Scrabble players from near and far convened in Albany for a tournament this month. WAMC’s Lucas Willard reports on some of the newbies and nationally-ranked players searching for a BINGO.
Hundreds of letter tiles clack together in their pouches as the first players kicked off a five-day Fourth of July Scrabble tournament in Albany.
Some of the world’s top competitors assembled in New York’s capital city for the event hosted by volunteer-run organization Let’s Play Scrabble.
As tournament co-director Kieran O’Connor explains, the tournament is open to everyone.
“We have two or three new players from the Albany area playing here today, but we have people coming as far as, we have four people coming from Nigeria, two from Uganda, along with a couple of guys from California. We got people from everywhere,” said O’Connor.
For Dalton Hoffine, the experience of competing alongside some of the most superior Scrabblers is something new.
“This is my very first competitive tournament. Very excited about it, much less intimidating than I thought it would be when I came in. I came in all nerves, but everybody has been great. I've made some new friends already. It's a wonderful time,” said Hoffine.
But new players need not worry about being paired against a ranked pro in their first matchup, says O’Connor.
“I liken it to a baseball analogy. There's sort of Little League, high school, college and pros. If you're not a great player, you can play Little League your whole life, and you can have fun and hang out with people and get to play, and if you want to study and whatever, then you might get to the pros or not, but you can always play.”
As a match between two world-class players is livestreamed in a corner of the Marriott hotel ballroom, players and friends reunite for the tournament.
Pouch pals Brian Garnet of St. Louis and Annette Obrestad of Las Vegas met through the Scrabble community that keeps in touch at tournaments and online.
“It’s pretty close-knit,” said Garnet.
“I would say it's pretty small. Like, most people know who everybody is like. It's the same people who go to the tournaments. It's not like the chess community, where there's like millions of people who play chess,” said Obrestad.
“That being said, I started in the chess community, and that's kind of how I found the Scrabble community, because there is a lot of intersection and interest between the two,” said Garnet.
Also traveling to Albany is Montreal-based player Josh Sokol. The 2023 Scrabble Players Championship winner sees a connection to chess.
“Comparing Scrabble to other games, I think it's a mixture of the strategic aspects of chess and the psychological aspects of poker. And when you're watching a game after two moves, it's a completely new game. So, every game is totally different. And so, there's always new concepts that arise, and it's always interesting to see what's created,” said Sokol.
Sokol says he loves two things about the game: words, of course, and counting.
“You have to count all of your plays when you're playing competitively. And there's also a lot of probability and other sorts of math calculation that that go into being good at Scrabble. So, I think that's what hooked me, just the mixture of the two,” said Sokol.
Ida Shapiro, an 83-year-old Queens resident, says she took five buses to get to the competition.
“It gives me something to do. You know, it's interaction with people, and you need to keep, keep at it,” said Shapiro.
Shapiro says she played Scrabble in her younger years, “but not like this.” And though she says her ranking isn’t the highest, she knows a lot of words.
“Look, I've won money in the game, maybe $1,800 or something like that, but it cost me about $60,000 between all the traveling and everything, you know, with everything so…and some people haven't won anything. So, you know, it's just…”
“It’s worth it?”
“It's worth it.”
