There are a number of websites with information on WSC99:
This is Paul's brief synopsis of the event. Hopefully Hels may comment one day :-)
The format of the tournament was three long days, playing 8 matches a day, resulting in a final between the top two players on the fourth day. The tournament was a SWISS format, meaning that you always played opponents who had the same (or similar) score to you with the proviso that you could not play the same opponent twice in one day.
Hels started really well, winning her first 5 games (one of only three people to do this) and finishing the first day on 6 wins (6/8). The leader at this point was on 7/8.
The second day was a struggle, losing games 1, 3 and 5 and winning games, 2, 4 and 6 - its always seemed that Hels could not quite build momentum - however she won the last two games of the day to finish on 11/16, only one game behind the leader.
At this point it should be pointed out how well Hels had been playing. Staying at the top of this field is no mean achievement and showed that she is capable of playing in this company (not that I had any doubts!).
On the last day, the Tile God completely deserted Helen and she lost the first SEVEN games of the day. The first game was against the New Zealand champion, one of the favourites, and Hel's starting rack was SSSCCWQ (!) - she eventually lost this game by 60 points when she failed to get any blanks or high scoring tiles - quite a creditable result.
Over these first seven games Helen held only 3 blanks (out of 14) and about 10 S's (out of 32), together with less than her fair share of the high scoring tiles (JQXZ). In a normal tournament it may be possible to cope with this, but at the top of the World Championships it is just not possible to overcome this - even so, Hels was able to keep the losses to a minimal level and had a heart breaking run of losing by 10 points, then 8, then 3 and finally 1 point! Hels is fairly sure that she didn't make any (significant) mistakes in these games.
Helen won her final game to finish the tournament 12/24, in 49th place out of 98 i.e. in the top half :-)
Overall Hels played extremely well and enjoyed the experience so much that she is already back in word learning mode so she can qualify for the next championships in 2001.
The final was between Joel Wapnick, a Canadian and Mark Nyman of England, the producer of the Countdown program on Channel 4. Although Mark played significantly better than the Canadian in the best-of-five final, he lost 3-1 as he failed to pick up his share of good tiles - its an unfair game at times.
SCRABBLE® women. Back row (L to R): Helen Gipson (England), Catherine Costello (Ireland), ?, Barbara Berlin (Australia), Odette Rio (Philippines), Joan Rosenthal (Australia), Linda Pray (Oman). Front row (L to R): Lisa Odom, Tournament Director Wilma Vialle, Wilma Warwick (Scotland).
(Can you help identify the others? Please e-mail Hels.)
This page was last updated on October 4, 2005
© 1999-2005 P S Gipson
