Everywhere you look this weekend, there are twins. We're in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota. We've got two twin Scrabble tournaments - Division 1 and Division 2 - doing battle over the boards. And in one round this morning, we even had two twin brothers going head to head at the featured table. In more ways than one, a twinbill is underway at the North American Collins Championship (NACC).
And, as of this writing, we are witnessing twin dominant performances in Division 1.
Alec Sjöholm, the tournament's top overall seed, and Oshevire Avwenagha, a strong expert from Nigeria joining us for his first CoCo event, are all alone atop the field after Day 1, sporting matching 7-1 records. Alec won his first 7 games and just barely missed out on an undefeated first day, losing by six points to Josh Sokol in his last game; Oshevire, meanwhile, came up short against Alec in round 6 but ran the table in all his other games. For the moment, these guys are the two to beat.
Here's how the top 10 looks as Friday comes to a close:
1. Alec Sjöholm (7-1, +741)
2. Oshevire Avwenagha (7-1, +234)
3. Charles Reinke (6-2, +548)
4. Wellington Jighere (6-2, +542)
5. Josh Sokol (6-2, +245)
6. Rob Robinsky (6-2, +200)
7. Ben Schoenbrun (5-3, +307)
8. Scott Jackson (5-3, +296)
9. Olatunde Oduwole (5-3, +156)
10. Yukiko Loritz (4-4, +354)
Tomorrow is another day. We've got 8 games in the books, but another 8 are on the horizon, and a whole lot about this leaderboard can change. We shall see.
Until then, signing off from the Twin Cities.