2005 WSC

2005 World SCRABBLE® Championship: Team U.S.A.

The NSA congratulates the following players who have earned the right to represent the United States at the 2005 World SCRABBLE® Championship:

• Joel Sherman, Matt Graham, Jim Kramer, Jerry Lerman, David Wiegand and Sammy Okosagah qualified on the basis of their ratings.
• Steve Polatnick, Tim Adamson and John O'Laughlin qualified through the qualifying tournament.
• Mark Kenas qualifies as the fourth-place finisher at the qualifying tournament because David Gibson declined his rating-based invitation.
• Joey Mallick, Randy Hersom, Jim Geary, Peter Armstrong and Lisa Odom qualified because respectively Brian Cappelletto, Joe Edley, Trey Wright, Chris Cree and Nathan Benedict declined their rating-based invitations.
• In the event that any of the above are unable to compete, the next two alternate players are Jere Mead and John Luebkemann.

As published in SCRABBLE^® News, Issue 185, February 2004 and emended to extend the QP by three days on January 13, 2005:

While there is no official news on the next World SCRABBLE^® Championship (WSC), the National SCRABBLE^® Association (NSA) has formulated a new qualification policy if it is held in the next two years.

1. Fifteen players will be eligible for the next WSC. Of these 15, the 12 American players who earn the Highest Peak Ratings during the Qualifying Period (QP) of January 1, 2004 through May 3, 2005 will be invited. A player's Peak Rating (PR) is his/her highest rating earned from NSA Open Rated tournaments during the QP after the first 60 tournament games have been played. In other words, each player must first play 60 tournament games during the QP before a legitimate PR is earned.

2. If a PR includes bonus points earned from the second half of a tourney 17-32 rds. long (or from the final third of a tourney 33-48 rds. long), then those specific bonus points will be subtracted from the player's final rating that tourney before reaching the PR for that tourney only. Subsequent tourneys will again include the bonus points from the previous events.

3. [Added 2005-04-24] In the event of a tie for the last PR-based place, such ties will be broken based on regular tournament ratings as of May 3rd, 2005.

4. The remaining players will be chosen from a WSC Qualifying Tournament (WSCQT), which in all likelihood will be held some time in June 2005. The top 3 players of the WSCQT will be invited to the next WSC and the 4th place finisher will be the American Alternate, should any of our other invitees not participate. If a second invitee decides not to attend, the player with the next highest PR will be invited, and so on down the PR list in the case of additional dropouts.

5. The WSCQT will use the Chambers Official SCRABBLE Words International, the official word source of the WSC.

6. In order to qualify for the WSCQT, players must be current members of the NSA and must have played in at least 3 NSA Open Rated Tournaments, including 50 games, during the QP. However, 20 of those games may have been played at unrated NSA SOWPODS divisions organized at NSA sanctioned Open Rated Tournaments for the benefit of our WSC players as an adjunct to the main event. These SOWPODS events must have a minimum of 4 players to count toward qualifying for the WSCQT.

Current qualification standings are updated monthly, with the publication of each new ratings list.

Qualifying Tournament

Mary Rhoades directed a 17-round qualifying tournament on July 1-3, 2005. Here is what she wrote about the results on CGP:

1. Steve Polatnick 13 +659   $175
2. Tim Adamson 11 +322      $125
3. John O'Laughlin 10 +567  $ 50
4. Mark Kenas 10 +501
5. Bob Lipton 10 +433
6. Amit Chakrabarti 10 +2
7. Sam Kanitmathi 9 +97
8. Geoff Thevenot 8 -254
9. Travis Chaney 7 +67
10. Stu Goldman 5 -427
11. Ben Withers 5 -798
12. Abraham Thomas 4 -1179

High game was John O'Laughlin's 572.
High Word was BIRDCAGE by Geoff Thevenot for 185.

Sam donated a Pocket SamTimer to the 5th place winner, which was Bob Lipton.
I donated a patriotic tilebag made by me for a drawing for the 6th-12th 
place finishers which was won by Ben Withers.

It's always quite an experience working with this group of folks (all 
men, this time), and I always enjoy it.

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