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Recapping this weekend's Saint Louis Open

Finally, at long last, the CoCo arrived this weekend in Saint Louis. Sure took us long enough!

Way back in the very beginning, the STL tournament was supposed to be one of the original CoCo events. When we first founded the organization back in late 2019, we started with just 6 tournaments on the calendar, and this was one of them. It was penciled into the calendar for June 27, 2020.

You can probably guess what happened next - there was that whole pandemic thing. We scratched our 2020 tournament calendar, gradually opened things up in late 2021, and then, once and for all, got to converge upon the Gateway to the West this weekend. Good things come to those who wait, I suppose. When I asked Chris Lipe, our tourney organizer, how fast he needed the money to reimburse his venue expenses, he replied, "It's not urgent. I've had the deposit down for like, 30 months, so what's a couple more?"

Anyway, 11 players finally met up in Saint Louis this past Saturday and Sunday to duke it out over 14 games of Scrabble. We convened at The Wizard's Wagon, a game shop located in the hip Delmar Loop area, which featured a spacious playing area as well as a fantastic selection of board games and comic books and whatnot. The venue was great, and we all quickly made ourselves comfortable.

(Thanks to Melissa Routzahn, by the way, who took awesome photos throughout the weekend, including the one you see above.)

As for the Scrabble, here's another thing that finally happened at long last: I got to win a tournament. This was my 10th time entering a CoCo event over the last couple of years, because I'm an addict like that - and while I've had a couple of second- and third-place finishes at various tournaments before this, I hadn't yet broken through and won one. It was nice to get that monkey off my back, so to speak.

Here's how the weekend went down...

  • The story of the weekend at the beginning was the dominance of Wolfram Poh, who came in as one of the bottom seeds but notched some big wins at the start, including 547-373 over David Whitley and 558-405 over Rob Robinsky. He was in first place at the first lunch break, with a dazzling record of 4-0, +463; a bunch of us were nipping at his heels with 3 wins, though, including Jason Keller, David, Brian Bowman, and myself.

  • I was able to take Wolfram down a peg in the first game after lunch, getting down a late bingo of PALSTAVE for 73 to seal the win. The afternoon games were pretty competitive all around, and all of us took at least a couple of losses in the 5-game session after lunch. At the end of day 1, Wolfram was still in the lead at 7-2, and I was at the front (by spread) of a pack of 6-3 players: Rob, Brian, Jason, David. It was anyone's tournament going into the second day.

  • The race only got tighter from there. Day 2 began with a Wolfram loss and a bunch of the 6-3 players winning. We had a 5-way tie for first place.

  • Eventually Brian began to pull away. He beat Becky Dyer 462-384 in the 11th round, then Rob 542-372 in the 12th. At the final break, with two rounds to go, he was 9-3, a game up on the field, with Rob and me a game back. Brian was in the driver's seat to win the tournament, as one of Rob or myself would need to win out to steal the title away.

  • I somehow managed to pull that off. I had a difficult game with Rob in round 13, nip and tuck the whole way, but I was fortunate to pull the crucial X and J for some late-game scoring punch, helping me survive for a 467-442 victory. Then, in the decider against Brian, I drew everything I needed. Bingos of DANDLER for 75 and NOSEGAYS for 89, followed by a positively silly qUIETU(D)e with both blanks, gave me the tournament by a 490-325 final.

This was a competitive event all the way, and it was a joy to compete against so many strong players. Congrats to Rob for taking home second place, Brian for third, and Becky for winning the class prize with her solid 8-6 record.

There were plenty of highlights this weekend besides just the wins and losses. For one thing, I want to give a shout out to Becky - she had the wonderful idea to do a word prize at this tournament for charity. She's a donor to the American Lung Association's LUNG FORCE, which is an organization working to defeat lung cancer, and she had a contest in Saint Louis to see who could play the best bingo using five or more letters in LUNG FORCE. I got stupidly lucky and drew COINFER for 105 points on my second turn of the tournament; as a result, Becky will donate $1,050 to charity, including some to LUNG FORCE and some to the CoCo as well. Thanks, Becky!

And now for a little comedy: Probably the funniest single turn of the tournament was when Rob drew the rack AEHIPST to go first in one of his games. He commented as he made his play - HIP for 16 - that he wished he'd been going second, as there were so many eights he could play through a floating tile on the board. Though maybe, he admitted, there was also a seven-letter bingo in that rack that he was missing. When he looked up the rack after the game and realized his mistake, he went... well, you can guess how he went.

And as always, it's important to note that many of the best moments at Scrabble tournaments have nothing to do with Scrabble. It was amazing getting to visit Blueberry Hill, a historic Saint Louis music club where Chuck Berry performed hundreds of concerts dating back to the mid-1990s, and to enjoy ribs and brisket at Salt + Smoke, one of the finest purveyors of Saint Louis-style barbecue you'll ever come across. Many good times with good friends were had.

Thanks to everyone who made the trip to St. Louis - this was a great little weekend tournament, and a great little precursor to the big tournament that's coming up in the Midwest in just a couple weeks' time.

Word Cup is right around the corner, and our whole CoCo team couldn't be more excited. Pack your bags and get ready, because the biggest and best CSW tournament in North America is on deck. Let's get after it.

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