KARACHI: Thursday was a day of fluctuating fortunes and surprises at the Scrabble Champions Tournament 2014 in London.

Each of the top three players from day one suffered a succession of defeats and were replaced by new faces.

According to the information received here, David Eldar of Australia after his shock defeat in the very first match at the hands of 15-year-old Abdullah Abbasi who proved too hot for all other players. Eldar won all of his matches on the second day to reach top spot with 14 wins.

World No. 7 Dave Wiegand of the US and world No. 5 Brett Smitheram of England are currently on second and third position with 13 and 12 wins, respectively.

Waseem Khatri of Pakistan started the day brilliantly by beating former world champion and current world No. 5 Adam Logan of Canada. Another win against Austin Shin (England) propelled Waseem to No. 5 position but losses in the last three matches of the day pushed him to the 23rd spot.

The Pakistani was involved in the highest aggregate match score of the championship so far (495 vs 603) against Craig Beevers (England). Waseem still has a realistic chance to qualify for the quarter-finals.

The highlight and the biggest upset of the second day was 17-year-old Moiz Baig’s win against Nigel Richards, the reigning world champion and arguably the greatest player of all times.

This was the second biggest upset of the tournament in terms of the rating difference between players after Abdullah’s feat on the first day.

Interestingly, the next two major upset wins as per ratings were achieved by 16-year-old Sumbul Siddiqui who has recently emigrated from Karachi and is now representing England. This shows how quickly and impressively the youth players from Pakistan have improved in recent years.

Moiz is now placed 48th and is the youngest player in the top half. Little Abdullah Abbasi continued to impress and is currently placed 65th out of 108 players.

Published in Dawn, November 22th, 2014