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2009 - October November
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2003

Causeway Challenge day five - I finish 15th, team finishes 3rd

NSC Semis - oh dear

MISO - 2nd place

UK Open - 3rd place

Causeway Challenge day five - I finish 13th, team finishes 1st

Causeway Challenge day one - 4 wins out of 9

December 1st - Singapore Rainforest Zoo/normal zoo/night safari

Picasa photos

WSC day three - I finish 8th

WSC day two

FIrst up was a really horrible strategic/defensive game against Sam. I had a small lead on a closed board with only 7s ending with a front hook to QUA available for any scoring - which in turn would provide floaters for a counter-bonus. I kept playing off low scoring tiles and my lead vanished with 2 blanks unseen. I let Sam open the board after I simply played A-QUA, unfortunately I managed to not have any bonus playable through the floaters he provided. In the end he got stuck with unhelpful tiles and the two blanks and went 40 points over on time to give me a very ugly win. Followed up with a straightforward victory and then a straightforward defeat although I almost snatched a win at the end. Pakorn's early scoring meant I needed a minor miracle against him, again story of the tournament so far I was just off making it interesting - although I should have reduced the spread significantly. So back to all square again at the break.
The very routine games continued, I had three very comfortable wins thanks to dominant tile picks and a loss in another of those very open attacking games where you just sit back and watch. If I'd picked one or both blanks against Mikki he may have difficulty to getting his out-bonus to counter my DEARLING, but that's Scrabble for you. So 9-7 and +449 puts me in the top third. Hoping for a good final day to put me in the prizes.
More will appear here later.

WSC day one

Started off struggling through against Rohaina Tanveer, didn't have a great deal but just enough to earn a small lead and keep it through to the end. I left a phoney unchallenged at the end just in case there was some other miracle play available. I was then drawn against two UK players. Two fairly straight forward wide open scoring games where I was a bit unfortunate at the end to pick clunky consonants whilst my opponent had an unlikely bonus leaving me with no comeback. A straightforward win to finish off the mini-session before lunch to leave me on 2-2.
Had not really had the tiles so far, was hoping for better after the break. Err no chance. Absolutely horrific stuff left me 2-4 and a bonus behind Kevin in the 7th game. The crucial point was whether or not to play AERATES with two significant scoring +S hooks and no other Ss/blanks remaining. I'm not sure what was best, but I played the bonus which opened up a juicy triple, fortunately for me Kevin did not have the tiles to capitalise heavily and I scraped a small victory. I got a jam-filled blowout to finish the day and put me on 4-4 and a positive spread.
More will appear here later.

November 25th

Had a little bit more trouble sleeping this morning, but can't complain too much as I've slept fine on the whole despite the background noise. More time spent kibitzing games and taking the odd photograph knowing tournament registration and a gala dinner were coming up later in the day. Tried my toaster out and it performed admirably. Plodded on to the registration where we all got big square black bags with the appropriate WSC gubbins on it. Some other knick-knacks were included whilst the media floated about - managed to evade the interviewing. Gala dinner followed with the predictable speeches and I got out of there shortly after, the little bowls of whatever were already turning my stomach before the noise cranked up and the solid food arrived to overload the senses further.
As alluded to earlier my hotel room overlooks a nice foresty/inlet bit, I've took quite a few photos of various exotic looking birds around there but they're all rather distant for my liking as they're all taken from the hotel. This side of the inlet is fenced off to help prevent smuggling, but I hope I can access some of the opposite side. But in the meantime I've got the World Scrabble Championships to think about which starts tomorrow morning.

November 24th

Went to a leisure complex with a few other guys (Paul, Lewis, Rik, Kevin and Adrian), first up was the bowling. I think the last few times I went bowling it was mini-version at Seaton Carew, where the balls were about the size of a coconut. I suppose that might be where my muscle memory was coming from as I kept hitting the ground with the ball a third of the way through and having it skew into the right gutter resulting in some superficial damage done to the finger ends. Went in teams and drew one each.
We all got some shopping done after, I bought a toaster as you do. Very fashionable orange and yellow number. Most things are a lot cheaper in Malaysia, but not chocolate. Brought some Maltesers with me though, so I'm saving those for a rainy day. The rest of the day was spent kibitzing or playing in Scrabble team games. I'm not one to play or study intensely just before a tournament - doesn't work well for me.

November 23rd

Had a bit of jetlag for the second day running. Kicks in at around lunchtime but passed after an hour or so of lying down and nodding off. Having toast and croissants for breakfast, having some sweets here and there with the occasional packet of crisps to top things off. Not much compared to what I usually have.

Hotel window views added - November 21nd/22nd

Included some quite nice views from my room on Picasa. There are quite a lot of herons about and some other unidentified noisy birds. Haven't found much in the way of things to eat yet, but that is as expected. Doesn't seem to be anything in the way of bread in the shops.

Arrived in Malaysia - November 21st

Touched down safely a few hours ago. Everything had gone surprisingly smoothly up until the ridiculous delays at arrival and the traffic between the airport and the hotel which was rather insane. The bikers in particularly are a desperate/brave bunch. Got my free wifi through the business district on the fifth floor once the magical word Scrabble was used - I'm on the fourteenth floor. Hotel itself is very spacious and impressive. Some photos are on my Picasa site and Facebook. Will add some thumbnails here later.

Zyzzyva 7s all added - November 13th

Hurray, only 4000 racks in my cardbox tomorrow. Decided to accelerate the adding stuff to cardbox process to give myself more time to properly learn a reasonable proportion of the least probable 7s. I don't expect to be anything close to 100% on them, particularly as there's a really annoying number of phonetically similar words which I'm likely to get wrong for weeks to come. Multiple spellings are bad enough, but when you get two similar separate root words that have multiple spellings... AARGH. Or should that be AARRGHH.

Scrabble blog launched - November 9th

Welcome to my rudimentary blog. The purpose is to chronicle my experiences in the field of Scrabble. Starting with the World Scrabble Championships 2009 held in Johor Bahru, Malaysia in late November. Followed closely by the Causeway Challenge the week after. I hope to add in or link to lots of photographs (assuming the airport doesn't dismantle my camera) and try to convey the events, the background, game details and all the relevant bits as best I can. There will also be plenty of stuff from the past few years added when I get time.

Zyzzyva study heats up - November

Doing crazy amounts of word study lately. Much more than I've ever managed before. My usual regimen is approximately 1000 or so racks a day on Zyzzyva which takes about an hour and a half - done via the cardbox system. Mix in some periods where congenital apathy takes over and I do nothing. Recently I decided I wanted to have every single allowable 7 added to the cardbox before I fly out to Malaysia. This has resulted in me doing roughly 3000 racks a day and the number is gradually increasing. Ouch. I'm on course to have them all included by Tuesday night, 17th November. I fly out on the Friday.

Post-NSC final media guff

A fair bit of interest now, but still a little less than I was expecting. Did a bit on regional news for the BBC. Was on live radio a couple of times (Talk Radio Europe based in Spain and Radio Five Live). There were lots of articles in the papers I expect but I'm not one to actively seek out coverage of myself. Always feels kinda weird, almost paradoxic to see myself on television, in a newspaper or hear myself chatting on radio.

I am National Scrabble champion 2009 - October 18th

Yep I'm the bloke who won 3-0 in the final and spent ages being photographed, filmed, interviewed... You can find the games themselves on CentreStar. The games haven't been analysed yet to my knowledge, this is something on my to do list and I'll add in my perspective on each move as well.

Pre-NSC final media guff

Surprisingly little interest. Last year I was kept pretty busy with lots of interviews and whatnot. Hardly anything this time. I suppose in the interests of laziness a lot of the content is regurgitated. Also my opponent (David Webb) lives down south so there's more interest in him.

National Scrabble Championships semis 2009 - September 12th-13th

Got off to a much better start this year. The turning point was probably against Jackie McCleod when I went with my instincts and played DONSHIP. In Scrabble you have to trust yourself, even if it leads to your downfall, because you won't get anywhere otherwise. From there on I won all seven games on the first day. I had been in similar situations in 2006 & 2007 however, so knew I was at best evens to qualify for the final. First up the next day I lost to Mark Nyman and kicked myself in the next when I had VITRAUX on my rack and played through a floating letter for 36 points, only to realise afterwards that I could empty my rack with the same word for a three figure score. Fortunately I still won that game and struggled through to the last match having shared wins and losses to leave myself in a situation where I merely needed a win to qualify. I was expecting to play Mark again, however I was drawn against Mikki as the computer had contrived a situation where the maximum (four) number of people had a chance of qualifying in second place. Mikki had to beat me by a big margin to have a hope, however he tried some very risky words early on which I challenged off enabling me to build up a nice cushion and a fairly relaxed path into the final.

Middlesbrough champion - September 20th 2009

Awarded grand master status - January 2009

Cleveland Scrabble Club champion 2008

National Scrabble Championships 2008 & WSC qualification

Cruised through the regionals. Had a horrible start to the semi-finals when I lost two of my first three games. However got a nice run of luck and played pretty well to scrape into the final after I won ten of the last eleven games. Unfortunately the luck ran out at the final where I lost 3-1. The final is covered on CentreStar. It was very much a bonus to get through to the final in the first place. When I went to the semis I was just concentrating on having a good couple of days to ensure my rating didn't plummet and push me out of the qualification spot for the World Championships held in 2009. Was kept very busy with the media in the build up to the final with plenty of interviews and the odd bit of radio. The elongated stint with BBC Radio London is one of those amusing experiences you keep with you for a long time.

Middlesbrough champion - July 6th 2008

Middlesbrough 25th champion - September 9th 2007

Countdown adventure starts

Going on Countdown had always been something I'd thought about doing as I'd followed it from a young age. Knowing you only get one go at it I wanted to do it properly. For me I felt I had to take a break away from Scrabble to help with the process of changing dictionaries, which is a huge problem for Scrabblers going on Countdown. This meant I only entered the bare minimum of tournaments in 2007. You can follow my experience on the much loved gameshow here.

Awarded expert status - January 2007

Cleveland Scrabble Club champion 2006

Winter Matchplay 2006 winner - November 25th-26th

Peterlee champion - June 18th 2006

Cleveland Scrabble Club champion 2005

Cleveland Experiment (5pp) winner - June 19th 2005

Cleveland Scrabble Club champion 2004

Snook the overall champion crown after Pete lost to his wife Laura. I had completed all my games and needed Pete to lose one of his two remaining games otherwise I finished as runner-up. Was pretty unexpected as neither of us lose that often at the club.

Middlesbrough champion - September 26th 2004

Peterlee champion - June 13th 2004

First ABSP rated tournament victory - April 24th 2004

First ABSP rated tournament - October 5th 2003

Struggled in my first outing in some pretty dour games. Never got going and ended up winning 2 out of my 5 games and getting a disappointing starting rating of 135, finishing 11th out of 16 in Division A.