was Diane Pratesi with a 380 spread. In the last round Diane faced off with Karen while Amy faced Jessica Pratesi. The spread difference was 65 between Diane and Karen. They were two very tense and close games. Amy's result came in first and Jessica kept Amy's winning spread a low one - difference 21 (427-406). Meaning Amy had not overtaken Diane as the situation stood. Eventually Karen marginally beat Diane 460-453 (seven points), enough to have a massive post-mortem on the play and outcome, but computer operator Mauro Pratesi knew the score. With five wins each, the finishing order was Diane, Amy and Karen with 51 points separating first from third. Diane wins the Kay Thorne trophy for the second time having won it in 2007. Karen had won it in 2009. Moira Conway was the only League member competing in Ladies A and Moira's 3 wins saw her finish mid-table. Two high scoring moves were Moira's SQUEALER for 122 and Anne Ashmore's MALTOSE for 102.     Ladies Division B was won by Sarah Wilks in similar fashion. Sarah led with five wins going into the last round followed by London League members Janet Bonham, Heather Laird and Philippa Morris who were one win behind. This time the spread difference between Sarah and Janet was 113. In the last round Sarah got Philippa and Janet got Heather. Janet bested Heather 407-378 and Philippa bested Sarah 399-337. Just enough for Sarah to hold on to win Ladies B with 329 spread from her five wins. Janet was second with 302 spread and Philippa came third with 176.     In a very strong rated Men's Division A, Neil Scott was leading three other players on spread with four wins going into the last round. Neil was paired with Wayne Kelly to whom he lost 425-444. Martin Harrison, who was second, played Steve Perry who was third. Martin thumped Steve 461-342 to win the Men's A Division. With Terry Kirk also having thumped Joe McGinley 370-344, Terry finished second while Neil bravely hung onto third place. In the Men's B Division Len Edwards had won all his games and led by one win from Graham Bonham and Chris Harrison. Len then lost his last game to Chris Harrison 376-419 and Graham lost 348-368 to Andy Gray. Len held on to win on spread from Chris while Graham lost by just enough to grab third spot. Full BMSC Warm-up results are available here More BMSC Warm-up pictures are available here

Mind Sports Olympiad . .     The fifteenth Mind Sports Olympiad took place at the University of London in Mallet Street in London's West End, which started the week beginning 21st August. As usual Scrabble was the best attended of the games being contested, with 38 players who played 7 rounds of Scrabble. Twelve London League members played in Divisions A and B.     Division A was not very good for London League members with five of them occupying the bottom five places. Victoria Kingham was the highest placed League member in sixth place with four wins and 141 spread. MSO winners are decided on head to head wins and/or common opponents. This was to prove crucial in the final countback as four players finished with five wins. They were Nick Ascroft, Philip Nelkon, Rik Kennedy and Calum Edwards (in spread order). After counting wins from common opponents we had Nick and Philip on five, Rik on four and Calum on 2. Third and fourth were simple enough to deduce. But the crucial match was to find if there was a head-to-head encounter between Philip and Nick? We did not have far to look back as round six showed Nick had beaten Philip 393-391! Nick for gold then and Philip got silver.     In Division B Chrystal Rose and Nick Stone finished with six wins each but as they had not played head to head and had an equal number of wins against common opponents, good old-fashioned spread was the deciding factor. Chrystal had a 726 spread and won gold. Nick scored 389 spread and won silver. Bronze trophy went to Reeyaaz Goolamhossen. Here again there were three players tied on five wins, Reeyaaz, Lee Graham (who finished third on spread) and Colin St Hill. Once their common opponents and head to heads were counted up, Reeyaaz had three wins to Lee and Colin's two.     There were other prizes including a junior prize of a gold trophy which went to Oliver Garner as the best performing youngster on the day. The other two youngsters received Silver and Bronze prizes, Jessica Pratesi and Natasha Pratesi. From Saturday's 'Clabbers' and 'If Only' competitions it was Sandie Simonis who was the most consistent winner and won a certificate for the best contestant in all variant Scrabble competitions. More Mind Sports Olympiad pictures are available here. Full tsh ratings and standings here.

The 21st Hockley (Goodmayes in Ilford) Invitational organised by Kevin Synnott and Evelyn Wallace.      On Sunday 14th August, 36 invited players split into three divisions of 12 played 9 games to 25 minutes per player. Nine London League members were present along with regular local and ex-members. Phyllis Fernandez's Nursery in Barley Lane in Goodmayes was the venue.     The top three players going into the final round robin format in Division A did not play each other and all won their final games. Calum Edwards won overall with eight wins and 567 spread. Vince Boyle was in second place with seven wins and 359 spread. Third was Mike Whiteoak on six wins and 265 spread. It was similar in Division B where the top four were also kept apart and all won their final games. Carmen Toscano just edged Marc Meakin out on spread having won eight games each. Their spreads were 531 and 462 respectively. In third was Nick Jenkins with six wins and 113 spread. In Division C Carmen Dolan led with eight wins from Ron Bucknell and Sue Ball with seven wins. In the last round Sue Ball beat Carmen which demoted Carmen to third with 269 spread. Sue Ball took second place with a 351 spread from her eight wins while Ron Bucknell was the clear winner after he defeated Sheila Anderson to win Division C with a 617 spread from his eight wins.

Ladies v Men Invitational No information of this event was available.

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British Elimination Scrabble Tournament as at end of July 2011 The tournament was open to all-comers throughout the whole of the UK including Ireland and the group final stages were part completed during July. Previously the Ireland and North West sections had been already decided and the winners going through to the quarter finals were Kevin McMahon and Wale Fashina.     Sadly London League members Di Dennis, Sanmi Odelana, Cody McCormick and Mike Chappell all had been eliminated from earlier rounds. Joining the two earlier quarter-finalists were Helen Gipson who beat Allan Simmons in the Scottish final, Mikki Nicholson who beat Andy Goodwin in the Northern final, Phil Robertshaw beat Neil Green in the South West and Wales final. Christian Brown beat Evan Simpson in the Midlands final. Lewis Mackay beat Paul Allan from the London North final - Lewis scoring 230 for the word ZETETICS, 149 for BEMUSING and won 719-406 (an ABSP record for the highest combined score). Finally Brett Smitheram beat David Webb in the London South final.     The next round pairings are: Phil v Lewis, Brett v Christian, Helen v Wale and Kevin v Mikki.

The 20th Hockley Invitational Sunday 31st July.     Kevin Synnott and Evelyn Wallace invited 34 players for their event and managed to fit them all inside Phyllis Fernandez's Ilford venue. So be prepared to play in the shower or bathroom if you are next invited and the invitees reach the magic 36! Divisions A and B were "oval" round robins, so... with twelve players per division and 9 rounds available you play all but two players! Going into the final round of Division A it became clear that the top two players would not be scheduled to play each other even though they yet hadn't played each other! Division C was a straight round robin but a late adjustment had to be sorted out when news of Margaret Seabrook's death of a heart attack the day before came as a bit of a shock. Final top three positions: Division A wins spd | Division B wins spd | Division C wins spd Mike Whiteoak 8 251 | Karen Game 7 324 | Claire Violett 7 399 Cecil Muscat 6 184 | Kevin Synnott 6 416 | Ron Bucknell 6 184 Calum Edwards 6 151 | Chrystal Rose 6 384 | Sandra Weston 5 299

Peterborough 24 hour event 23rd-24th July The event attracted 27 players, four of which were London League members. The three groups of nine players were prepared to go throughout the night playing a total of 24 games from the 27 scheduled rounds which included one sit out per session. After every nine rounds three players finishing top were promoted and three finishing bottom were relegated.     The top three rated in Division A invariably stayed where they were with Lewis Mackay winning 17 games in a row and going for his own personal record of 25 straight wins and Mark Nyman's all time record of 27! It all came to an end at the hands of Wayne Kelly in the third session. Other than 200 identical tiles ending up in one bag at the beginning of proceedings in C things went pretty smoothly. Winners of the first session at the 8.30pm stage were Austin Shin in A with 6 wins and 757 spread, Bartosz Pieta in B with 6 wins and 627 spread and Geoff Cooper in C with 6 wins and 342 spread.     By 6.15am the following morning the second session finished with Lewis Mackay as the winner of A with 8 wins and 1074 spread. Paul Thompson won B with 7 wins and 856 spread. Victoria Kingham gained promotion to A on spread. The top three in C, won by Nicky Huitson on 7 wins and 711 spread from Kim Hands and Chrystal Rose all regained their B status having all been relegated from the first session.     Midway through Sunday afternoon after a long 27 hour marathon the third session was won by Wayne Kelly in A with 8 wins and 635 spread. Greg Kelly won B with 6 wins and 336 spread with Chrystal Rose finishing third. Geoff Cooper, who had been promoted and then relegated, won C with 7 wins and 816 spread. Reeyaaz Goolamhossen came second in C with 6 wins and 516 spread after floundering in lowly positions in the first two sessions. It was no surprise that the overall League table consisted of top rated players Lewis Mackay, Wayne Kelly and Austin Shin occupying the top three positions.

HB Holidays - Southport 23rd-24th July     Eighteen players attended and were split into two divisions of eight and ten with 14 rounds. In addition to the regular duo of Moira Conway and Philippa Morris, Viv Bishop made it three London League members. With ten wins and finishing top of Division A was Peter Thomas with a 398 spread. Peter had already secured victory going into the last round, his final match with Moira Conway finished in a win for Moira 376-337 thus Moira finished second with nine wins and just edged Neil Darbyshire on spread after Neil had lost his last game to Peter Ashurst by 19 points. Another H-B Division B title for Barbara Lukey who came top with eleven wins and 825 spread. Philippa Morris came sixth on seven wins and Viv Bishop further down in eighth.

UK/English Open 15th-17th July Who would have thought at the Quality Hotel in Coventry over twenty one rounds the world's top player could not only be beaten but come second in a tournament! Going into the last round of the tournament Nigel Richards (Malaysia/New Zealand) had 17 wins and 2136 spread with Theresa Brousson (Malta) also on 17 wins but with 1507 spread. Not only did Theresa beat Nigel 506-472 to win the Open but she inflicted Nigel's third succesive defeat from their three encounters. The best of the rest included Lewis Mackay (England) and Phil Robertshaw (England) in third and fourth respectively having scored 14 wins each with Wayne Kelly (England) in fifth with 12 wins. Nigel's 21 game total game score was an impressive 10,213, Theresa only, only mind you, scored 9,582!     Two of the three London League members played in Division B. David Shenkin was one of three players on 13 wins going into the last round. David had to defeat leader Rafal Dominiczak (Romania) to win the division. Third placed Steve Balment was almost 200 points behind David on spread and played Sylvia Swaney in the last round. Sadly David fell to Rafal 356-451. Rafal had won the division while Steve overpowered Sylvia 424-295 to gain second spot. David had to settle for third place. Ted Lewis also played in this division and was well off the pace and finished with eight wins.     Division C was wrapped up by Mark Bradley. Valerie Morris was also guaranteed second place. The final pairings not only gibsonised Mark and Valerie but the computer program made them play each other in the final round. This left Dave Hoskisson and Anne Darby to play for third place. Mark bested Valerie 385-356 and won Division C with 17 wins and 1142 spread. Valerie was second with 14 wins and 495 spread. Anne downed Dave 411-289 to come third with 13 wins and 373 spread. The remaining London League member Caroline Elliott, despite having to miss her first three games on Sunday morning, returned to finish with 6 wins.     Full results can be found here:

Corby Tournament 10th July     74 players attended five of which were London League members. Seven rounds were played at the Best Western Rockingham Forest Hotel in Corby. The winner of Division A, who won all seven games, was Paul Allan. Paul secured his win having beaten Femi Awowade by ten points in the last round. Femi's low loss meant he retained second place on spread with five wins. Kim Hands who finished third and Christian Brown who finished fourth, also had five wins.     Janet Bonham was the winner of Division B with six wins and a 512 spread. Six players trailed on five wins, one of which was Andy Gray who missed out on a top three place by eight points. Janet had been the only player on five wins to win their last game. The other two players; Esther Kasket had been beaten by Janet, while Geoff Cooper lost to Eileen Foster. Eileen's win had elevated her into second place.     Joe Knapper won Division C having won all his seven games. Joe secured the victory by defeating Ted Anscomb by 123 points in the last round. Joe scored a total of 890 points in the process. David Garland was second with six wins after he had won his last game by two points. Caroline Elliott just missed out on third place on spread to Paul Walford both had also scored five wins. Corby statistics can be found here

Romford 2nd July     Kelvedon Hatch was the venue for the annual Romford Club Tournament. A total of 62 players attended 14 of which were current London League members. The tournament consisted of seven rounds.     Calum Edwards won Division A for the second year running. Both Calum and Barry Grossman had lost one game going into the last round, Barry to Andrew Eames and Calum to Barry. Calum narrowly won his final game against Mike Chappell 393-390, whilst on the other table Diane Pratesi put pay to Barry winning the tournament having beaten him 393-334. So even though Mike had lost his last two games against Calum AND Barry, Mike's five wins was enough to stay third ahead of Diane Pratesi and Vince Boyle on spread.     Ken Bird won Division B with seven wins and 406 spread. Ken beat Priscilla Munday in the last round 424-344 to secure top spot. Sue Ball defeated Phyllis Fernandez 373-305 to finish second with 5 wins and 371 spread, and Reeyaaz Goolamhossen defeated Peter Bailey 383-340 to finish third also with five wins and 279 spread.     Anne Convery won Division C with a full compliment of seven wins and 502 spread. Two wins behind were Gill Thompson, Nick Stone and Margaret Seabrook. Viv Bishop almost finished in the top three but for a last round loss to Gill Thompson. Romford pictures and stats available here

ABSP Masters 2nd-3rd July Some of the original qualifiers who were invited declined but with twelve Grandmasters and four Experts it was a strong collection of Scrabble talent. It was played at the Stone House Hotel in Stone where it has been held the past few years. With sixteen players and 16 games it was a simple 15 round robin with king of the hill last round. Games were played with five point penalty challenges. The new ABSP Treasurer Peter Ashurst was the Tournament Director and computer operator.     No current London League member attended yet five contestants had played in the London League including Helen Gipson, Terry Kirk and Evan Simpson. Going into the last round Craig Beevers and Wayne Kelly were tied on 11 wins each but Craig had a hugely superior spread. Craig won by 431-370 and with it the Masters title for 2011 with 12 wins and 803 spread. Mark Nyman beat Theresa Brousson 455-448 to come second with 11 wins and 765 spread. Wayne Kelly was third with 11 wins and 224 spread.     Full results can be found here:

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