DUBAI // A 22-year-old Australian university student won the Dubai Winter Scrabble Challenge in Dubai on Saturday.
Alister Richards, ranked 17th worldwide, won Dh1,400 for winning 18 of 24 games during the three-day tournament, which kicked off on Thursday.
In second place came Navya Zaveri, a 16-year-old student at the Indian High School Dubai, who won 17 of 24.
“It was quite a close round,” said Nikhil Soneja, the chairman of the UAE Scrabble Club, who came eighth. “Alister and his mother Karen have a coaching camp and they travel around the world to train students, which is what they did in Dubai on Wednesday, to promote tournament scrabble for youths. He’s a champion player.”
Alister has also been coaching Navya, who ranked higher than all the other adult players in the UAE. “We advertise this as an international tournament,” Mr Soneja said.
“We advertise this as an international tournament,” Mr Soneja said. “It’s a worldwide tournament so he will go into a worldwide ranking. In the UAE, we only have the Gulf tournament but now this is considered world-rated and players always follow their ranking so it’s important.”
He said Alister was one of the top players in the world. “He’s currently 17th so it’s important for him as he travels the world playing tournaments,” he added.
The winner for the beginners division was Mohammad Fawaz, a 12-year-old Indian who won five of six games and scored the highest word for beetles. The highest game score was 418 by 12-year-old Siddarth Hariharan and 654 in the masters division, with 145 for the highest scored word of apterous by former Gulf champion Ralph Lobo, originally from India.
The next tournament will take place in India next week. “It’s quite a prestigious tournament on the calendar in India so we’re hoping to make Dubai the precursor to such a big tournament,” Mr Soneja added.
cmalek@thenational.ae
