While several scrabble regulars were not there, in their place sprouted a myriad of new faces, at least to me, and especially in C Division. Apparently there were also some pretty strong players making a comeback after a hiatus and because there were too many 'A caliber' players, several were pushed to B Division. With this excess of C players and A players, B division players found themselves with a lot of new visitors, all hungry for prizes and glory. All in all, the tournament took a round robin format (9 rounds with each player playing every other in their division), with 10 players each in Divisions A, B and C.
From NTU was Xing Long and Sze Mei, Xing Long playing his 2nd tournament and finding himself in Division B for the first time, and Sze Mei playing her first tournament. Albeit being the lowest seeded in B, Xing Long made a respectable score of 5 wins out of 9 to place 6th, and Sze Mei shot from obscurity to achievement, clinching 2nd in Div C. NTU Graduate student Aaron Chong placed 4th in Div A, which was a fierce tempest of the gods, the lowest rating (in that div) at the start of the tournament being 1801.
Aaron, with a rating of 2077 before the tournament, was the highest rated player in the tournament, and in Singapore as well, but took defeats from his strong competitors (what the heck, everyone in A is damn strong right) all around him (in fact, those that placed 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 5th). Just yesterday, at a practice session in Bishan, I was declaring I didn't know of any word with a Y front hook that takes an 's' behind (e.g. YBET, YFERE, YLIKE), but was proved wrong by Aaron with his high word YSHENDS for 103+5.
Xing Long had a brilliant start with 4 straight wins, over his Div C arch-rival Poh Ying Ming (who defeated him twice at the National Scrabble Chps to take first, leaving Xing Long second), Master Jeremy Khoo and even eventual Div B winner NM Goutham. He then survived a tough onslaught, managing to take down SM Adrian Tay in the process as well. Considering Xing Long is estimated (by me) to have a rating somewhere on the high 14s or low 15s, and that more than half of the players in this division were Masters, SMs or NMs (and i thought B Div was supposed to be intermediate), this was an extremely spirited performance by him!
Sze Mei was in the lead after the first 3 rounds, and several GINORMOUS (omg it's a word) wins (+386 and +484) until she took 2 small losses (-25 and -23) to be knocked down to 3rd place. In her crucial game in the fight for 2nd place in the penultimate round, Sze Mei edged past her opponent by just 4 points, leaving her with the same number of wins as her opponent, but 800 points ahead in spread. Sze Mei told me she was scared because her last round opponent had this 'killer aura', but she prevailed in the end to comfortably sail into second place.
Yours truly took a hand in TDing for the first time, as the BOSS LKB couldn't find anyone else and asked me to. It was a good learning experience, both in how a tournament runs, and in learning words, as I could walk freely during the game. Looking at Div B, retrospectively I'm glad I was watching and learning instead of foolishly jumping headlong into the fray to get slaughtered!
