UK Open (Scrabble)

Last updated

The UK OPEN Scrabble Tournament is a British Scrabble tournament that was first organised in 2008. It is one of five major flagship tournaments overseen by the Association of British Scrabble Players (ABSP).

Contents

History

The five-day tournament has been held every year since 2008. The prize pool was £13,000 in 2011 and has become the largest Scrabble tournament in Europe. [1]  Players from as far away as Australia, Nigeria, and the United States have participated.

The event consists of an 18-game warm-up event running over two days followed by a separate 30-game main event running over 3-days. The former awards a smaller pool of prize money than the latter. Players may enter one of both of these, but the official title of UK Open Champion is awarded to the winner of the main event.  The tournament has revolutionized Scrabble in the UK.

Founder and organiser Len Moir said:

 "There are people from around the globe. It’s one week, a great prize fund and 48 games –  Coventry was chosen because it’s the centre of England and it has great air links. With Birmingham Airport nearby" [1]

Since 2012, tournament has been held at the Quality Hotel in Allesley.  The tournament had previously been held at The Aston Court Hotel on Holyhead Road. 10-time UK Open champion Nigel Richards, who represents New Zealand at the UK Open, is the most successful player at the tournament. Only three other players have won the title to date: Helen Gipson in 2009, Paul Allan in 2015 and Ed Martin in 2020.

Previous Winners

Grand prize winners of the UK Open Scrabble Tournament

Tournament DateLocationPrize FundWinner
2020Coventry ?Ed Martin [2]
2019 ? ? Nigel Richards (10) [3]
2018 ? ? Nigel Richards (9) [4]
2017Coventry> £8,000 Nigel Richards (8) [5]
2016Coventry> £8,000 Nigel Richards (7) [6]
2015Coventry> £8,000Paul Allan [7]
2014Coventry> £8,000 Nigel Richards (6) [8]
2013Coventry> £8,000 Nigel Richards (5) [9]
2012Coventry> £8,000 Nigel Richards (4) [10]
2011Coventry> £8,000 Nigel Richards (3) [11]
2010Coventry> £8,000 Nigel Richards (2) [12]
5–9 January 2009Coventry> £8,000 Helen Gipson [13]
7–11 January 2008Coventry> £8,000 Nigel Richards (1) [14]

Related Research Articles

<i>Scrabble</i> Board game with words

Scrabble is a word game in which two to four players score points by placing tiles, each bearing a single letter, onto a game board divided into a 15×15 grid of squares. The tiles must form words that, in crossword fashion, read left to right in rows or downward in columns and are included in a standard dictionary or lexicon.

Australian Open Annual tennis tournament

The Australian Open is a tennis tournament held annually at Melbourne Park in Melbourne, Australia. The tournament is the first of the four Grand Slam tennis events held each year, preceding the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open. The Australian Open starts in the middle of January and continues for two weeks coinciding with the Australia Day holiday. It features men's and women's singles; men's, women's, and mixed doubles; junior's championships; and wheelchair, legends, and exhibition events. Before 1988, it was played on grass courts, but since then three types of hardcourt surfaces have been used: green-coloured Rebound Ace up to 2007, blue Plexicushion from 2008 to 2019, and blue GreenSet since 2020.

Professional Darts Corporation Professional darts organisation

The Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) is a professional darts organisation in the United Kingdom, established in 1992 when a group of leading players split from the British Darts Organisation (BDO) to form what was initially called the World Darts Council (WDC). Sports promoter Eddie Hearn is the PDC chairman.

British Darts Organisation Former governing body of darts in Great Britain

The British Darts Organisation (BDO) was a darts organisation founded on 7 January 1973 by Olly Croft. Made up of 66 member counties, it oversaw professional, semi-professional and amateur darts competitions in Britain. The BDO was a founder member of the World Darts Federation in 1976. It also staged a World Professional Darts Championship from 1978 to 2020.

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.

Irish Poker Open Texas hold em tournament running since 1980

The Irish Poker Open is the longest running No Limit Texas hold 'em poker tournament in Europe and second longest in the world after the World Series of Poker.

UK Open Annual darts tournament

The Cazoo UK Open is a ranking major darts tournament held annually at the Butlins Minehead Resort by the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) in England. Often referred to as the "FA Cup of darts", the UK Open replicates the abolition of seedings, elimination play, and fixtures determined via open draw. One-hundred-and-sixty players compete in the multi-board event over eight-stages before the PDC’s Top 32 enter the tournament in the fourth round. The tournament has a prize fund of £450,000; the victor’s prize is £100,000.

The BoyleSports World Grand Prix is a PDC darts tournament traditionally held in Dublin, Ireland every October, but takes place in Leicester, England in 2021. Its original venue was the Casino Rooms in Rochester, Kent in 1998 and 1999, and then for one year only in 2000 at the Crosbie Cedars Hotel in Rosslare, County Wexford. In 2001, the tournament moved further north to the Citywest in Dublin. In 2009, the tournament moved from the Reception Hall at the main Citywest Hotel, to the newly completed bigger venue on site, the Citywest Hotel Convention Centre. In 2012, the tournament moved back to the Reception Hall for that year, before returning to the Convention Centre in 2013. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 tournament was held at the Ricoh Arena, Coventry, and in 2021, it was held at the Morningside Arena, Leicester. When the World Grand Prix was founded in 1998, it replaced the earlier World Pairs tournament which ran from 1995 to 1997.

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.

Nigel Richards (Scrabble player) International Scrabble champion

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.

The North American School Scrabble Championship, formerly the National School Scrabble Championship, is a Scrabble tournament for 3rd grade to 8th grade students, held annually in North America since 2003.

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.

Championship League is a professional snooker tournament, devised by Matchroom Sport. A ranking event version of the tournament began from September 2020, played similarly to its invitational, non-ranking counterpart but with some minor changes and opened to the entire World Snooker Tour. The tournament was originally held at the Crondon Park Golf Club in Stock, Essex, from its debut in 2008 until 2016. From 2017 to 2018, it was held at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry. Luca Brecel is the reigning champion of the ranking edition and John Higgins is the reigning champion of the invitational edition.

The 2009 PDC Pro Tour was a series of non-televised darts tournaments organised by the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC). They consisted of Professional Dart Players Association (PDPA) Players Championships and UK Open Regional Finals.

Global StarCraft II League StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void tournament

Global StarCraft II League (GSL) is a StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void tournament hosted by afreecaTV and Blizzard Entertainment in South Korea. This event is broadcast up to 2 nights a week. GOMeXp had hosted it until the last season of 2015. There is also an English language stream available. The tournament features two leagues, Code S (major) and Code A (minor). Code S and Code A are mainly cast by Dan "Artosis" Stemkoski and Nicolas "Tasteless" Plott. Formerly broadcast on Wednesdays and Saturdays on TwitchTV, the programme is now broadcast on Mondays and Thursdays on YouTube.

The Mattel World Scrabble Championship 2018 was a Scrabble tournament organised by Mattel and Mindsports Academy (MSA) to determine the world champion in English Scrabble held from 23 to 28 October 2018.

The Mattel World Scrabble Championship 2019 was a Scrabble tournament organised by Mattel and Mindsports Academy (MSA) to determine the world champion in English Scrabble held from 19 to 24 November 2019.

The 2021 U.S. Open Pool Championship was an international nine-ball pool tournament held from 13 to 18 September 2021 in Harrah’s Resort, Atlantic City, New Jersey. It was the 44th entry of the U.S. Open 9-Ball Championships, first held in 1976. Joshua Filler was the defending champion, having won the 2019 U.S. Open Nine-ball Championship. However, Filler lost 4–11 to Aloysius Yapp and 3–11 to Mieszko Fortuński, eliminating him from the tournament. Carlo Biado defeated Yapp 13–8 in the final to become the tournament's first Filipino winner since Efren Reyes in 1994.

References

  1. 1 2 "Wordsmiths from all over the world in Allesley for UK Open Scrabble Tournament". Coventry Telegraph.net. Trinity Mirror Midlands Limited. 7 January 2011. Retrieved 1 February 2012.
  2. ↑ CentreStar. "2020 UK Open Website" . Retrieved 16 January 2020.
  3. ↑ CentreStar. "2019 UK Open Website" . Retrieved 16 January 2020.
  4. ↑ CentreStar. "2018 UK Open Website" . Retrieved 16 January 2020.
  5. ↑ CentreStar. "2017 UK Open Website" . Retrieved 16 January 2020.
  6. ↑ CentreStar. "2016 UK Open Website" . Retrieved 16 January 2020.
  7. ↑ CentreStar. "2015 UK Open Website" . Retrieved 16 January 2020.
  8. ↑ CentreStar. "2014 UK Open Website" . Retrieved 16 January 2020.
  9. ↑ CentreStar. "2013 UK Open Website" . Retrieved 16 January 2020.
  10. ↑ CentreStar. "2012 UK Open Website" . Retrieved 16 January 2020.
  11. ↑ CentreStar. "2011 UK Open Website" . Retrieved 16 January 2020.
  12. ↑ CentreStar. "2010 UK Open Website" . Retrieved 16 January 2020.
  13. ↑ CentreStar. "2009 UK Open Website" . Retrieved 16 January 2020.
  14. ↑ CentreStar. "2008 UK Open Website" . Retrieved 6 May 2011.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.