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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.
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.
On this website, a tournament as described above is different from a casual tournament.
Tournaments are organized by NASPA-sanctioned Directors and listed on our calendar. In order to play in a tournament, you must:
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.
A director may refuse entry to a player for "misconduct by a player that is not specifically defined in other sections of this code, but is clearly abusive, negative, or detrimental to the success of the club, tournament, NASPA, or organized Scrabble in general." (See Classification 1.g. of the Code of Conduct). If a player is refused entry, the player may appeal that decision by the director, as detailed in the Code of Conduct.
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.
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, and posted to our Twitter feed within minutes of being created.
Complete the Tournament Listing Request form to request sanctioning of your tournament.
In order to have a tournament sanctioned (added to the calendar of upcoming scheduled events), you must:
We currently recognize four different kinds of rated tournaments:
Any of these types of tournaments may also be played using the Collins (SOWPODS) lexicon (see directing SOWPODS tournaments).
The following table (excerpted from the Director’s Manual and updated) describes the different kinds of tournaments in more detail.
(Capped) Open rated tournament (COT or ORT) | Team challenges or championships (TCC) | |
Advance notice/ sanctioning | Multiday tournaments: 4 weeks with no exceptions
One-day tournaments: 10 days with no exceptions | |
Tournament calendar listing | All rated events must be listed on NASPA calendar | |
Rating method | Fully rated except for:
| |
Geographic restrictions | Multiday tournaments: no other multiday event occurring within two weekends and 200 miles of your proposed tournament; no other one-day event on the same day as one of your tournament days. | |
One-day tournaments: no other one-day tournament within 100 miles on the same day as your event (reduced to 50 miles if the other tournament has a cap on attendees of 30 players or less); no other multi-day within 200 miles. Consecutive one-day tournaments with no cap on attendees will be treated as multi-day tournaments for the purpose of this policy. | ||
Exceptions:
| ||
How many games? | At least 3 games. A 3-game tournament will be 1/3-rated. To be fully rated, a tournament must have 4 or more games. | |
How many players? | At least 4 players in each division - at least 2 rated players in each division | |
Membership requirements | All players must be current NASPA members | |
Player restrictions | None permitted | Entry restricted by club/region (for team challenge) or club/region/rating (for championship). |
Participation fee | $.50 per player per game | |
Examples | Scrabble Players Championship, most tournaments | Portland-Seattle Interclub Challenge, Texas State Championship, Can-Am |
In the above, the phrases “50 miles”, “100 miles” and “200 miles” in tournament
distance calculations shall mean 50 miles, 100 miles and 200 miles, respectively, 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.
"Cap on attendees" refers to tournaments that limit the number of players who may enter (e.g., "Entry is restricted to the first 16 players who register"). The actual number of players who enter the tournament is not considered, only restrictions on the number of players who may play, due to the size of the venue or other reasons.
Until 2024-01-01, there was another tournament category: Local Club Tournament (LCT). LCTs were 1/3-rated and required shorter advance notice. Once all 1-day tournaments required only 10 days advance notice, there were no significant distinctions between LCTs and other tournaments.
Note: In general, no exceptions will be made to advance notice guidelines. However, in extraordinary cases, the Executive Committee has the right to grant sanction to a tournament that does not meet the guidelines.
Directors may need to update or correct the listing for an already sanctioned tournament. Directors do not need to submit another Tournament Listing Request but should:
Directors may need to cancel an already sanctioned tournament or division in a particular lexicon. Directors should always:
If the cancellation occurs in the same month as the planned event, the director should also:
If a director applied to have a Collins event to be WESPA-rated, the director must notify the Tournament Committee if the event does not happen. NASPA needs to notify the WESPA Ratings Officer of the cancellation.
With respect to tournaments scheduled on or after July 1, 2018:
To celebrate and promote multi-day tournaments, the Championship Committee has established the Scrabble Players Championship (SPC) Satellite Event program.
An SPC Satellite Event is a multi-day event that consists of 14 rounds or more and has at least 50 players. A complimentary registration to the next Scrabble Players Championship will be provided for every 50 players in the event.
Click here for more information about the program.
Generally, all rated games must be played to a 25-minute per side clock length. However, pursuant to an Advisory Board ruling, effective as of August 12, 2014, Directors may offer sanctioned tournaments that include early bird and/or late bird events with shorter clocks, subject to the following:
The NASPA Youth Scrabble Program is open to all U.S. and Canadian residents who are 18 years of age or younger as of the beginning of the calendar year and have not yet graduated from high school. This program features a separate rating and achievement points ranking system specifically for these youths, with annual recognition of the most enthusiastic and skilled players.
Competition may take place solo or in two-player teams, using the NSWL, NWL, or CSW lexicons.
Directors can list upcoming Youth Scrabble tournaments via the Tournament Listing Request form.
Many directors wish to have unrated Scrabble tournaments and/or newcomer divisions that run concurrently with the main event. The following information is provided to help directors identify whether or not such an event is permitted under NASPA guidelines.
The Tournament Committee will not sanction events that include mirror images of the proposed NASPA-sanctioned event, save only for NASPA sanction. In general, unrated or newcomer events should be of significantly shorter duration than the main event with which they run concurrently. These events are accorded special consideration because they are designed to build interest in competitive play for newcomers, and grow our ranks. After-hours unrated events, tag-team events, etc. are generally fine.
Because of the large number of sanctioned directors, and the creativity with which they approach crafting events to meet the wishes of their constituencies, it is difficult to define every type of event and declare each as either prohibited or allowed. For that reason, directors who plan to offer unrated events are encouraged to contact the Tournament Committee with any questions about the suitability of a particular event.
Directors should always include details about all Scrabble events (whether rated or unrated) to be run in conjunction with any event, when seeking sanction for the event.
If your event is being held in support of a charitable cause, please review our separate page about fundraising tournaments.
Major events, such as NASPA 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.
Tournament sponsorship is permitted with the prior approval of the Tournament Committee.
This page was last edited on 28 December 2023, at 20:27. Privacy policy
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