Although Helen Gipson has achieved success in County bridge (winning the Flitch for the last two years) her first love is Scrabble. This October she represented England for the second time in the 7th World Scrabble Championships (WSC) played in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and finished in 11th place, the best ever performance by a woman in the history of the tournament. Needless to say she was very pleased with her performance, although she'd have been even happier if she had won her last game.
Tournament Scrabble is very similar to tournament bridge, in that it comprises lots of people who only discuss the game - at breakfast, lunch, dinner, every break. Scrabblers also talk to each other using bridge parlance - "you hold ..." is how most conversations start!
Games are playing using chess clocks, with each player having 25 minutes for all their moves. The WSC is played with a normal Swiss movement, 8 games per day over three days, with the modification that repeat pairings are allowed on the last day.
Helen finished the first day beating Malaysia's top rated player to finish on 6 wins and lying in equal 4th position - actually she was 13th on points difference which was still negative (despite the 6-2 record!) due to small wins and heavy defeats.
On the second day Helen came back well from losing her first two games to finish on 11 wins, still joint 4th but lying 10th with an aggregate points difference now finally positive although only +38 (for comparison, the fourth place player had a spread of +891).
In the 1999 Championships Helen entered the final day in a similar position, but fell back as a poor run of tiles and perhaps a little tiredness set in. She was determined to do better this time, and gained a good win in the vital first game. Two losses followed but Helen was able to gain some good wins on the run in to finish on 15 wins and joint 8th place, actually 11th place when points difference is taken into account.
At the prize giving Helen was introduced to Her Highness as the "BEST WOMAN SCRABBLE PLAYER IN THE WORLD" and was presented with a cheque for $300 (another indication that Scrabble prize money is similar to bridge!).
Some of the unusual words she played in the tournament were BAILEES, EMICTION, SERINGA, BONANZAS, TZAREVNA, FULGENT, TELERANS, AEGIRINE, BOXINESS, MALTOSE and BLUETTE. If you want to know the meanings of these, don't ask Helen (she really doesn't care!) but most will be in the Chambers dictionary.
Panupol Sujjaykorn (Thailand) claimed victory as the first Asian World Scrabble Champion with fellow Thai teammate, Pakorn Nemitrmansuk, finishing second. Second runner up was Andrew Perry (England) followed by Mark Nyman (England) in 4th place who beat Helen in the final match.
Finally my role at the championships was as part of the directorial team, primarily as a word judge. This did give an excellent view of the tournament, and provided an introduction to some sharp practices from the African players that would have been more typical of David Bird's Witchdoctor - the "throwing the bag away to hide the last tile" trick, and the "challenge me if you dare!" ploy were less well known by the Americans who took the place of Brother Tobias!
Next year, 2004, is the qualifying period for the 8th WSC (scheduled for 2005) - so we won't see much of Helen at the bridge table as she now wants to be the first woman to win the title!
Paul Gipson.(http://members.lycos.co.uk/pooh_corner/)
Last updated: 07/12/2003