CNSC 2011 Commentary: Round 1

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Go to: Before the Tournament, Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Round 4, Round 5, Round 6, Round 7, Round 8, Round 9, Round 10, Round 11, Round 12, Round 13, Round 14, Round 15, Round 16, Round 17, Round 18, Award Ceremony, Final Round 1, Final Round 2, Final Round 3.

Oh no they didn't. Oh yes they did. The Canadians at the Canadian National SCRABBLE Championships just sang "Oh Canada" to start off the event.

Roger Cullman says, "George MacAulay (Saskatoon SK) didn't bring his equipment and he asked me if I had equipment to lend, so I lent him my rack and clock. They had no tilebag, so decided to use the clock timer bag as one." After he'd told me this, I admitted the truth: Hasbro had given us a box of tilebags! So, Roger obtained one and ran it over to them. Much better!

Chris Lipe, American, resident of Rome, NY, player in today's Early Bird, is here to annotate or to do whatever we need. Currently he's been drafted to do colour commentary support. His first colour is this: "I've played with 48 of the 52 players in this event." Experts, they can't help it :).

(John: I really need to hire people who know how to spell the word "colour" properly, I'm tired of doing global search and replaces.)

Before round 1 started, John Chew went over some of the event prizes, the event rules, and we had a chance to thank the players, Hasbro Canada, and the event workers. After the song, which Robin Pollock Daniel (Toronto ON) started us off on (she sang in both French and English, intermingled, saying she might have learned this by watching a few Canadian hockey games). It was powerful, moving, and brought a tear to my eye!

Of the many players of note in this room, three are former World SCRABBLE Champions: Joel Wapnick (Montreal QC), Adam Logan (Ottawa ON), and David Boys (Dorval QC). One is half of the reigning National School SCRABBLE Championship team: Jackson Smylie (Toronto ON). And two of these four champions are at table 1 this round. Lucky Jackson got Adam. They are playing beside the CNSC cup.

We've got many onlookers here tonight: Vivienne Muhling, Roger Cullman, and Sharmaine Farini. Many others have milled off, prefering to play than watch others play.

Chris Lipe will be giving me colour, which I will try to credit to him. Here is one anecdote: Zev Kaufman (Toronto ON) is set up with his Sabbath-appropriate playing gear — a set of tiles for him to flip down for tracking, and a large book, where the page bookmarked signifies the score. 'How many pages are in the book?' I ask him, wondering if a 650 game might leave him in the lurch. He flips to page 1067 at the end of the book. 'I think it'll be enough,' he says."

While I walk by the board 1 game, Jackson Smylie (Toronto ON) bingos in his game with Adam, playing KAOlInES from the K down the triple. The nearby annotators help him find the blank designation form to properly specify his blanks. Before the game began, Jackson asked Adam to sign his rack "for his sister." Adam complied. And, I find out as I type, that David slew Goliath and the School SCRABBLE champ just beat Adam!

Matthew Tunnicliffe (Ottawa ON) makes one of those moves that hurts. He played off six tiles and when drawing, carefully, one at a time, he drew out 7 tiles. His opponent, Marilyn Wilkins (Richmond BC), turned over three: A, A, and then the blank. Well, no surprise, the maple leaf went back into the bag.

On a Geoffrey Newman (Brampton ON) vs. Will Nediger (London ON) game, I spot the fun play: ERLKING.

REARRIVE* is on the Evan Berofsky (Thornhill ON) vs. Allan Simon (Calgary AB) board.

Joel Wapnick (Montreal QC) s. Jeff Parsons (Logy Bay NL): PLATONIC, FOOTreST on the triple, and AGENDAS.

I attribute it to a misplay that was just missed, but rESRTIKE* is on a game between Glenn Dunlop (Brantford ON) and George MacAulay (Saskatoon SK)]. I also spot POECHORE, PrESUMED, HANDRAIL, and the nice MYCELIA. Chris adds: George opens his game with Glenn with CHORE; Glenn has played the stylish MYCELIA as a nonbingo through the C. George comes right back with rESTRIKE for 86.

Vera Bigall (Toronto ON) vs. Lou Cornelis (Stoney Creek ON): ReLISHES and MUTTERED.

Zev Kaufman (Toronto ON) vs. John Dungey (Mitchell ON): NEUROmA and BEMIRES.

David Boys (Dorval QC) and Shan Abbasi (Mississauga ON) are in the lobby, lost, looking for, we discovered, an adjudiction machine. I pointed out the ones on the table in the middle of the room, the playing room. They smiled and made their way over there. While they are off, I see SCOOTER and InDOORS on their board.

Ron Hoekstra (Surrey BC) vs. Michael Lancashire (Toronto ON): AIRINESS and BOUnTIES on their board.

Gabriel Gauthier-Shalom (Montreal QC) vs. Glenn Mosher (Toronto ON): ECHIDNAE, LANTeRNS, DEsPISED, OUTWARDS, and REJIG.

Jesse Matthews (Kelowna BC) vs. Sam Hollington (St. Catharines ON). Two swell looking guys! I see LATEENS, APERIES, and VeRIEST.

Max Panitch (Toronto ON) defeated Steve Ozorio (Mississauga ON) this round, 554-348. Steve got down DALEtHS and BEELINED through the second E. Max played GESTURER, ENTITLES, and TEaRING.

Andrew Golding (Verdun QC) vs. Jim Nanavati (Burlington ON): FOOTAGES, TERRAIN, and SPANIEL.

Some colour from Chris:

Allen Pengelly (Waterloo ON) opens against Craig Rowland (Mississauga ON) with a humdinger — his opening play is DINGERS.

Eric Tran (Calgary AB) v. Ben Lam (Toronto ON) appears to have opened with NNNNNN on the star. Oh, wait, their set is short a tile — they're missing a V. Not that many SCRABBLE players would complain about missing a V but they find one from another set and start. The tile sets are packaged in groups of 100 by hand, and well sometimes it just happens that one ends up with 99 or 101 in the bag.

Bernard Gotlieb (Montréal QC) v. Ross Brown (Ottawa ON): it's Ross' turn, but Bernie is sitting with PINATAS on his rack and two spots to play it — either above or below the opening play of MOUNT.

Jason Ubeika (Mississauga ON) bingoes with IMaGOES, but not to be outdone, David Jones (Ottawa ON) comes back with a triple-triple ORIENTAL through the I for 131.

Strolling past Bernie's game with Ross, he's played the bingo up top — PINATAS and AMOUNT.

Dielle Saldanha (Richmond BC) has played TOWAWAY as a nonbingo into the AY against Sue Tremblay (Carlsbad Springs ON). What a great way to towaway those Ws!

John Stardom (Ottawa ON) — owner of the best last name in SCRABBLE — has put down REGOSOL against Andy Saunders (Guelph ON).

It's looking pretty densely populated up at board one. Adam Logan (Ottawa ON) is playing the diminuitive School SCRABBLE champion Jackson Smylie (Toronto ON), surrounded by four annotators, two laptops, a photographer, and the giant silver cup, the CNSC trophy, almost as big as Jackson himself, that Adam is kicking off his defense of.

Okay, now Bernie's getting street — his rack spells out FATHERZ.

Jeremy Hildebrand (Ottawa ON) waves me over, and shuffles up his tiles. His rack spells CANADAS. There's no OH on the board to play it after, though — the closest spot he's got is WOCANADAS. Seriously, though, unfortunately there was no place for SANDARAC.

Sherrie has fired me — George actually played RESRTIKE and I didn't even notice. Also on their game — the opening CHORE was extended to POECHORE — sweet!

Close game between Ron Hoekstra (Surrey BC) and Michael Lancashire (Toronto ON) — Ron's in 431-429. Late in the game — six in the bag, down 31 on a closed board, Michael plays off an AE opening a wide open bingo lane keeping AEIST. Unseen is ADEEGILNPRTUZ — doesn't look too good for a bingo, but Ron has PRALINE to go up by 98, and draws GUTZ. Michael bingoes out with LEADIEST off PRALINE, and catches 28 off Ron's rack, but it falls just short. A play like AE in that position is a Hail Mary pass, and it's often hard to tell with six in the bag what the correct probability of winning is with a play like that — trying for a bingo — vs trying to catch up without a bingo. In this case, it looked like a good attempt by Michael — the lane he opened was hard to block while scoring and without opening the triple. If Ron doesn't have a bingo, Michael is incredibly likely to pull a bingo to AEIST. As it were, it looks like he got unlucky with the tiles Ron had at the time.

Matthew Tunnicliffe (Ottawa ON) prevailed over Marilyn Wilkins (Richmond BC) by drawing all three blanks in their game. Yes, Matthew lost one of the blanks on an overdraw, but drew it back again. One was in ABLEGATE with a blank L, and one played in the endgame with JUD?S (blank as an O, tho it could be an A).

Looks like John Stardom got the best of Andy Saunders this round. Andy played ATONAL late keeping ET with plenty of vowels in the back. He "drew Old MacDonald" as he put it, and floundered with a rack of ET plus EIEIO. John's win, 433-372.

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