Collins Coalition

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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...