Causeway SCRABBLE Challenge

The Causeway SCRABBLE Challenge is an annual international team event organized by Michael Tang of Singapore. Ten five-player teams play a team round robin schedule over 45 rounds, where each player plays each player from an opposing team once. The 2009 Challenge is being held in the same location as the 2009 World SCRABBLE Championship in the week following that event, to make it as easy as possible for international players to play in both events.

NASPA is overseeing the qualification system for the U.S. and Canadian Challenge teams. Players will be chosen according to their qualification rank for their respective WSC teams. If there are any players who want to play in the Challenge but did not register for the WSC, they will be ranked below all WSCQS registrants and in order of NASPA rating on 2009-08-01.

If at least five players register for their team by 2009-08-01, the top five will constitute the team, with any additional players being designated alternates.

If neither team registers five players by 2009-08-01, but there are at least five players registered from Canada and the United States, then we will apply to the organizer to have a five-player North American team. When choosing from among more than five players, positions will be assigned in alternation beginning with the larger WSC team. So the U.S. will send the 1st, 3rd and 5th members, and 2nd alternate, if up to four Americans register; and Canada will send the 2nd and 4th members and 1st and 3rd alternates. (If the U.S. only sends one or two players, then Canada may send four or three respectively.)

If it becomes necessary to rearrange teams after 2009-08-01 because of cancellations or late registrants, priority will be given to players who registered before the deadline, and among late registrants to those who registered earlier than others.

Here are the registration statuses of all candidates. Please email corrections and updates to John Chew.

Team U.S.A.		Team Canada
?	Dave Wiegand	no	Tony Leah
?	Jason Katz-Brown	yes	Joel Wapnick
yes	Sam Kantimathi	yes	David Boys
?	John O'Laughlin	maybe	Max Panitch
yes	Nathan Benedict	yes	Dielle Saldanha
?	Jason Idalski	?	Ron Hoekstra
?	Geoff Thevenot	?	Mark Schellenberg
yes	Jim Kramer	?	Andrew Golding
yes	Marty Gabriel	?	Dean Saldanha
?	John Luebkemann
?	Sam Rosin
no	Nick Ball
yes	Robert Linn
?	Mark Kenas
?	Amit Chakrabarti
?	Brian Bowman
?	Puneet Sharma
?	Steve Polatnick
?	Stuart Goldman