Since my laptop charger is broken, the pictures will have to wait a while, but here is my experience from this weekend, originally written in three instalments...necessary background: Thailand is a competitive Scrabble powerhouse, and the current world champion is Thai. Scrabble and other related games are played at the scholastic level by thousands of kids, as I found out this weekend...
oh man.
this tournament is so much crazier than anything I've ever seen before that it will likely take me a good half-hour to write all the things I want to say about it.
I showed up at the mall where the tournament was taking place at about 9:30 or so, knowing that the tournament was supposed to start some time around 10. I also knew I was supposed to find an aquarium somewhere on the ground floor. What I didn't expect is that I quickly stumbled upon wave after wave of schoolchildren. A lot of them were gathered by uniform, some younger, some older. But what was certainly the case is that there were hundreds of them, far more than mameow, my one contact in thai scrabble, had told me to expect. The official number was somewhere around 2000. This is for a minor regional tournament, mind you.
I literally spent twenty minutes wandering around trying to find where I was supposed to play scrabble. It felt like I was in a living ocean of sorts, surrounded by board after board. Not just Scrabble, but thai scrabble, a math game played on a scrabble board, even a sudoku competition with a good 200-300 competitors. Meanwhile, this was all surrounded by a very, very active mall, chiang mai's biggest, which was doing great business. Most popular of all was clearly the cookie store, with a line stretching out the door. I wandered everywhere on the ground floor and in every nook there seemed to be at least a couple of kids sipping on milkshakes or splaid out on the floor.
The internet cafe is closing up, but I'll be back tomorrow morning to tell you more about it...
my record: 6-3, 6th place!
I only have 15 minutes before I have to hop on a bus to the tourney but I'll try to condense that into a few paragraphs of awesome
Anyway, I figured out where I was only when Nawapadol and Amnuay (godfather of Thai scrabble, for those who don't know) saw the tall white guy wandering out in circles and figured it might be me. At that point I figured out why I had previously been unable to find the playing area - it didn't exist yet, and instead there was an opening ceremony going on, complete with pretty women, dignified long speeches in thai, an introductory video describing the state of Scrabble (known as crossword here) in Thailand, and the like. The one thing the video taught me is that I've missed my calling in life - Thailand's most prestigious university, Chulalongkorn University, apparently has an undergraduate degree in Crossword Games. The ceremony culminated with a dance done by ten little girls in ballerina's outfits and then a final speech by the prime minister of chiang mai, which is actually a province. This is the equivalent of your senator showing up for your next scrabble gathering. Amnuay and the prime minister stood next to each other and shook hands, and then a gigantic cannon belched glitter all over them. It was absolutely surreal and hysterical.
More ridiculous still was the process of actually playing games. I had joked about how noisy it was with mameow before the games started, and she told me it would quiet down a little. Well, dif it did I couldn't tell, because the gigantic speakers next to the playing area kept blasting out music the whole time we were there. Whoever said there was a crossword game theme song is not quite correct because as far as I can tell there's a good 4 or 5 of them, each with different moods and styles. My favorite is the one with the kids where they list all the different games, but even I tend towards the suicidal when I hear that on repeat ten times and I'm trying to solve an endgame. Also crazy is that this is just out there in the atrium of a huge mall, which means that every once in a while during a game I would look around and see people three storeys up just chilling there watching me play, not to mention the huge throng right outside the playing area. It took me a long time indeed to feel comfortable at all, compounded by the 22 minute clock which made almost every game into a near-frenzy. Occasionally final events for other competitions would take place on the stage next to us while we were playing, at which point the speaker would switch to playing the Final Countdown on repeat - I definitely found myself rocking out to the guitar solo once or twice.
OK, so what about the games themselves? The field is only 22-24 people, but it is ridiculously stratified. To wit - there are 5 former WSC participants here, Panupol, Jakkrit, Charnwit, Marut Siriwangso and Pichai Limprsaert. I assume Amnuay made it at some point too, and Nawapadol is just directing. On the other hand some of the players playing in this open division are total greenhorns. Thus, after the first two games I was quite pleased with my 220 spread until I looked over at the standings and saw the top 3 at 2-0 +600, 2-0 +600 and 2-0 +599!! I joked to Nawapadol that they had to be cheating. In any case I think I was 2-1 against WSC players yesterday after lucking out against Jakkrit and Marut and losing by about 50 to Charnwit. One of my losses was a once in a lifetime game, though - they had a big board with magnetic tiles and we actually played on it, drawing tiles from the table in front of it! Absolute craziness! And there was an announcer! I made it competitive with a timely phony but unfortunately still lost by ten or so, but it was still a seriously fun time.
Panupol is 8-1 +1500 and likely unattainable, but I at least have a shot at everyone below him. but I'm late already, so here I go! later folks! wish me luck!
ok, that's an exaggeration and a half. But yeah, as usual, I managed to build up some hope and then wipe out at the end. 3-3 on the day, but in the morning I won all three and then afternoon I lost them all back. ack! The morning went pretty smoothly, then after lunch I lost the next game after leading until the very last play, where to my eye there was nothing I could do, and then in the deciding game to see who would go to the final to play panupol, I played marut and sucked it up. Very bad timing. I lost by almost two hundred when I really should've been in it with a chance to win, but ended up going over by 5 minutes. Meltdown. The last game was never in my reach either. So I went from having a chance to play at the big board in front of hundreds of schoolchildren to losing the game for placement!
Final standing 9-6, 6th place. So close!
Though I am still grumpy, I brought my camera today and took a bunch of pictures, most of them very chaotic looking because there are just so many kids in them. They had an award ceremony to end the day where they handed out lots and lots of prizes, with big cheers coming from their schoolmates. Then the adult division winners went on stage and no one really cheered because they weren't from their school or anything and thus there was no rooting interest! I thought it was a hysterical reawakening to reality - just because you think what you're doing is important doesn't mean everyone else has to as well.
I wonder about the health of Thai Scrabble. On the one hand they have thousands of students playing, some of whom choose to continue doing it after they grow up. On the other hand, the scene I witnessed was so crazy that I can't imagine anyone over 30 not being completely exhausted by it. Indeed, most of the adult competition players are also very young. It reflects the divergent base of financial support for scrabble here - it comes from the thousands of students who play rather than the american foundation of wealthy old people. So for anyone who thinks thai scrabble is the best - yeah, it's pretty great, but every system has its problems.
ok, bus to bangkok at 8 pm, so I'm going to go get some northern thai cuisine and then head off. Sawatdee khrap!
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