Whitefield hosts Karnataka State Scrabble Association Indian Open; Nigel Richards dominates Division A

The tournament featured around 170 participants across all four divisions, with forty playing in the top A division, consisting of players above the WESPA skill rating of 1200.

Across four divisions labeled A, B, C, and D, participants came from all walks of Scrabble expertise.

From January 24 to 28, Whitefield hosted the Karnataka State Scrabble Association Indian Open, India’s largest international Scrabble tournament. The event took place at the offices of Mu Sigma, the sponsors of the tournament. Across four divisions labeled A, B, C, and D, participants came from all walks of Scrabble expertise. These ranged from players such as Nigel Richards, the many-time World Champion regarded as the best Scrabble player in the world, to Lennie and Rex D’Souza, who were among the first pioneers of competitive Scrabble in Bengaluru, and newcomers.

The tournament featured around 170 participants across all four divisions, with forty playing in the top A division, consisting of players above the WESPA skill rating of 1200. International participants represented eleven nations, including Denmark and the UAE. The more skilled players in the A and B divisions played across all four days of the event, engaging in a total of 33 games each, while the latter two divisions played on the last two days of the tournament. The prize pool of Rs 11 lakh was distributed among all four divisions.

According to KKSA President Suchindra Potnis, “Most international players tend to be self-funded…. among the newer players here we have a lot of engineers. You also have a lot of scientists and doctors playing. High level scrabble players tend to be good chess and poker players as well, as they have an almost photographic memory.”

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Another notable participant at the event was Akshay Bhandarkar, the winner of the Scrabble World Championship in 2017. Bhandarkar, who works in the banking sector in Dubai, started playing Scrabble at the age of 9, with his mother Mangala being the founder of the Bahrain Scrabble League in the early 1980s. Bhandarkar said, “I’ve always been fond of reading and participated in a lot of tournaments in Bahrain and the Gulf every year… I’ve also participated in seven or eight World Cups.”

Bhandarkar explained, “There are three major factors in how high level players work – first being word knowledge.. Experts also spend a lot of time analysing strategy, analysing games and creating openings. There is also the mental element, taking each game and day of the tournament at the time… as far as new players are concerned, the average age of players has gone down. During COVID you also had a lot of players playing online, and streaming games on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch.”

At the end of the tournament, the toppers were Nigel Richards in Division A, Shaikh Ahmed in Division B, Sreek Sukumar in Division C, and Abhyuday in Division D.

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