Recapping 20 games in 32 hours (!) in Portland, OR
It's difficult to put into words what it feels like to play 20 games of tournament Scrabble in 32 hours. But after this weekend, having just been put through that wringer personally, I'll try and say something.
It makes you feel like you're pushing the limits of what a person is capable of mentally, physically, even spiritually. This dawned on me at some point in round 11, as I was struggling to spell the commonest of words and practically sleepwalking my way through a game that I somehow won 332-331: This isn't natural, I thought. This isn't reasonable. Humans aren't built to do this.
...and yet, somehow, a group of us did. The "PDX 20/32 Tournament" was the (downright psychotic, if I may editorialize) brainchild of organizer Travis Chaney, who rounded up a group of Portland locals and Portland-adjacent individuals and managed to persuade us all to play a soul-crushing number of games in one weekend. Dave Wiegand was in the director's chair, and our host venue was the building that houses both Shorebird Bakery and Oakshire Beer Hall. There were plenty of pastries and coffee in the mornings; there were many pizzas and IPAs flowing in the afternoons. And, from sunup to sundown, on both Saturday and Sunday, there was a whole heck of a lot of Scrabble.
We got underway bright and early on Saturday morning - the first tiles were drawn at 8 a.m. sharp. Mind you, the format wasn't a simple 10 games Saturday, 10 Sunday - it was 12 and 8! So we all knew we were in for a slog on that first day. For many of us, myself included, it was our first time ever playing a dozen rounds in a day. But eventually, we all survived it. Actually, Dave Wiegand did much more than survive it, as he raced out to an 11-1 start with an absurd spread of +1343. Kolton Koehler, meanwhile, was 10-2 with an even more absurd spread of +1600. Conrad Bassett-Bouchard, also 10-2, was spread points back from second place. The rest of us were doing the best we could to keep up.
The race for the title got even more interesting on day 2. I put together a little bit of a run on Sunday morning, and Dave took a couple of setbacks, and what was once a three-person race now looked like a four-person one. With 15 games down and 5 to go, the standings looked like:
Conrad, 12-3, +1122
Kolton, 11-4, +1623
Dave, 11-4, +998
Evans, 11-4, +638
Toward the end, the title picture became clearer. Kolton took a couple more losses and fell out of the hunt; I kept winning games, but not by much, and my spread just wasn't going to cut it. Going into the final round, it was Conrad versus Dave for all the marbles... and Conrad put a hurting on Dave in game 20, winning 509-339. When the dust settled, the final result was:
Conrad, 16-4, +1385
Dave, 15-5, +1233
Evans, 15-5, +828
Kolton, 14-6, +1898
A pretty remarkable finish, to say the least. Congratulations are due first and foremost to Conrad, as winning 16 games of Scrabble in 32 hours is a downright insane accomplishment. CBB takes $350 for first; Dr. Bing gets $220 for second. Travis, the top finisher out of the bottom half, won the class prize. Dave awarded me the "sadness prize" for going 15-5 and receiving no money; I will begrudgingly accept this. Special shoutouts are also due to Kolton, who scored a massive rating gain and broke 2000 for the first time; to Stefan Kac, who traveled all the way from Southern California to join us; and to Nigel Peltier, who played in his first CoCo event and put up a solid finish against an extremely tough field of Collins veterans.
So, that was quite a weekend. A Scrabble slog like none other. Honestly, it might be difficult to transition back to normal tournaments after a weekend like this. Playing "only" 6 or 7 games in a day is going to feel weird for a while, probably. But back to normal Scrabble, we indeed must go. Coming up in the next few weeks, we've got a handful of 1-days, including events in both Charlottesville, VA, and Seattle, WA... and shortly after that, it's the North American Collins Championship (NACC) in early November. The Scrabble just keeps coming. We hope to see all of y'all somewhere on the circuit sometime soon.
Until then...