NACC Day 1: A crowded field at the top
We're just one day into the North American Scrabble Championship (NACC), but we've already seen a lot.
There have been 160 total games (well, 152 plus 8 byes), 126,585 total points scored, two bizarre director calls, about a billion raindrops, and too many more notable occurrences to list them all here. Rest assured, it's been a day. And we've still got three more days to go.
After one day of NACC action, we've got quite the race shaping up at the top of the standings. Turns out, when you put a lot of really strong players together in one room, you end up with a lot of people with good records. Imagine that!
Let's take a look at where things stand with 8 rounds down and 16 to go...
THE LEADERS
We've got 22 total players in the Division 1 field, and four of them are sitting pretty at 6-2. That's almost 20% of the field!
Here's the rundown of the top 10 players...
1. Dave Wiegand (6-2, +692)
2. Brad Whitmarsh (6-2, +435)
3. Kolton Koehler (6-2, +380)
4. Austin Shin (6-2, +62)
5. Peter Armstrong (5-3, +271)
6. Quinn James (5-3, +263)
7. Rasheed Balogun (5-3, +69)
8. Joel Wapnick (5-3, +17)
9. Chris Lipe (4-4, +348)
10. Christopher Grubb (4-4, +209)
GAME OF THE DAY
Check out our featured game from round 7, which featured Peter Armstrong going head to head with Kevin Fraley. There were a couple of sweet bingo finds early, a tight score the whole way, and a tricky pre-endgame situation with the game on the line. Interesting stuff.
ALL THE GAMES
If you'd like to view all eight of the games we saw at Table 1 today, you're in luck. They're all online - every rack, every move.
Round 1: David Whitley vs. John O'Laughlin
Round 2: Scott Jackson vs. Dave Wiegand
Round 3: Quinn James vs. Chris Lipe
Round 4: Rob Robinsky vs. Joel Wapnick
Round 5: Austin Shin vs. Kolton Koehler
Round 6: Brad Whitmarsh vs. Alec Sjöholm
Round 7: Peter Armstrong vs. Kevin Fraley
Round 8: Dave Wiegand vs. Brad Whitmarsh
COMING UP TOMORROW
Eight more games are on deck! We'll see if this morass of 6-2s starts to resolve itself, or if the race for the top spots stays crowded for another day.
See you at 9 a.m. tomorrow...