ICT Penang Open Scrabble Tournament 2008
Reported by Chuah Sim Swee
The novices category held in the morning had 30 players pitting their skills trying to outdo each other. Yeoh Eiu Jyn emerged the champion, the only one with five wins, followed by Chong Xin Rou and Amery Seow with four games each.
50 players from Australia, Singapore, New Zealand ,Thailand , USA and Malaysia took part in the Open category. . The player who attracted the most attention was Jason Katz-Brown, the youthful creator of ‘Quackle, the most popular Scrabble AI simulation freeware at the moment.
After the pairings had been called, the masters were off to a fine start. At the end of four games, the heavyweights, A. Ganesh, Nigel Richards, Tony Sim, Cheah Siu Hean and Jason Katz-Brown ran true to form and led the pack. They also led the field on the second day and it was clear that it was not the question of whether A.Ganesh would emerge champion which was on everyone's mind but when would someone, anyone, take a game off the big guy! Nigel Richards eventually did in game 17 and was congratulated as if he had won the lottery.
The juggernaut’s prowess and dominance was so great that it was the only game he lost as he marched relentlessly to the finish line on the second day. The rest of the field had to be content to fight it out for the remaining nine spots in the top ten finishes.
Dinner was at the revolving restaurant of the City Bayview Hotel. The rotation of the restaurant took some getting used to but the view over Georgetown and the harbour was magnificent. There was a wide variety of local and foreign delicacies to choose from and a life band to boot. Some of the foreign tourists loved the ‘kambing masak merah’ so much, they couldn’t stop singing its praises and went back repeatedly for helpings. Yours truly stuck to what she loved the most – free flow of ice cream!
There were five games left on the third and last day, all of them with repeats. That meant that Nigel Richards who had 14 wins had to face repeatedly A.Ganesh who had 15 wins. With each loss to the juggernaut, the rest of the chasing pack caught up with him. However, he clung tenaciously to second spot right to the end with the help of his solitary win in game 17. In the meantime Tony Sim, Cheah Siew Hean and Jason Katz Brown kept their stranglehold on third, fourth and fifth positions from game 15 right up to game twenty, playing a game of musical chairs as they switched positions with every round. The final standings after game 20 can be seen below:
1 A Ganesh 19
2849
2 Nigel Richards (NZ) 15 1284
3 Jason Katz Brown (USA) 15 1012
4 Cheah Siu Hean 14 1259
5 Tony Sim (Sin) 13 687
6 Yeo Kien Hung 12.5 896
7 John Lam 12 975
8 Bob Jackman (Aus) 12 450
9 Ramaraj Sundaraj 12 381
10 Ker Jen Ho 11.5 165
11 Khoo Beng Way 11 732
12 Alastair Richards (Aus)11 522
13 Jocelyn Lor 11 462
14 Vannitha Balasingam 11 371
15 Brian Lim Da Qing 11 8
16 Tengku Asri 11 -63
17 John Barker 11 -183
18 Sreepathy Iyer 11 -232
19 Karen Richards (Aus) 10.5 224
20 Michael Tang 10.5 -30
21 Martin Teo 10 249
22 Alex Tan 10 89
23 Dianne Ward (Aus) 10 -4
24 Chang Ching Wei 10 -73
25 Chow Xin Wei 10 -128
26 Martin Waterworth (Aus)10 -254
27 Ng Chee Eng 10 -259
28 Yeoh Sue Jane 10 -435
29 Mohd Salahudin 10 -487
30
Yeap Gim Sai 9.5 -423
31 Tan Jin Chor 9 3
32 Lim Shalyn 9 -3
33 Seshi Ramanathan 9 -21
34 Paulette Yeoh 9 -316
35 Jagan Narayanan 9 -369
36 Jackie Cheah 9 -386
37 Chuah Sim Swee 9 -620
38 Yeoh Eiu Jyn 9 -696
39 Lee Yee Fun 9 -772
40 Olga Visser (Aus) 8.5 -192
41 Chin Hon Yew 8 -168
42 Sunny Wright (Aus) 8 -395
43 Betty Eriksen (NZ) 8 -475
44 Adele Tan 8 -679
45 Zeenath Ariff 7 -568
46 Yeoh Sue Anne 7 -639
47 Shameer Muhammad 7 -967
48 Khwanjai Thammaping 6 -429
49 Amery Seow 4 -1288
50 H'ng Hsieh Zhen 3 -1064
High Game: Nigel Richards 612
High Word: Karen Richards 181 "Seawives"
Yang Berhormat Danny Law Heng Kiang officiated at the closing ceremony. He praised Island college of Technology for making scrabble an integral part of its English teaching program and for supporting the Penang ICT open all these years. He also reiterated that the Penang State Government would continue to support the tournament for as long as it continued to be held.