Recapping this weekend's 1-days in Portland, OR and Austin, TX
Another week, another fun-filled weekend of 1-day tournaments for the CoCo.
We've had a successful go of it lately with starting up 1-day events in major cities across North America that have vibrant communities of CSW players. And this past weekend, two such cities - Portland, OR and Austin, TX - played host to two such events.
New director Dave Wiegand ran his first CoCo event in Portland, while Jesse Day returned to run his "Texas CSW 1-Day" event for the third time. Both tournaments took place on Saturday afternoon, and both went off without a hitch.
Let's hear it straight from the two directors…
Here's Dave:
We had a great turnout of 12 players for the first Portland CoCo 1-day tourney. In addition to our local stalwarts, there were 4 out-of-town visitors and 1 Collins newbie. The field was stacked, including 5 former national champions.
We convened at noon Saturday at Oakshire Beer Hall in Northeast Portland, taking over several tables on the patio. The day was fairly hot, but with a definite breeze in the air. Summertime Scrabble at its finest! As the 6-round tourney played out, there were a few moderate surprises - including that the top 4 seeds all lost a couple of early games to drop out of contention.
Going into the final KOTH round, there were 3 players in the running for first place: Mike Johnson, Peter Armstrong, and Evans Clinchy, all at 4-1 with spreads in the 300-400 range. Evans beat Alec Sjöholm by 73 in the final game, which was not enough to overtake Pete, who defeated Mike 524-411 to clinch the championship. Mike hung on for third place. Congrats to Pete, Evans, Mike, and also to Travis Chaney for winning the class prize. There was also one hotly contested side prize - for the high word containing the letters O-A-K in any order. Betty Cornelison dramatically seized that prize with a clutch play of SOAK for 33 in the final round.
After the tourney, many of us moseyed to Conrad Bassett-Bouchard's house for some more fun, games, beer, and pizza. A good time was had by all.
Thanks to everyone for making this a great event. Hopefully there will be many more to come!
...and here's Jesse:
The third ever Texas CSW One-Day was the smoothest yet! Our menagerie of players included two participants from the recent WESPA Championship in Las Vegas and one player who had most recently competed in German. The "best word" theme for this month was room-temperature superconduction, for which the competitors submitted fine candidates after some initial confusion. First-timer Anuj Shetty won with UTOPIAS, and he was rewarded by having his brave lunchtime order of Irish nachos comped, as well as a pair of lab goggles. Anuj revealed that he had actually previously conducted materials science research, making him a truly worthy recipient. Bottom seed Michael Donegan received one of the two class prizes even with a 1-5 record, a testament to the CoCo rating system and its inclusion of spread as a parameter.
The tournament came down to the final rematch between Becky Dyer and me, and ultimately my bingo of MACULOsE for 98+5 was what sealed the deal. I also managed to draw a rack in perfect alphabetical order after a bingo, NOPQRST, which no one present had ever witnessed, except it was later discovered that Joey Mallick had had the same exact rack two weeks prior on his opening move in the final of the national championship.
Speaking of improbable outcomes, James Curley lost his game to me when he inexplicably drew a final rack of EEEEII after a late bingo, where even a single consonant would have likely won. He's depicted rueing his defeat while also witnessing the thrashing of his football team.
We'll do it all again next month! There are also rumblings of a special October event...
(Super special editor's note: While Becky came up short of winning the tournament against Jesse, she did tell us that getting to hold Jesse's baby boy was as big a prize for her, if not bigger, than winning second place. Some things in life are more cherished than even Scrabble.)
That's a wrap on another successful weekend of 1-days! Thanks a million to Dave and Jesse for being two highly capable directors and each running their respective shows smoothly - and congrats to all who performed well over the boards. We'll see you at the next CoCo event - be it in Portland, Austin, or wherever else we might see you across North America.