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Antonin Michel is a French Language Scrabble player who has also competed in English. He has won the French National Championship four times, the World Championship twice and finished 95th in the 1999 English World Championship.
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Antonin Michel is a French Language Scrabble player who has also competed in English. He has won the French National Championship four times, the World Championship twice and finished 95th in the 1999 English World Championship.
Antonin shocked the Scrabble World in 1987 when he won the Junior World Championship - aged just nine years old. The upper age limit was 15. His next major success was winning the French National title in 1998, and shocked the Scrabble community again by competing in the English World Championship the next year - although he finished a disappointing 8 wins out of 24, -951 points, 95th place out of 98 competitors.
He would win the French title three more times, 2003-05 but would only finish tenth in 2006 despite only missing one top.
He became World Champion for the first time in 2005, with arguably the most dominating performance in the championships' history. He dropped just 4 points over 7 games, a championship record. He also won the blitz event, the pairs event, and the défi mondial (a sort of play-off game). No other player has ever won these four events together in the same championship. He finished second in 2006 but won the World Championship in 2007 having lost only 9 points over 7 games. He became the 7th player in 36 years to win the championship more than once.
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Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen is a Norwegian chess grandmaster who is the reigning five-time World Chess Champion. He is also a three-time World Rapid Chess Champion and five-time World Blitz Chess Champion. He has held the No. 1 position in the FIDE world chess rankings since 1 July 2011, and trails only Garry Kasparov in time spent as the highest rated player in the world. His peak rating of 2882 is the highest in history. He also holds the record for the longest unbeaten streak at the elite level in classical chess.
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The British Quiz Championship (BQC), also termed the British Quizzing Championship, is a quiz competition in the United Kingdom. The current competition has been organised since 2004 by Chris Jones' and IQA-CEO Jane Allen's company Quizzing Ltd. Early in 2011 the re-launch of the quizzing.co.uk website saw it rebranded as the home of the British Quiz Association.
Tony Rickardsson is a Swedish former professional motorcycle speedway rider. He competed in the Speedway World Championships from 1989 to 2006. Rickardsson is notable for winning six Speedway World Championship titles in 15 attempts. He most recently rode for Masarna from Avesta in the Swedish Elitserien league, Unia Tarnów in the Polish Ekstraliga and for the Ipswich Witches, Poole Pirates, King's Lynn Stars, Arena-Essex Hammers and Oxford Cheetahs in the British Elite League. In 2011, Rickardsson was named an FIM Legend for his motorcycling achievements.
Levon Grigori Aronian is an Armenian chess grandmaster, who currently plays for the United States Chess Federation. A chess prodigy, he earned the title of grandmaster in 2000, at age 17. Aronian held the No. 2 position in the March 2014 FIDE world chess rankings with a rating of 2830, becoming the fourth-highest rated player in history.
The World Scrabble Championship (WSC) is the most-prestigious title in competitive English-language Scrabble. It was held in every odd year from 1991 to 2013. From the 2013 edition, it became an annual event. It has been an open event since 2014. Although the official brand name and organizations of the event have changed over the years, many Scrabble enthusiasts from more than 30 countries compete to become World Scrabble Champion.
The Scrabble Players Championship is the largest Scrabble competition in North America. The event is currently held every year, and from 2004 through 2006 the finals were aired on ESPN and ESPN2. The 2019 event was held in Reno from July 20–24, 2019, with Alec Sjöholm emerging as champion.
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, often referred to by his initials, MVL, is a French chess grandmaster who is the reigning World Blitz Chess Champion. With a peak rating of 2819, Vachier-Lagrave is the seventh-highest rated player in history.
Hou Yifan is a Chinese chess grandmaster, four-time Women's World Chess Champion and the second highest rated female player of all time. Once a chess prodigy, she was the youngest female player ever to qualify for the title of grandmaster and the youngest ever to win the Women's World Chess Championship.
Francophone Scrabble, or French-language Scrabble, is played by many thousands of amateurs throughout the world and the Fédération internationale de Scrabble francophone has more than 20,000 members. Just as in English, points are scored by playing valid words from the lettered tiles. In French there are 102 tiles - 100 lettered tiles and two blanks known as jokers. The official word list for Francophone Scrabble is L'Officiel du jeu Scrabble.
Herve Bohbot is a French Scrabble player who competes in both French and English language Scrabble competitions. He is also an administrator on the online Scrabble site Internet Scrabble Club, the president of the French matchplay Scrabble committee and an official on the French-speaking International Scrabble Federation.
The first World Youth Scrabble Championships were held in Wollongong, Australia 2006. Competitors from Australia, Bahrain, Canada, England, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Kuwait, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, United Arab Emirates and United States have competed in the annual tournament so far. WYSC is open to anyone under the age of 18 on 1 January of the year of each tournament. The tournament used to be held at the start of December but was brought forward to August for 2014. So far the WYSC tournament has been held in Malaysia five times, Australia twice, Dubai twice and the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and the United Kingdom once each.
Duplicate Scrabble is a variant of the board game Scrabble where all the players are faced with the same board and letters at the same time and must play the highest scoring word they can find. Although duplicate is rarely played at competition level in English, it is the most popular form of the game in French and is also played in other languages, such as Romanian and Dutch. The largest French Scrabble festivals can attract over 2000 people and some individual tournaments can count over 1000 participants per game. Although not popular for competitions in English, the computer game Scrabble 2005 contains a duplicate version allowing up to 16 players to play on the same board at once. It was also used on the UK TV game show TV Scrabble as one of the rounds.
Nigel Richards is a New Zealand–Malaysian Scrabble player who is widely regarded as the greatest tournament-Scrabble player of all time. Born and raised in New Zealand, Richards became World Champion in 2007, and repeated the feat in 2011, 2013, 2018, and 2019, and remains the only person to have won the title more than once. He also won the third World English-Language Scrabble Players’ Association Championship (WESPAC) in 2019.
Michel Duguet is a French Scrabble player who won the French World Scrabble Championships five times during the 1980s. His record of five world titles has never been broken but has been equaled by Christian Pierre during the 1990s. Despite both players being five-time world champions, it was Duguet that was awarded the prize of 'player of the century' at the World Championship in Paris in 2000.
Fabien Lefèvre is a French slalom canoeist who has competed at the international level since 1998]. As a permanent resident of the United States, he has competed for his country of residence since 2013. He represented France until 2011. He won two medals at the Summer Olympics in the K1 event with a silver in 2008 and a bronze in 2004. He has a son called Noe Lefèvre.
The French World Scrabble Championships is an annual Scrabble tournament that takes place in a different French-speaking country every year. Created in 1972 by Hippolyte Wouters, it was the first of the three World Scrabble Championships to be created, with the English version being created in 1991 and the Spanish version being created in 1997.
The UK National Scrabble Championship (NSC) is a British national Scrabble tournament that has been held annually since its inception in 1971. It was formerly organised by Mattel, the copyright owners of Scrabble in the UK, and has been organised by the Association of British Scrabble Players (ABSP) since 2014. It is one of five major tournaments in the UK, the other four being the UK Open, the British Isles Elimination Scrabble Tournament (BEST), the British Matchplay Scrabble Championship (BMSC) and the UK Masters. The current UK champion is Brett Smitheram.
The Belgian Scrabble Federation (BSF) is an association for Belgian Scrabble players. The federation has approximately 1,000 members in 60 clubs, and was the first federation for Francophone Scrabble players, founded in 1972, before the unified French Scrabble Federation and the International Francophone Scrabble Federation. As of 2012, the president is Éric Leurquin.
