New world champion for New Zealand   17 Oct 2011

Joseph Hoye

While the All Blacks moved one step closer to world rugby domination over the weekend, another New Zealander claimed a World Championship of a different kind.

Nigel Richards stood up to the pressure as tournament favourite to win the final of the 2011 Scrabble® World Championship, fittingly against Australian Andrew Fisher.

The 2011 Scrabble® World Championship was staged in Warsaw with 116 competitors from 44 countries attending, making it the largest World Championship in its twenty year history.

Richards set another Championship record, becoming the first competitor to have twice won the title. His first victory came in 2007 and he followed that up with the runner-up prize in 2009.

This year, his finals round was hard fought against Fisher. In a tit-for-tat match, the best of five went to the fifth game. Richards took the first and third with Fisher coming back with scores over 500 in the second and fourth to keep the match competitive. In the end, Richards superior word knowledge won through with a fifth round score of 477-334 in the New Zealander’s favour but it was a much closer match than his 2007 win where he beat Malaysia’s Ganesh Asirvatham in straight sets.

Having begun competitive Scrabble® in Christchurch, Nigel Richards moved to Malaysia in 2000 and is based there while still representing New Zealand. He is a three-time and reigning US Scrabble® champion and an eight-time winner of the world’s largest Scrabble® competition, the King’s Cup in Bangkok.

As well as claiming the World Champion title, Mr Richards also accepted a prize of USD 20,000 for the win while Mr Fisher took home USD 10,000 from a USD 50,000 prize pool.

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