Recapping this weekend's 1-day tournament in Somerville, MA

The New England 1-day CoCo tournament crew, led by director Matthew O'Connor and organizer Niel Gan, was fortunate to go into this weekend's event in Somerville, MA knowing one thing: No matter what happened, they were virtually guaranteed to see their event go more smoothly than the one they held four months ago.

Back in January, these guys had a tournament on the calendar in Providence, RI, that they were looking forward to - only to discover that practically the biggest blizzard in the history of the universe had other plans. They had to scramble at the last minute to convene a different field of people, on a different date, just to have any tournament at all. They just barely pulled it off.

Fast forward to Somerville this weekend, and... hey, everything went off as scheduled! The tournament happened where it was supposed to happen, and the people who were supposed to play, played. Much Scrabble was enjoyed by all! It's always nice when a plan goes smoothly, y'know?

The day was also quite nice for Boston-area local Brad Whitmarsh, who put up a dazzling 6-0 record en route to the tournament win. His day wasn't without a few trials and tribulations, as a few of his wins were close ones that he barely squeaked out, but in the end, every single result was a win. After five games, Brad was Gibsonized, and the only unanswered question was who would win the battle for second place. That ended up being Richard Buck in the end, as Richard bested Niel in the final round to take it down.

Congrats to Brad, who takes down his first-ever title in the Matthew/Niel series of 1-days. Any day you can go undefeated at Scrabble is a very, very good day. Cheers to Richard as well on taking second place. And thanks, as always, to Matthew and Niel for continuing to keep this series of tournaments going.

And now, the series keeps chugging along. This was the fourth event that Matthew and Niel have run together, dating back about 12 months; a fifth one is coming up soon. The crew will be back in action in Providence again on March 15.

Until then, adios. And stay warm.