WSC/US NATS 2023
Umm, yeah, I'm the 2023 World Champion. Here's how it happened.
First things first, is I definitely checked out a bit of Scrabble since I won one of these to begin with; my level has probably been on a slow downward trajectory since 2017 and my rating has reflected that (though there have been ebbs and flows, my cleanest tournament remains my nationals victory in 2020 or whenever where I was on red hot fire, and this was likely my skill peak). I admit to not trying as hard, and learning the 9s has really shifted my skill level and study regime in a much grosser way than I thought it would. AORN I think I have about a quarter of the 9s in my cardbox and I just don't feel like I'm anywhere near done with that project, and expect it to take at least 2-3 more years to completion. That said, that's what it takes to learn them, and I want to know them.
The nats crept up slow; I wanted to play in the 2nd US Nats in Albany but there was a 10 day break in between, and getting to Albany adds a LOT of flight time to my journey stateside. I couldn't find anything exciting to do in the 10 day break so I decided to give this one a miss; though when watching the games online I regretted it. That said, I did remember how the last time I went made me feel and I do get quite despondent when I play poorly, I vividly remember just being crushed at my moronic phoney of RONNISH* against Wiegand. What goes on at nighttime at these tourneys can be a mixed bag; sometimes there's a lot to do, but sometimes there isn't and even if there is, sometimes if you come from Australia, you are simply too fucked from Jetlag to do anything other than eat sleep and scrab.
That in fact happened this time; NB the week before this I squeezed in a long trip to Japan with my ailing father and Elle which already wore me out. I had only a 2 day break at home before jetting to USA. Unfortunately I chose to fly united which meant my flight was delayed an entire day. This meant I did not really have much time to acclimatize at all. Surprisingly, the US border seems to have softened over the years; I was nervous and geared up for a good old grilling - the guy just looked at me and nodded me through; perhaps I have a note on my account now that I'm fine - after the years of bullshit they have put me through (I'm still scarred from my Canada trip and vowed never to return, but I may have moved past that after 10-15 years).
Ok, good start, though the astonishing heatwave I faced upon exiting the airport was a sore reminder of why I don't ever spend too long in Vegas (in my heyday, I spent months living here in a house with 10 bros, and have visited a few times since). I am certainly a fan of Vegas - there are lots of great ways to entertain yourself, the food is of the highest level and I wish there was more time to go and see the exceptional shows that are on every night.
I had already called the Westgate to alert them to the fact that I would be a solid day late and TO PLEASE STILL RESERVE MY ROOM. I also called several times to try and ensure I would have a desk and deskchair in my room - years of using AirBNB or crappy hotel tables to try and home my laptop has bothered me enough - the hotel refused to guarantee me such a luxury but they did promise to put a note on my account, whatever that means.
Well, I arrived to the Westgate at 3pm or so and there was a massive swath of people. The line for checkout went well outside of the marquees set up for the line - I asked the local servant man how long the line would be and he quoted me over an hour - which I thought was so utterly ridiculous that I decided to go and check out for some scrabble dudes instead, and come back later to check in when the line had calmed down. On the way, I encountered Ricky, who informed me about the line and that it could just be like that all night, that Aussies had arrived last night at 2am and had to queue for hours before getting their room. Worse still, Marlon and Co had to queue for hours before being told their room was not available and the hotel overbooked, then having to go to a different hotel and having to spend hours queuing there as well. This scared me straight and I decided it was worth waiting in the horrible line, which had only gotten longer in the last 20 minutes. I saw a scrabble man in front of me in line, so I tried to strike up a conversation with him, but he was atypically unsociable. Instead I resorted to my last line of defense when it comest to self entertainment; I had purchased an emergency book, the seven moons of maali al meida, which turned out to be quite enjoyable and I read a full 50 pages before reaching the front of the line. To my surprise, after all the nightmare stories, they said yep we got your note here and heres your room with a desk and deskchair. Hey presto - this did mean I was in a different tower a bit further away from the scrabbos than the other people, but really the room was nice and the bed was comfortable, so I was very pleased. Additionally, it was close to the elevator and on the 3rd floor, which meant I was always first on and off the elevator.
Jetlags a killer - I couldnt stay up past 6pm and when I woke up it was 3am, so I ordered a boatload of fat american food to my door - as usual forgetting how portion sizing etc works in america and ending up with enough food for 3 moderately sized scrabble players. On the day before the tournament I tried to entertain myself in the playing room, however many of my international scrabbling friends seemed absent. Luckily a very close friend lives in Vegas and we hung out a bunch during the day - going to play some darts at a local casino before spending an hour searching for his car in one of the massive casino parking lots. Late at night I enjoyed a poker dinner with some buddies who were visiting from abroad at Raku Toridokoro, which was conveniently open until 2am and served an excellent feast. I also played some anagrams in the playing room but unfortunately our game was ruined by a very harassy Sam K, who insists on behaving like everythings normal and we're all bros, but we're really not and please leave us alone. It's one thing to resume tournament play in relative silence, it's another to impose yourself on everyone when they really don't want you there and you should have been banned. In a private message I did recommend to him that he quit and not look back, theres like 100 other niche communities just like this one where people like him can get a fresh start but just no way that that message is ever going to get through I guess. I tried.
Play took place in a giant ballroom which would have probably been classy in the 1970s but now is in essence a blown up version of my dead grandmothers living room. The players barely filled the space which was at times good, but also a reminder of how far things have sunk for competitive Scrabble since I started playing. Certainly when this event was in the riviera (where I competed), there was a much bigger showing. Alarmingly more people recognize me; although its nice to be recognized by a roomful of ignorant Americans, it also means they have enough brain space to catalog me which previously did not exist due to other people who are no longer with the scene, rather than being due to my rapidly expanding legend.
My first two games were against two unfamiliar opponents, Yukiko Loritz and Ruth Hamilyton, both friendly enough and went down without too much of a fight. Things got ugly fast against Karen Richards who I almost never lose to.
https://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=43558
Very paranoid play with GAUP and DESEX leave me at a deficit. ORC is an utterly inexplicable brain explosion which seems to have been spurreed on by hours and hours of playing HASTYBOY - after Karen played MILKER I immediately recognized my idiocy. Fortunately, Karen had overscored REI by 2 (she had originally put down TIER), and a one point victory became a one point loss for her when I performed a recount (simply playing ZEST on the right wins for her). I couldn't believe my luck to get out of this and also the depth of my mistake. This was a theme for this tournament - I wanted to sink through the floor when I realised what I'd done. Better game against Sjoholm on stream, where he had a meltdown on his final turn missing a few 100% wins (thats two games in a row, this list gets long). I had a similar meltdown against him last year so I considered this even. Unfortunately lunch options in the hotel were quite limited, and with the extended lunch break I elected to get ubereats delivery and sleep in my room still being badly jetlagged, or on a few occasions just skipped lunch.
A lot of team Nigeria showed up which helped transform this tournament from a very easy lineup to actually quite tough level. Nigeria may not have the most 2000 players, but they have an endless sea of 1800-1900 players who all pose a challenge. Prince Omosefe was against me and gave me a good game before falling to my strong play of BEWINGED. Many of these games were annotated and I was kept off stream either for diversity picks or for TWL. Stefan played a silly phoney allowing me a 9x and 200 pt victory.
At night I didn't recognize too many people present and my friend became sick so I often spend the night just hanging in my room which was pretty lame - the jetlag prevented me from realistically joining anyone for dinner - I was scared of leaving the hotel and not being able to retreat quickly to my bedroom which I wanted to have the ability to do. I only ended up eating at the hotel twice in fact, once with Austin at "rikki tikki sushi", which did actually have quite decent food. I needed to arrive in america earlier to adjust to the timezone difference. Against Rik Kennedy and Wappers I put down two out of 3 158 point moves I scored that day - that's right, in a single day I scored 3 moves worth 158 points exactly.
I had a great match against Olatunde Oduwole on stream,
https://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=43559#23#
Here I decided that simply turning over the H was good business regardless of emptying the bag - 8 points for me, and 8 out of my opponents hand on countback - surely a net total of 16 was enough to void the problem of emptying the bag. If I think about it though, he never has the Q and I simply can't withstand the Q - I thought I could but I cant, and I figured it was too easy for him to OI2 (but if he has the Q its almost imposssible). So yeah not great, and its really hard to tell whats best on the sim - HOX does fine really but its entirely reliant on missing the Q and as usual I have a bad tendency to empty the bag when not necessary. What happened next sucked.
I wrote on my scoresheet
ESKY - 0
SKY - 1
Yep, so ESKY is a tie, SKY wins by one. Uh yeah... I obviously need a new notation system lol. Watching the stream back was funny, for american pronunciation of ESKY, and assuming I would simply miss that (come on...). So yeah, from now on, I write down all my little notations with a plus or minus. I spent the rest of the tourney assuming this game would cost me the tournament, but later I found out that it doesn't seem to matter how many games I throw away, I'm finals bound.
Against Austin I had a tough game but made this brilliant play.
https://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=43560#20#
Which crushed a sim, but didn't matter. This was probably my best play of the tourney. TWITCH a few turns prior caused me long headaches and does turn out to be incorrect. This tourney was already a while ago and I already feel unsatisfied with 7 games a day playing it back, even though I'm just retelling the tournament to you, I can feel the dissatisfaction. For a lead in the tournament, I started off swell against Welly, but he made an inexplicable play of BITER and it was so bananas I forgot about the hook OBITER (which turned out to be a 15 pt error), and then he went on to crush me. Brad Whitmarsh smashed me to close out the day, along with me crushing Opeyemi Oloro.
I finally felt well enough to go to dinner sort of, so I joined Castellano and the boys for a nearby meal - they insisted on eating off strip (the previous night I declined to join, sokol tried to take us 15+ minutes off strip for some inexplicable reason) - I said I'd join as long as its within 5 minutes of the hotel .The problem is Castellano and WTFs ride was a loaded van and I was not allowed to take a taxi, and they are both vegetarian which greatly restricted options, and they both insisted on eating indian. Fine - but the only place within 5 minutes was the not delectable "shish kabobs and more" - which for some reason I trusted, despite the extreme dilapidation and filthiness of the joint, and I don't know why the alarm bells didn't go off, but I ate the food and I was really really sick but yes on reflection a place that specialized in kebabs but also made burgers and pizzas was PROBABLY NOT THE BEST PLACE TO EAT DINNER and we're in vegas for christs sake - I got to spend the night very sick - I woke up for 2 hours at like 4am with various bowel related problems and only at 7am or whatever was I finally over whatever I had, which I'm sure didn't help my performance for the day. I was very nervous I wouldn't get back to sleep but I managed 5 or 6 hours which I consider to be the bare minimum to play scrabbles. It was a horrible evening.
The first few games of the day were tight - Wellington had already sealed himself a spot in the final, but Alec Sjoholm was a game and spread behind me, which was a bit nervy. First, this nerve wracking game against Marlon,
https://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=43561#21#
here I played fine to this point - and then my brain went crazy and said TRY COSET. It sims about level with COSED - I think COSED ended up winning but this was a good play! I saw multiple draws at ELEDOISIN ultimately and decided that's how I was going to have to win this game so that's what I went with. I was really scared of the OK OW option that he ended up playing and foresaw that losing the game for me. The next play of LINDS is just me being completely out of ideas and that seemed like a good equity play. I missed SIDELOCK which could theoretically win. KAIL again was me basically giving up - I was very low on time, but somehow I had enough time to count up SEED as a win and a crazy choke for Marlon. Inexplicably the next game Keller chickened out of DISCOED which would have beaten me, and Eta also messed up an endgame in order for me to win by a respective 2-3 and 4 points or something in these games, the Marlon game was just because he challenged UMPY too. I faced another difficult game against Marlon and won that too to propel me near the finals. Finally I just had to hold off Sjoholm in the last two games, and though I was probably too paranoid, I managed to do that easily enough and get myself an assured spot!
At night we had started to develop a small crew with Castellano and Sjoholm with some occasional anagrams action as well as simulation parties which was quite fun. I was mainly relieved to make the final rather than bothered about winning it or not, I can't really explain why - I think the pain of missing the final would be greater than losing in the final - fortunately I didn't have to experience this in either tournament. The final was one sided until it wasn't, I played great, Wellington played fine, and ultimately outdrew me 7 blanks to 3, which is simply not enough to beat an opponent of that caliber unless you're Nigel. I was happy for a couple of days off, especially since the worlds meant a lot more familiar faces would be showing up. I enjoyed a good steak dinner with Trevor Andrew and sean, as well as the very overly fancy E with Trevor - it seems though that American fine dining, much like my experience at Alinea, has moved into a shitty model where they have two seatings and just shovel as much food as they can into your mouth in the limited 2-3 hours. What really irked me about E, is they asked us to show up 15 minutes early, and then one of the patrons was 20 minutes late, so we ended up stalling the entire meal for her sorry ass, which meant things moved even quicker. I was way overfull after the meal because things moved very quickly, but the food was of the higest quality, and it was deeply nostalgic to revisit the cosmo, as I have many fond memories getting dinner and hanging there when I used to live in Vegas. It's still really nice.
I didn't have anything to do the day before the tournament, so I figured I'd play the early bird, a quick 4 games to get the juices flowing again. Yeah, I lost every game. Yeah, including the three final games against wellington, that makes a 7 game losing streak, AKA my worst losing streak of my entire career. A very young me moved quickly from Advanced to Masters in Australian tournaments and lost all 6 games one day (technically I think I skipped "advanced), but that awful day in 2003 was up until now my worst scrabble streak of all time. Andy Kurnias game was the funniest - he crushed me, but despite being of few words, at the end of the WSC tournament he mustered up a few to congratulate me and did not neglect to mention his excellent victory over me in the early bird :D and indeed a few people mentioned that that might be the precursor! Amazingly, I played quite well in these games.
WSC
Not discouraged, I got off to a rollicking start in the WSC against Ikekeregor, Patricia John and Charles Tachie. My 3rd game, I commented to Jesse Day, was against someone I had never heard of. He also commented he was unfamiliar with his opponent. Huh... strange... feels like old times I thought. What followed was probably one of the strangest and seemingly most legendary tournament games of all time.
My opponent sat down across me, a youngish (for scrabble) woman, I asked where she was from (to try and get a read on her), and she said Phillipines. I figured she might be ok - I don't know how the Scrabble situation is in Philippines anymore, but there used to be quite a lot of strong players from there back in the day. I remember many losses to John Tabasa and Odette. Maria didn't seem entirely familiar with the clock, but it was one of those shitty samtimer ones - I drew my tiles, and she asked if she should start my clock - sure - she gave it a solid whack but with the jolty manner of someone who hasn't spent much time playing ball sports - as if she was a cat trying to stop a mouse by the tail. This was the hardest anyone hit the clock all tournament, and she hit it that hard every time. Ok, I didn't suspect anything too weird yet, I opened with a couple of pedestrian bingos. Where things started to get strange was on about the 3rd move, Maria grabbed the board with both hands after setting her rack aside, and pulled the board right up to her body, like she just won an all in at the poker table and was collecting all her opponents chips in one grand reach. Presumably so she could inspect it closely. I have literally never seen this before, but I was well over 100 ahead so I thought I'll roll with it. After putting down OF for 25, she returned the board to its normal position, thwacked the clock, and kindly turned it around so it faced me again (I informed her she didn't really need to do this, but it's no big deal).
She'd only played 2 and 3 letter words, so I clogged things up with a timely RITZ, and then she again pulled the board close to her so she could better inspect, and after spending several minutes she surprised me by uttering a word I don't think anyone has heard an opponent say on the 4th turn. "Pass". Thwack. Mystified, I continued upon my business, playing off a W keeping a V (thinking sigh, I want to win this by 100s, but how can I with this rubbish). Then Maria played CED* + EWE + DAD. Uhh, challenge. I show her how to pause the clock and restart it and we rush to the computer. I enter CED*, invalid obviously. Then this happens; she says "oh ok, let me just check the other words" AND STARTS TO TYPE THE OTHER PLAYED WORDS INTO THE COMPUTER. Because she had clearly never used the computer before, she didn't get past the screen where it asks you the number of words you need to type in, and ultimately her typing seemed to bug the computer so it couldn't be used for the rest of the round. This didn't stop her trying, so I grabbed Art, who kindly explained to her that you definitely cannot check the validity of words midgame. She said "oh ok". Her next play was CAD for 6. Thwack.
I play off my V, then QUIST and BRAVOS for 55. She challenges to my surprise - I was half expecting she wouldn't know what a challenge was at this point. QUIST is valid obviously, so we come back, and she whacks the clock, ok, your turn. I explain that in fact all that happens is that she loses 5 points, not her whole turn. After trying to take 5 points from each side, she explains that she hadn't played in a while. I notice at this point that the flag on her badge is Qatari (wat?). Well, with a 300 point lead now, I liked the way this game was going. She drains a TONNE of time, 5 minutes plus on another turn, before asking if she could pass. Sure, I explained you have to play a word or pass. "Pass". "Change 6". This took her aback, lol, and at this point I assumed she probably had both blanks - the board was really blocked though. Eventually, her clock ticked over.
"I lose now, oh well".
"Actually, we both keep playing until we have finished - you only lose 10 minutes for each minute you go overtime, but the games not over".
"Oh, we have to finish the game?"
"Yeah"
"Oh ok ...
Pass"
Thwack.
A couple of very slow turns pass, and I'm truly wondering how this person ended up playing me in round three of the World Scrabble championships. More short plays and passing and the rarest occurrence is happening - my scoresheet is almost full. I slap down HOARSEN and OVUMS* assuming theres a good chance she's just done with this game and she does let it go. After 10 minutes elapse, I figure now is as good a time as any to remind her that she's losing ten points a minute. "oh really? I didn't know that... Pass". Thwack. Eventually she played off both blanks for 18 and emptying the bag. I devised a clever out in two, and go on to win by 600, wondering if I should have been meaner and taken a 7 or 800 point win. Ultimately I started feeling bad and wanted the game to be over - it was also quite boring.
This game was a very very hot topic for many of the discussions I had this tournament. My favorite which was a random (Norases?) approached me and asked how I won by 600 - without missing a breath I responded "It's magic baby I'm the best". My second favorite would be on the fourth day, Maria in fact approached me and explained that she was very nervous during our game! And then she asked for a selfie with me. Excellent! I was thrilled to see she won at least 5 games throughout the course of the tournament. Against Keller, alarm bells in my head as I played the incredible BIRDY*, convincing myself it had been added at some point. No it hadn't but miraculously he let it go. I was getting shafted off the top boards due to diversity picks and sent to the bottom few tables where I observed Trevor get thrashed by a man dropping SPEEDWAY on him for 180 points. The bottom boards at the tournament were an utterly miserable place to be. 8 to a table, barely enough room to move, and garbage Scrabble equipment - trevor later labelled it the apt Scrabhell. Here Olatunde dropped ONA* against me, and I rode to a 6-0 start, before dropping to Henry and another frustrating loss to Wellington where I played fine.
The regrets begun on Day 2. Against Fraley, I played an atrocious preendgame.
https://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=43562#20#
Here, what I need to do is score enough over two turns to prevent his bingo winning. Instead, what I did is exactly opposite that, draining my clock and settling on some pathetic equity play (I saw a lot of bingos to draw with CEVT), which loses to getting outscored or refished on, both consequences which I had considered. Simply VOX, or even blocking with VEXT perform much better on the sim. VOX of course would have won this game comfortable, as well as several other plays such as WOVE and WIN. This is a huge huge mistake, and in the end I lost by 5 points, the amount of points lost on my annoying challenge of EGRESSED - perhaps if I looked for SLEDGERS I would have left that alone, but I couldn't be certain it was valid. Very disappointed in myself for this one. A bad game against Castellano was riddled with mistakes, but a lucky break against Russell and he let me get away with the atrocious ALVEATE*. I tilted against Sjoholm, playing too fast, opening -OUB/AIRE, misseing OUREBI, which is a 10 point error and then lost the game. Against Harshan, I faced a few brutal decisions.
https://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=43563#1#
First, I made an excellent play. Typically, I would play AUGH here to set up the triple. But I remember looking at the inferrer bot, that often when people play a strong consonant, they very often have a duplicate of it. Reasoning that Harshan was much likelier than usual to have a T, I play AUGH/GLINTY. I ran this through magpie or whatever the inferrer is called later on at night - after LINTY, Harshan has a T 78% of the time! I confirmed later that Harshan kept TO on this rack. Excellent play.
https://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=43563#17#
Just ignore my awful miss of HEAVIER will you? I missed quite a few of these on day 2, no idea what was going on. Maybe fatigue starting to finally set in. So here now what? Sim wants KEB and somehow it thinks I can win from there, I decided I couldn't, and changed into ENDAMOEBA, unfortunately, Harshan was onto it. It didn't even matter to draw the bingo, apparently changing keepign KE is the best change anyway.
https://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=43563#19#
Here the best move was not NUG, but the genius rUG for 3 making an unstoppable setup. Don't think it wins very often, but it certainly pushed a lot harder than my play ultimately did. Immediately with the play of NUG and changing I recognize something - I don't get pushed at Australian tournaments and my endgame lacks practice because I almost never get in one.
Easy games against Lipe and will help, and I'm feeling good after passing Whitley who 9xes me and draws both blanks. Against Anand I randomly miss ENTRYIST natural (!) and later REDSHIFT with a blank, after using way too much time early. (but was it enough time if I still missed two bingos?). I was trying to slow down. I had an easy win against Conrad, and against Thacha I draw great and cruise to an easy victory UNTIL I DONT and the preendgame got tricky, I made a mistake, and then emotionally checked out of the game. Even then, I still just had to fucking look, because it turns out all I had to do to win was TO PLAY OUT AND I MISSED IT. Missing an outplay is a new one for me - I'm legitimately not sure the last time I lost a game like this. I became verey despondent after this. I play like garbage against Tony Leah already having written myself off for the tournament.
https://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=43564#22#
I played fast and bad up to this point, randomly dropping 10 or 20 points of equity needlessly in a tilty blur. After EH I was so bereft, I stared at this rack for ages ruing his block of KEMBOS and wondering how the hell I'm supposed to win this game. Then it came to me in a flash - SOKEMEN! SOKEMAN is valid. Tony cracked up when I played my move. What on earth was I thinking about!? Somehow he missed his fish and I go on to win this miracle game.
https://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=43565#0#
I win this absolute thriller against Wiegand, with only one mistake, again outplaying the double blanking.
https://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=43566#19#
Double blanked again against Sjoholm, I lose this heartbreaker when I had an easy win. I saw EANED, then CREEDAL. I remembered my game with Harshan - just take the 40 points. But these situations are very different and I was compensating for the wrong thing, another horrendous pre endgame play, another classic Eldar - failing to block the obvious bingo line. I see LEANED a second after I play the clock and sink through the floor to the bottom floor of the titanic when Alec slaps down GIDDIEST. I had feebly reasoned at least there was an I in the bag for me to draw and win with (he did in fact draw said I). Time to go home, learn some words, and never play Hastybot again. Ever.
https://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=43567#1#
I had given up all hope here when Etim opens with another Blank bingo. My tilt reaches an all time high here
https://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=43567#9#
Deciding to play POINTE in a hopeless game to "open the board". Something a very old version of me would have done. I'm so dead here though, I only lose one percent, as opposed to playing the very obvious QAT.
https://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=43567#20#
To my astonishment, after a couple difficult plays, Etim slaps down the ultimate 8th game of the day move with URVAS. I knew this emptied. I place down REHOMING defeatedly, and he stares at it for 4 minutes before not bothering to challenge and conceding (restart my clock, he told me, as if he needed to run down the clock to fully process what just happened here). I'm utterly miserable. Trevor unhelpfully explains that I can aim for a finish in the top 10. Meanwhile I've been enjoying some good dinners at night at least, Momofoku was exceptional as always, and I've never been to benihana, but a meal there tonight with Andrew and Trevor where I stuff myself with food helps lift the mood a bit - my parents used to take me to teppanyaki as a kid and I legitimately don't think I've ever been since I was a child. I'm missing my two vegas favorites though - Robuchon, which was booked out, and Naked fish, the classic late night poker player joint from back in the day. I once dragged Jesse Day there on an extremely late night and have been dreaming of it and the WSOP roll ever since.
Day 4 just brings more pain, against Andrew fisher I get double blanked AGAIN.
https://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=43568#19#
It's all well played but very very hard going, until here, where I have an inexplicable blind spot and spend a lot of time obsessing about how im going to lose to HAZER and HAZED. I never think of HAZEL. Instead, I play the paltry LIT, somehow pray andrew misses and win.
Wellington smashes me but I smash Thacha, and win a tight game against Dean. Lunch at bagelmania - it dawned on me. I can win 3 games and get in. Wellington and Will, who had led the entire tournament, had magically started losing badly and I crept into 4th place. First game, a tight win against Harshan, streamed.Then against Wiegand, I don't know what happens but I miss COZENER for over 100 points, after looking for minutes, then draw DOGGIEST onto my rack and simply CANNOT place it as a word anywhere in my memory. DOGGIER particularly sounds phoney. But wouldn't I know it if its invalid as a phoney? I cant decide and make some terrible inferior play, a 40 point punt. As soon as I hit the clock I know its valid, obviously. Somehow I win anyway. I draw the worst tiles ever against Lewis, and finally I have to play off for the last spot against Wellington. Mercifully I get the start - and I go on to thrash him while he seems to be badly on tilt.
Yep, I made the final somehow, and it's all thanks to Bagelmania, the delicious jewish deli nearby, and aided by a few donuts from the local donut hole, pinkbox. Dinner is at Best Friend, which turned out to be totally delicious, but probably ran a bit too late and I should have just eaten in the hotel. I ended up staying up until 2 simming my games - having a great time with Castellano and Sjoholm in the late night area was good action - I was very fortunate they were leaving the playing room open late. I slept a full 7 hours so was fully charged for the final when it arose - a repeat final against Harshan, who also appeared amid Willingtons collapse.
The first game is an immediate disaster. I have a note about FURRINER/FARRIER but can't remember what the note is. FARRINER* is a million points so I have to try it. I lose badly - why oh why did I decide to study the 9s. The second game is a blowout - the commentators wonder why I spend so long on PAVILION - I thought it was spelled with 2 Ls and play it though I know I should really play PAVONIAN if I was being an adult. Next Harshan wins a good one - everyone focuses on my great R-TAN through-setup, but the game is lost when I play the idiotic DOZIER, getting caught up by the score and playing too fast and ultimately losing a game where I had good chances. Next I win a blowout while Harshan misses BORACHIO fortunately.
2-2 and the most thrilling part is there are 700 viewers - peaking at an incredible 900. Will Anderson is carrying the entire scrabble world on his back. Game 5 I get outdrawn badly, and the same in G6. I gave up all hope after Harshan plays off another blank for TENIOID, but found an inspired play of CUT to win a game that almost anyone else would have lost. I win a lot of games like this in general but I've never won one with the stakes so high. After all that it comes down to one game, I'm on rage tilt after Harshan opens with ANOTHER blank bingo for ECHOIER, and play the atrocious REWATER quickly, missing WAZ for the 100th time. In an amazing turn of events, Harshan blurts out "thats phoney" midgame, looking at REWATER. I stop the clock and say "what?". He says, oh, never mind, I shouldn't have said that. Showing the power of the mind, I also decide that REWATER is indeed phoney (what were we thinking of?), but I'm two bingos down and drawing V after V after V and there is just no light in sight. I mistakenly play FYCE, reasoning that my alternative the better VEG never bingos, but it's a terrible play. I'm saved by some good tiles finally, INES to my VG?, and play 100 point bingo to breathe life into things. The bingo is also the most paranoid and wrongest bingo, but I play it like its the best move I ever made.
I play a guy called Jerome at table tennis pretty often. He's pretty annoying, and I mostly beat him, but until I did a bunch of training we routinely went to epic 5 setter tiebreaks. After beating me 13-11 and being predictably annoying about it, he says "you know, in games like this, it's not really about who's the better player, it's all in your head". Thanks Jerome. But Jerome may have been right - Harshan played a phoney 3 when the pressure of the game and fatigue was at its highest. Far be it from me to speak to why X player makes X mistake, because no one really knows the magic ingredients that go towards the ultimate choke - if you made that same mistake on game 1 day 1 no one would bat an eye so its pretty results oriented to think that it could be pressure or fatigue related - humans love to draw patterns where there are none. The truth is no one really knows and no one ever really will know and by the time you've gone through the self flagellation of figuring out how to never write a plus instead of a minus again, you've lost even stupider games in ten differenter stupider ways - just long enough has passed for you to start making the first mistake all over again once the unending bitterness has embedded itself deep below your subconscious.
It was greatly fortunate that there were 8 tiles in the bag after DAUNTERS. I was of course diligent enough to check this, but if there were 7 in the bag I cant bear the thought of having to play URD or whatever it is I'm supposed to play and taking it to an endgame with everything on the line. Instead the game ends with DAUNTERS (though there are a few sequences where he wins, mostly involving him playing MILREIS underneath and getting a lucky draw to follow up).
I scribbled out my speech which I already had the skeleton of for the Nationals - this was truly unexpected and I hadn't taken the time to polish it. I managed to sneak in a good DBZ reference, but I did want to expand - the episode I had in mind was where Nappa just goes to town and starts wrecking shit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6VBMdLArJ8&ab_channel=P
Well, ok, maybe the military didn't get exploded in Scrabble Australia, but safe to say without two elite players moving to Melbourne, I would never have became this good. This is the case for all sports and games - that is why poker houses and clans exist - I had almost given up on poker in 2010 or whatever before I moved in with Sean and we symbiosis-ed our way to the top of the food chain. It's a real thrill to capitalize on that luck twenty years later and cash in another Worlds title hopefully with more to come (this will largely depend if new players come through and push me out or not, because I don't expect to improve much from here), and I'm definitely very lucky that I also have the resources to attend every WSC (though I skipped perth and Kenya), because attending more means your chances of winning them are much higher than your average person. You can see on WESPA I have one of the higher "games played " stats.
We celebrated in style - it was a bit awkward as Naked Fish could only fit the 8 of us and we overinvited, however I made the executive decision that I needed to go there (I'd been dreaming of the WSOP roll for months now). To my surprise, this restaurant exceeded all memories, the food was actually fantastic high level sushi (without being ritzy), and exceptionally cheap for the quality of fish and rolls that were coming out, which in my opinion would rival some of the high end sushi places which would be charging double. I massively over-ordered and it was an extremely satisfying meal; everyone else seemed really happy with the quality of the food too. I ended up chatting with Andrew and Trevor and others in the bar until 3 or 4am before we finally called it. I had originally designed to stay in Vegas a few more days but unfortunately I had to fly home the next day to visit my family.
On the last day I did visit Caesars Palace (somehow never been!) which was astonishing - probably the nicest casino. We had intended to hang out in the buffet til my flight, but to my disappointment they kick you out after 90 minutes! What kind of buffet has a time limit! Does that sound like a man who had all he could eat? In any event, I was massively overfull from the night before and when I came I wasn't even hungry so I couldn't properly enjoy how impressive the buffet was (though the dessert cart sucked). I slept the whole way home and am still jetlagged. Well, now at least the "pressure is off", and since I've taken the lead in the 2nd best player race, I feel no impetus whatsoever to study. I guess you need to be pushed to want to try - I will continue to study the nines until I finish and then reevaluate when that's done in a few years. Whew - that was a long one. I hope anyone who read this far enjoyed it - peace out guys and see you in two weeks.