KARACHI: Britain’s Craig Beevers rounded off a great week by lifting the World Scrabble Champion trophy in London on Sunday.

According to information received here, Beevers beat Chris Lipe of USA 3-1 in the best-of-five final to take the title. Dave Brennan of MindSports International handed over the trophy to the winner.

The side tournament played by the rest of the players was won by Nigel Richards of New Zealand with 12 wins in 14 matches.

Austin Shin of England was second with 11 wins and John OLaughlin of USA was third with 10 wins.

Waseem Khatri of Pakistan made a remarkable recovery and was well poised to finish in the top 10 but a defeat at the hands of John O Laughlin ended his surge. Interestingly O Laughlin was the player who deprived Waseem a place in the quarter-finals a couple of days earlier.

Waseem however won the prize for the biggest win of the tournament when he pulverized Catalin Caba of Romania 684-253.

Meanwhile, the First MindSports International Scrabble Championship being played alongside came to an end at London.

Poh Ying Ming of Singapore shattered Moiz Baig’s dream of winning another youth championship before he turns 18. Moiz remained unbeaten in his first 10 matches but his winning streak was broken by former team-mate Sumbul Siddiqui who now plays for England.

The last match of the day was fittingly played between Moiz and Poh who were both on 11 wins. As it turned out Poh won an extremely close match 380-379; just one point separated the two.

Moiz eventually finished third while Jack Durand of England defeated compatriot Natasha Pratesi to take the second position.

Published in Dawn, November 25th , 2014