I arrived at the Hilton Hotel at about 9:50am and met Rafal there. We were asked by a few radio stations (Anty-Radio, Radio WaWa, Polish Radio 3)and two TV stations (Onet.tv and TVP Info) for interviews and we happily obliged chatting about the background of this game.
Then there was the official opening mixed with a press conference like stuff.
We have learnt what has brought this World Championship to such unlikely venue as Poland and got to know that it was all about honouring of good sales of Scrabble sets in Poland (some 700,000 sets sold in the last 5 years). Then there was also some talk about the first ever bilingual Polish-English version of Scrabble.
The most successful Polish Scrabble player Tomasz Zwolinski talked about his playing Scrabble in Polish and there were some questions from the audience about English words allowed in Polish Scrabble ("help") and Polish words allowed in English Scrabble ("zloty", "grosze").
The games started with a delay of about 20 minutes but nobody seemed really to care. Overall the tournament looks to have a rather relaxed atmoshere with players starting their games amidst noise from the outside room where other Scrabblers still discuss their past games over cups of coffee. The media was allowed to walk between tables and nobody seemed to be too distracted by that either.
I'm very happy how the games went today for me. I won 3 games and lost 4. I beat the Scotsman Simon Gillam and Kuwaiti Shakir Reshamwala. But the sweetest win of all was against Alastair Richards - an Australian who virtually destroyed me in the recent Coventry tournament just three days ago. I beat him by 395-361 despite having no blanks and only one S at my disposal. That was something special.
On the downside I could have probably won a close game against the 16-year-old youth champion Jen Ho Ker have I challenged off the phoney *YSLAKE (for 66 points). In the end I lost this game by 65 points.
Challenging off phoneys is what I still need to work on.
What's also very interesting is that my good averages for the first day like 2,43 bingos and 403 points per game were achieved with only 36% of blanks and 50% of S's. This means I've been very lucky today.
I wonder what tomorrow brings.
One thing is for sure - we start at 8:30am and are going to play 9 games.
In the first game I'll play an American John O'Laughlin (the co-inventor of Quackle) and then I'll play a Welshman Gareth Williams.
Keep your fingers crossed please :)
The STATS for WSC day 1:
Then there was the official opening mixed with a press conference like stuff.
We have learnt what has brought this World Championship to such unlikely venue as Poland and got to know that it was all about honouring of good sales of Scrabble sets in Poland (some 700,000 sets sold in the last 5 years). Then there was also some talk about the first ever bilingual Polish-English version of Scrabble.
The most successful Polish Scrabble player Tomasz Zwolinski talked about his playing Scrabble in Polish and there were some questions from the audience about English words allowed in Polish Scrabble ("help") and Polish words allowed in English Scrabble ("zloty", "grosze").
The games started with a delay of about 20 minutes but nobody seemed really to care. Overall the tournament looks to have a rather relaxed atmoshere with players starting their games amidst noise from the outside room where other Scrabblers still discuss their past games over cups of coffee. The media was allowed to walk between tables and nobody seemed to be too distracted by that either.
I'm very happy how the games went today for me. I won 3 games and lost 4. I beat the Scotsman Simon Gillam and Kuwaiti Shakir Reshamwala. But the sweetest win of all was against Alastair Richards - an Australian who virtually destroyed me in the recent Coventry tournament just three days ago. I beat him by 395-361 despite having no blanks and only one S at my disposal. That was something special.
On the downside I could have probably won a close game against the 16-year-old youth champion Jen Ho Ker have I challenged off the phoney *YSLAKE (for 66 points). In the end I lost this game by 65 points.
Challenging off phoneys is what I still need to work on.
What's also very interesting is that my good averages for the first day like 2,43 bingos and 403 points per game were achieved with only 36% of blanks and 50% of S's. This means I've been very lucky today.
I wonder what tomorrow brings.
One thing is for sure - we start at 8:30am and are going to play 9 games.
In the first game I'll play an American John O'Laughlin (the co-inventor of Quackle) and then I'll play a Welshman Gareth Williams.
Keep your fingers crossed please :)
The STATS for WSC day 1:
Games won: 3
Games lost: 4
Spread: -217
Average for: 403.4
Average against: 434.4
Blanks: 5/14 = 36%
S's: 14/28 = 50%
Games won:
2 blanks: 1/1 (100%)
1 blank: 1/3 (33%)
0 blanks: 1/3 (33%)
Bingos for: 17 (2.43 per game)
Bingos against: 13 (1.86 per game)
7 letter bingos: 8 (47%)
8 letter bingos: 9 (53%)
Bingos with blanks: 5 (29%)
Bingos without blanks: 12 (71%)
Highest no of bingos in a game: 4
Lowest no of bingos in a game: 2
High game: 461
Low game: 366
Highest combined score: 980
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