2011 Malta International Scrabble Open: May 13–15, Qawra, Malta

May 13–15, 2011

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MISO 2011 Commentary: Round 12

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Go to: Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Round 4, Round 5, Round 6, Round 7, Round 8, Round 9, Round 10, Round 11, Round 12, Round 13, Round 14, Round 15, Round 16, Round 17, Round 18, Round 19, Round 20, Round 21, Round 22, Round 23, Round 24, After the Tournament.


In the annotated game at Board 1, it's Jayne Mackenzie (Eng) vs. Mikki Nicholson (Eng). Jayne opens with EHIOOUW and opts to exchange IOOU, and the first few turns go by as rack balancing plays. Then Jayne plays HEW (23) keeping BCKL to set up CRAB hooking C-HEW (one of my favorite words) for 40, while Mikki likewise plays WEFT (20) keeping ?MN setting up 8l YONI (47). Then things get exciting for a few turns, as Mikki bingoes consecutively RuMOURS and HYDRATE, while Jayne trades tiles once to fish out the blank for SARKIEr, leaving her still almost 100 points behind. Two turns later, Mikki lays down ZO (64) and Jayne cannot catch up.

In the end, Mikki wins 487-303 and advances to 10-2 +1174. At Board 2, Evan Cohen (ISR) plays Jojo Delia (MLT) to a 386-point tie; they both fill out the winner's side of the result slip (see photo). This leaves Evan half a game back at 9½-2½, and he probably doesn't have to worry about his spread anymore, with the tie on his record. 1½ games behind Evan on 8-4 are Theresa Brousson (MLT) and Yi En Gan (DEU) after Yi En beat Theresa 432-368, and Kevin Synnott (Eng) and Jojo Delia (MLT).

In Division B, Margaret Armstrong (Eng) wins again, this time against Gila Blits (ISR), 451-375 and is now 11-1 +870. The number of players trailing two games back drops from four to two, with Sammy Mangion (MLT) losing to Albert Zammit (MLT) and Jim Wilkie (Sco) losing to Geoff Cooper (Eng). In second place then, it's Geoff at 9-3 +392, followed closely by Sammy +380.

It's going to be a long afternoon for everybody. We are playing a ten-game schedule: 2 / tea / 2 / lunch / 2 / tea / 4.


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