Revision as of 14:05, 30 November 2010

Tournament SCRABBLE® play in Canada and the United States is administered by NASPA and its Tournament Committee. If you have questions about tournaments that are not answered here, please email the committee.

What is a Tournament?

At a tournament, NASPA members get together to play several rounds of SCRABBLE according to tournament rules under the supervision of a tournament director. The player who wins the most games usually wins a prize, and the results of the event are submitted to NASPA to update everyone’s rating. There are several tournaments each week somewhere in the United States and Canada, and most clubs hold at least one big tournament each year.

Playing in Tournaments

Tournaments are organized by NASPA-sanctioned Directors and listed on our calendar. In order to play in a tournament, you must:

1. be a NASPA member in good standing (US$15 for first-time players)
2. be familiar with the tournament rules
3. contact the director listed in the calendar to register for the event

If it is your first time playing in a tournament, you should make sure your tournament director knows this. Ask the director how you should prepare for your tournament; and do not hesitate to ask the director for help, if at any time during your tournament you aren’t sure what to do.

If you have special needs, our tournament directors will do their best to accommodate you, if they receive enough notice. In particular, almost all tournament venues are accessible to the physically handicapped, and players are entitled to use assistive equipment or sit at the most convenient table to accommodate a handicap.

Score sheets and other player forms are available for download from the Player Resources page.

Finding Tournament Results

If your tournament director is using correctly configured modern tournament software, you will probably know your new tournament rating before you leave at the end of your event. Your tournament director will then submit the results to the NASPA website, where the ratings and tournament results will be updated as soon as the rating officer reviews the results. (This can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours.) Tournament statistics are copied regularly from our website to our partner site cross-tables.com on an hourly basis.

Organizing a Tournament

In order to organize a tournament, you must:

1. be a NASPA member in good standing
2. be certified as a tournament director or tournament coordinator
3. contact the Tournament Committee at naspa-tourney@yahoogroups.com to request that your event be sanctioned and added to the calendar, in advance of the deadlines listed below. The tournament listing form may be used to gather information about your tournament for sanctioning.
4. ensure that a certified tournament director will be present throughout your event.

Kinds of Tournaments

We currently recognize four different kinds of rated tournaments:

• An Open Rated Tournament (ORT) is open to anyone and is fully rated.
• A Local Club Tournament (LCT) is open to anyone but one-third rated.
• A Team Challenge is restricted to members of specific clubs or residents of specific regions, and is fully rated.
• A Championship is restricted to members of a specific club or residents of a specific region, and is fully rated.

The following table (excerpted from the Director's Manual and expanded) describes the different kinds of tournaments in more detail.

Sanctioning Tournaments

The tournament and director running the tournament must satisfy the following conditions for ORT and TCC events:

• Multiday Tournament: No other multiday SCRABBLE game tournaments occurring within two weekends and 200 miles of your proposed tournament. No other one-day tournament on the same day within 200 miles of your proposed tournament (tours/cruises with similar itineraries need 90-day separation).
• One-day Tournament: No other tournament on same day within 200 miles.
• Exception: if the organizers of conflicting tournaments are agreeable, NASPA will sanction both.
  • The term “200 miles” in tournament distance calculations shall mean 200 miles driving distance from venue address to venue address, as measured by Google Maps using the default driving directions. The Tournament Committee may consider appeals for exception in the event that Google Maps is shown to be in error, and may select an alternative mileage calculation tool should Google Maps be deemed unreliable.
• the application is submitted six weeks before the planned event
• the director’s membership expires after the end of the planned event

Local Club Tournaments (LCT), which are 1/3-rated, require advance sanctioning and will be listed in the calendar. LCT's have the same Player Participation fee as Open Rated Tournaments.

As of Jan 2010, NASPA is sanctioning and rating tournaments using the SOWPODS word list (now more commonly known as the Collins SCRABBLE Words, or CSW). If you would like your tournament to use CSW, please specify that when requesting sanctioning.

Processing Memberships or Renewals

Directors: As players want to register for your tournament, you will need to check the Membership Database to be sure their NASPA membership is current.

All tournament players, whether a newbie or someone with a rating who hasn't joined NASPA yet, must join NASPA in order to play in your tournament. Here are some scenarios that might apply to your tournament:

1. You are gathering entries for your tournament and you look on cross-tables to see if they are members. Cross-tables says "check with NASPA". You check on the NASPA member database, accessible by clicking on "Member Search" on the sidebar. If they have a member number in the NASPA database, they are good to go. Occasionally a membership does not show up on Cross-tables right away but will already be listed on the NASPA database.

2. You are gathering entries for your tournament and you agree to let someone join NASPA at the door. If you know ahead of time that one or more people are going to do this, go to Member Services and click on the “Add New Member” button in the Director section. Fill out all the membership information and then choose “Payment with your next tournament’ participation fee” payment method. Your players’ memberships will be activated right away, and a charge will be placed on your account with NASPA, so that it will be totalled with your participation fee after your tournament.

3. You are checking in players the day of the tournament and you have a walk-in who is not a member.

Check to make sure that all of your players are listed on the NASPA site as members. Rating data will not be accepted if any players are not members. Ask nonmembers to fill out printed membership forms, then activate their memberships as in case 2 above. If you have players who say they have recently mailed membership checks to NASPA, do not pay that portion of the amount shown owing; it will be removed from your director account when their checks clear. If their checks do not clear, you will be liable for their membership fees and will not be able to run a tournament until we receive full payment.

By “director account” that simply means there will be a list of directors and what they owe for the new members and your “account balance” will go away once you have paid. This does not go on your credit card when you submit your results.

You also have the option of authorizing the membership monies to be charged to your credit card, which you might do to help a club member join NASPA when you do not have an upcoming tournament.

4. A tournament entrant says he has joined NASPA. Ask what his membership number is. If it starts with AA followed by 6 digits, you're fairly sure he joined NASPA and not the NSA. Occasionally people join the NSA thinking that it will entitle them to play in NASPA-rated tournaments.

Web Coverage

Major events, such as national championships, are webcast on this website, and web coverage is archived in perpetuity.

Web coverage typically consists of standings updates continuously throughout an event, commentary about the event’s highlights, photos and interactive games where you can follow along at the top board in real time.

Sponsorship Policy

Tournament sponsorship is permitted with the prior approval of the Tournament Committee. In pursuing sponsors, please remember that we are licensed users of a registered trademark for a board game which is primarily marketed to families, and that sponsors should be appropriate for that demographic.