Reflecting on the Word Cup that was

Whew. This was one whirlwind of a Scrabble tournament.

For all of us on the CoCo team, this was our first time directing a major championship event. We've run plenty of Scrabble tournaments before, but one of this magnitude proved to be an entirely different beast. Anytime you're directing 70-plus players competing in 31 games over the course of 5 days, it's going to be a grind - that's true even during normal times. In the age of COVID, doubly so. This was quite a week.

Somehow, though, everything turned out OK. Perhaps even better than OK! We made it through the full 31 games, and in the end, we got to crown two deserving champions, not to mention hand out generous cash prizes to a range of other top finishers and class prize winners. After the event concluded on Wednesday, people were all smiles at the awards ceremony. (At least we think they were. You can never be too sure, with the masks and all.)

Now that we've had a few days to reflect on the Word Cup that was, it's the perfect time to sum everything up.

For starters, complete results and ratings are available on our dedicated Word Cup results page, so do check those out.

And now, let's get into some congratulations, some thank-yous, and some concluding thoughts from this tournament.

CONGRATULATIONS!

Congrats first and foremost to our grand champion, Dave Wiegand. Dave is one of the best players on the planet, so it was not a surprise at all to see him hoist the big trophy at the end, but it was gratifying nonetheless. Dave turned in a stellar performance throughout the tournament, finishing with a record of 23.5 wins and only 7.5 losses, and locking up the championship with two rounds still to play. And he did most of it from the big stage of Table 1, with the pressure of a live streaming audience watching from all over the world.

Congrats to our second- and third-place finishers, Jesse Day and Will Anderson. When the aforementioned Dr. Bing brings his A game, he's as tough a competitor as there is, but Jesse and Will both managed to put up a valiant fight, turning the quest for the title into a three-man race on the final day. In the end, Jesse took second place at 21-10, with Will third at 20-11, and they each took home hard-earned paychecks. Well done, gentlemen.

Congrats to our other cash winners in the top division - David Eldar, Ben Schoenbrun, Rasheed Balogun, and Chris Lipe. This was one of the toughest fields of any Scrabble tournament in the world in 2022, and all of these guys had to outlast some world-class competition just to crack the top 7. They all pulled it off, so kudos to them.

Congrats to our class prize winners. Typically, class prizes at Scrabble tournaments go to intermediate and novice players who are still rising up the ranks. But in this field, where everyone was incredibly strong, we handed out cash to some 1900+ level players who just happened to be seeded below the top group. Brian Bowman, Peter Armstrong, Wolfram Poh, and Moiz Ullah Baig all punched above their weight this week and won prizes.

Congrats to our Division 2 winner, Noel Livermore. Like Dr. Bing in Division 1, Noel was Gibsonized as his division's champion, as he outlasted BJ Premore to lock up the title in round 30. But congrats to BJ as well, as he started out the tournament on a ferocious pace, winning 17 of his first 19 games, and closed out a second-place finish when all was said and done. Noel finished the tournament 23-8; BJ was 21-10.

Congrats to the rest of our D2 winners. Yukiko Loritz, Terry Kang, and Gary Smart rounded out our top five; meanwhile, class prizes went to Rohaina Tanveer, Betty Cornelison, Wajid Iqbal, and Emily Brodeur. Well done, all.

And finally: Congrats to everyone! You all got to be a part of the biggest, most competitive, most diverse CSW tournament in North America - if not the entire world - this year. Everyone in attendance, all 70-plus of you, helped make it happen. We salute you.

THANK YOU!

Thanks to everyone else on the Word Cup directing team for collaborating with us to make this tournament a success. Mike Johnson, Steve Pellinen, Lynda Finn, and Bennett Jacobstein all worked incredibly hard over the last 6+ months to put this event together. They were great teammates throughout, and we obviously couldn't have pulled this off without their support.

Thanks to Becky Dyer, whom we inadvertently (and to our horror) neglected to recognize in the original version of this blog. Becky has contributed hundreds of hours to the CoCo, and Word Cup was no exception. For months, she diligently updated our entrants lists as players registered for the event, following up to collect missing information and ensure that we had emergency contact information on hand. She’s the person who made sure our players had name tags, table signage, personalized scorecards, and much more ready for the event. We thank her husband Wayne as well for all his help in preparing our materials for print. Becky’s contributions are so numerous that there is undoubtedly more we could list here, but suffice it to say that her help was absolutely indispensable.

Thanks to the donors who contributed to this event. Of course, the generous grant money from the Carter Chapman Shreve Family Foundation was a major driving force making this the biggest Word Cup ever, so tremendous gratitude is owed to Jon Shreve and his organization for everything they've done for this tournament and for Scrabble. Additionally, we thank Scopely, Inc. for their sponsorship, as well as their granting us the official Scrabble Twitch channel to broadcast the event. Furthermore, we had a number of player donors, including Winter and Terry Kang, who contributed specifically to the Collins side, helping us put extra funding into both prizes and high-quality streaming.

Thanks to the World English-Language Scrabble Players Association (WESPA), the international governing body that sanctions Scrabble tournaments around the world. From our inception, we at the CoCo have believed strongly in working together with WESPA to connect our community here in the U.S. and Canada with the rest of the Scrabble world. The 2022 Word Cup was a key step in that effort, as it was the first CoCo tournament ever rated by WESPA. We greatly appreciate their recognition of our event.

Thanks to Martin DeMello. Most players probably don't realize this, since all the work he does is so hidden behind the scenes, but Martin is the true MVP of the CoCo. A great deal of the technological innovation we've done to modernize Scrabble tournaments - digital results submissions, real-time stats and standings updates, pairings that directors can spit out with just the click of a button - is possible because of the countless hours of work Martin does. He's been collaborating with us for a long, long time to build out the technology you see at CoCo tournaments today, and he worked especially hard during the last few weeks leading up to this tournament. Thanks to his efforts, the tournament was a smooth and seamless one to direct, so we can't thank him enough.

Thanks to Peter Armstrong, the CoCo's treasurer. Pete put in many hours of work, both before this tournament and during it, budgeting for the event and then paying out our many expenses. This is tedious, often thankless work, but it's crucial to running a tournament effectively, and Pete crushed it. Hilariously, he was in the middle of signing checks to pay out prize money during Wednesday's awards ceremony when we called him up to the stage to receive one of those checks himself, since he won a class prize. Talk about pulling double duty! Great treasurer, great Scrabble player too.

Many, many, many thanks to Allison Anderson, who unwittingly found herself pulled into the role of lead director midway through this tournament. Allison just reached out to us a few weeks ago and asked if she could begin learning to direct Scrabble tournaments; little did she know that, as a result of some COVID complications, she'd end up directing a major championship right away. She did a fantastic job! Allison's poise under pressure was incredible, and she kept the tournament afloat despite all the adversity we faced throughout the week.

Thanks to Jesse Matthews as well. Just as Allison was a stabilizing presence on the directing side as we navigated COVID madness, Jesse did the same on the broadcast side. Through all the testing and quarantining and contingency planning, he stayed calm and collected and helped guide us through everything. We don't know how we could have survived this week without him.

Thanks to the entire streaming squad. Christian Kay led the way - he's an absolute wizard with a Twitch broadcast, and he produced all live streams of 31 rounds like a true pro. Andrew Kay, his brother, gave a highly capable assist. Also, alongside Jesse, we had a truly global team of co-commentators that included Weibin Toh, Jeremy Khoo, Aditya Iyengar, Sam Rosin, and Paul Gallen (along with occasional celebrity cameos from players like David Eldar and Dave Wiegand). Everyone was awesome. You love to see it.

Thanks to everyone who helped us stay as safe as possible from COVID. This includes... well, everyone, as it was a total collective effort to keep everyone masked, tested, and as socially distant as possible when playing 31 games of Scrabble. But there are a few people in particular we want to thank here: For one, we should recognize Deborah Komatsu and Terry Kang for collecting the belongings of a couple of sick players from the playing room to help make them whole. We greatly appreciate Mark Francillon, who delivered fresh groceries for an isolating player, ferried equipment back and forth from the playing room, and volunteered to help with any task that needed doing. And thanks to Lindsay Shin, who made sure our quarantining director didn't starve, plus did countless other small tasks to keep everything going.

What we saw this week was some of the best the Scrabble community has to offer - players taking care of each other selflessly and showing real kindness and care. We could not have made it through the week without you all, and we extend our heartfelt thanks.

And now... we move on. For the two of us in particular, there's no time to rest on our laurels - we've got another tournament coming up in just a few days, and it's taking place in our living room. Come one, come all, to northeast Seattle.

And as for the CoCo at large, we've got all sorts of interesting plans in the works, so do stay tuned. Exciting times lie ahead for Collins Scrabble in North America.