There's under three months to go until Easter already, but there are tournaments coming up from Aberdeen to the Isle of Wight, from Belfast to Cork and from Nottingham to Peterborough, all before the Easter Matchplay kicks off in Coventry. There is also the invitational Grand Slam for winners of 'A' divisions and wildcards towards the end of February.

Here's a round-up of the events coming in the next three months. All the information, entry forms and contact details are on the main ABSP calendar.

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Northern Ireland Championship - a two-day tournament in Belfast, organised by Stewart Holden.

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Isle of Wight - a three-day event, starting on the Friday afternoon, featuring two 10-game tournaments played back-to-back with promotion and relegation between divisions at the half-way point. This tournament is organised by Steve Perry in conjunction with Isle of Wight Tours.

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Stewart Houten's Nottingham Nomads series gets underway in February, with the second installment just after Easter. There are four more events through 2024.

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Wayne Kelly is running the Grand Slam event in late February in Warrington. This is an invitational event for players who have won an 'A' division tournament since 2020, plus the most improved players from those years, the players with most runners-up spots and the most 'B' division wins, the highest rated player not already qualified and the highest-rated youth player for the year.

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Another busy weekend with a one-day tournament on both days, although players may be hard-pressed to play in both given they are over 400 miles apart! The Saturday tournament is Chris Hawkins' Peterborough tournament, with the Aberdeen tournament organised by Neil Scott on the Sunday. Of course, if anybody fancies the challenge of playing in both, we'd love to hear how you're managing it!

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The Cork tournament takes place on the southern coast of Ireland, the weekend after St Patrick's Day. Chris Broderick is the organiser for this two-day tournament.

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Before we know it, the early Easter will be upon us. Wayne Kelly is organising a 4-day long weekend in Coventry that includes the Warm-Up event for warm-up on Good Friday and Saturday morning with the main event running from Saturday afternoon to Easter Monday.

Happy New Year ABSP members! The start of a new year means it's time for Wayne Kelly to reveal the updated titles and awards after 2023.

Firstly, many thanks to the Stewart Houten and Rachel Bingham for their parts in the maintenance of the database over the last year. Contained in this post will be Titles information, Highest Rated Player, Most Improved Player and a few other stats!

Titles

I think it may be the worst-kept secret in the ABSP community but this year, after a long wait, we finally have a new title holder. Natalie Zolty scored 5 170s in a row and had to wait until the final event of the year to get her average for the year back to 170 to attain the rank of Expert. Many congratulations to Natalie for holding her nerve and getting her just reward.

Potential Experts:

• 3 years
  • Colin Northmore (3 170+ ratings)
  • Wolfram Poh (3 170+ ratings)
• 2 years
  • Chris Cummins (2 170+ ratings)
  • Jack Moran (2 170+ ratings)
  • Brian Po (2 170+ ratings)
  • Wale Ilori (1 180+ and 1 170+ rating)
  • Chris Lipe (1 180+ rating from last year)
• 1 year
  • John Ashmore
  • Sunny Bhatia (first 170+ rating)
  • Joanne Craig
  • David Delicata
  • Nick Deller
  • Stewart Houten
  • Mohamed Alieu Kamara
  • Toby Abs (first 170+ rating)
  • Chris Vicary
  • Ryan Wee (first 170+ rating)

Potential GMs:

• 1 year
  • Kong Chock Heng (1st 180+ rating)
  • Rik Kennedy

There are some with potential to get back on the ladder but with a rating higher than their previous best so they have been excluded. Let me know if you think there is anything amiss.

Highest Rated Player

The Highest Rated Player Award is given to the highest rated ABSP Member on January 1st of each year, provided that they have played at least 30 games in the previous year. The winner is Harshan Lamabadusuriya (194) Harshan has certainly made his mark on not just the ABSP scene this year but with second place in the WESPAC event also, he went global! (Brett Smitheram had not played 30 games this year).

Most Improved Player

The Most Improved Player award is given to the ABSP member (as at 31st Dec) who has a full rating at the start of the calendar year, plays at least 30 games throughout that year and improves their rating the most. The player's rating at the end of the year must be higher than any previous end-of-year full rating. The winner for 2023 with an improvement of 34 from 106 to 140 is Barry French. Barry played 254 games over the year.

Four other players met the criteria and improved by at least 10:

• +18 69 Lisa Atkins
• +17 105 Kevin Rayment
• +11 139 Rebecca Wilkinson
• +11 164 Joel Davey

• Most games played and most prolific Expert – Craig Solomons (395)
• Most prolific GM – Phil Robertshaw (153)

Unweighted ratings for those with a rating over 150 plus details of highest games scores for 2023 can be found on the ABSP database. Well done to all winners - and those that missed out - keep trying!

Wayne Kelly

As the Summer draws to close (although with the current heatwave across most of the country, it might not feel so much like it!) a number of tournaments are coming up soon across the country in Middlesbrough, Glasgow, Warrington, Holmfirth, Nottingham and Lancaster.

Looking ahead, there's more coming later in the Autumn in Edinburgh, the Winter Matchplay in Milton Keynes and Nottingham Nomads (again), before the end-of-year Twixmas tournament leads into the new year for the Northern Ireland championships in Belfast and the Isle of Wight tournament in Shanklin.

If you don't fancy the chilly weather, why not try the Continental Championship at the end of September in Bucharest, with an early bird and a main event; or take a week-long trip to Malta for MISO for an early bird, late bird, main event and also incorporating the Seniors World Championship this year.

For more details on these events, and events further in the future, please see the main calendar

Cleveland - two separate one-day tournaments on Saturday and Sunday in Middlesbrough, organised by Trish Matthews.

Glasgow - one-day tournament on Saturday in Milton of Campsie, just outside Glasgow itself, organised by Ross MacKenzie.

Warrington and Holmfirth run back-to-back over this weekend with a one-day tournament on Saturday in Warrington, organised by Wayne Kelly and Caroline McLaughlin's one-day tournament on Sunday in Holmfirth, just on the opposite side of Manchester.

Nottingham Nomads: the latest edition of Stewart Houten's one-day tournament series on Saturday in Mapperley, Nottingham. Also look out on the main calendar for the final Nomads tournament of the year coming in early December.

Lancaster: after running a hugely popular tournament earlier in the year, Rebecca Wilkinson is running another one-day tournament in Lancaster on Saturday 21st October.

Tobias Outi has won the British Matchplay Scrabble Championship held at the Kents Hill Park Conference Centre in Milton Keynes over the August bank holiday weekend.

Tobias beat Wayne Kelly 426-378 in the final round to win the title with a 18-6 +998 record, just ahead of Brian Po (17-7, +900) with Wayne ending up in third position (16-8, +860) The fourth and fifth place prizes were split by just two spread points, with Chris Cummins (16-8, +634) just edging out Nick Deller (16-8, +632)

Although Tobias had held a one game lead going into the final round of games, none of the prize positions had been decided, so there was everything to play for. Tobias' victory meant he secured the title, with Brian having to settle for second after defeating Chris in that final round. Nick defeated Craig Solomons (15-9, +763) by just 11 points in their round 24 match to clinch fifth place.

There were also three ratings prizes in the championship division, with the first going to Teresa Lyes (14–10, −220) who raised her rating by nine points by achieving a tournament performance rating of 35 above her initial rating, including a win against top seed and defending champion Lewis Mackay. Rafal Dominiczak (19 above rating) and Rose Northmore (17 above rating) won the other two ratings prizes.

In division B, Jared Robinson clinched victory with a round to spare, finishing 18½-5½ +1452 to win by two games ahead of Paul Thomson (16½-7½, +793) who was, himself, two games in front of Colin Nicol (14½-9½, +572) The ratings prize in division B was won by Janet Adams (12-12, +175) with a performance 12 points above her initial rating.

Division C was also clinched before the final round, with the victory going Margaret Pritchett (18-6, +827) just ahead of Paul Habershon (17-7, +1141) and Paul Cartman (15-9, +1090) The division C ratings prize was won by Lisa Atkins (11-13, +397) with a tournament performance rating 26 points higher than her rating.

Final standings: Championship Division | Division B | Division C

David Eldar has defeated Harshan Lamabadusuriya 4-3 in the finals of the WESPA Championship to become world champion for the second time in a thrilling match that was in the balance until the end of the deciding game.

The two finalists shared the first two games, with Harshan winning a close first game after challenging off David's play of FARRINER. After opening game 2 with an exchange, David continued with an impressive sequence of high-scoring bonus plays as well as LUZ for over 60. Game 3 was a tight affair with a tense end-game as, with Harshan leading by around 25 with just 3 tiles left in the bag, David found a low-scoring play of TAN needing to draw A,E from the bag for a guaranteed win, but drew A,O allowing Harshan to out run the come back and take a narrow victory.

After the lunch break, in game 4, David had another barnstorming game featuring LUKEWARM, SUPREMO POSITIVE and LOITERING to win by over 100 despite Harshan's double-double of EQUATING for 122.

Game 5 was a closer game again, with David's early SOSATIE opening up a lead early on before Harshan hit back with VERMINED TEUCHEST and the out-play of RESEMBLE to win by 90 and put him one win away from the title.

Game 6 started with many high-scoring plays with David's opening PROTEGE giving Harshan EPITAXES and David responding with SNIFTER. As the game neared the end game, Harshan played ENTASIA opening up a second triple-triple lane and although David played in both places, it wasn't with a bonus and Harshan continued with TENIOID but David made a key play of CUT setting himself up to level the match at 3-3 and send it to a decider.

Harshan had the advantage of going first in the deciding game, courtesy of finishing the preliminaries with the best record and he opened with ECHOIER using the first blank, following with PEPONIDA. David immediately came back with ZEP for 67 and after struggling with vowel-light racks, used the second blank for VERSING. Unfortunately, faced with clunky vowel-heavy racks, Harshan played the phoney LUE which gave David the momentum and a late 30 point lead. As the end-game arrived with 8 tiles in the bag and a 10-point lead, David bonused with DAUNTERS and despite an excellent rack of AEILMRS and plenty of floaters, no bonuses would play and David outlasted Harshan, who played out with RAMILIES, but it wasn't enough and so David won the final game narrowly to win the tournament and to be crowned a 2-time world champion.

David and Harshan contested the best-of-7 final after finishing in the top two places after playing 32 preliminary games over the previous 4 days. The field was one of the strongest in a world championship event in recent times, with over a dozen players rated above 2000 in an overall field of 134 competitors.

Four players were in with a shot of qualifying for the final contention going into the last round of the preliminaries, although none of them were guaranteed a spot. David and Harshan defeated two former world champions, Wellington Jighere and Adam Logan, respectively in win-and-you're-in matches.

Lewis Mackay finished top of the other home nations players, and indeed all the other players in the field, as he finished in 3rd place overall after winning his final 9 games to finish 22-10, +1763 in front of Wellington and Andrew Fisher, with Adam Logan's loss in the final round dropping him to 6th.

Neil Scott (19-13) was the highest-placed Scot in 24th place, one game ahead of Paul Allan (18-14) in 40th and Stu Harkness (14-18) in 114th. Northern Ireland's sole representative, Rik Kennedy, finished in 84th place at 15-17. Team England had Jason Carney, Natalie Zolty, Jack Moran and Elie Dangoor finish with 17-15 records, Bob Violett with 16½, Fidelis Olutu with 15½ then 4 more on 15-17 (Femi Awowade, Wayne Kelly, Donna Stanton and Jared Robinson) with John Ashmore, winner of the warm up event, and Stewart Houten one game further back.

Apart from John's victory in the Hearts event, James Wilkie and Ruth MacInerney finished 6th and 7th in the 24-game Diamonds event, with Sumbul Siddiqui just behind in 10th before going on to finish 6-2 in 3rd place in the Clubs challenge event.

The 2023 WESPA Championship is getting underway today in Las Vegas, Nevada

There are 32 games in the Main Event over 4 days, with a best of 7 playoff for the top 2 at the end to decide the champion. During the event, live stream on Twitch is available.

Alongside the championship event, a series of 4 side events is running, which are named after the suits in a deck of playing cards. Many players chose to play the Hearts event yesterday as a warm-up for the main event, and the event was won by England's John Ashmore. Hopefully this bodes well for a successful championship run in the coming days.

Good luck to all the UK players taking part this week!

The list of players representing the home nations in the main event is:

Also going along for the side events are James Wilkie, Sumbul Siddiqui, Ruth MacInerney and Sanmi Odelana. James and Ruth played in the Last Chance Qualifier for the main event on Friday, but just missed out on winning a place.