December 4, 2018
Nigeria yet again proved to be the dominant force in African Scrabble by retaining the Africa Scrabble Championship title at the 13th ASC held in Kenya from November 28 to December 2, 2018. The National Scrabble team took the top three positions at the 4 day event won by current National Champion (2018) Moses Peter who had 26 points and a spread of +2051. Former African champion Jighere Wellington was first runner-up with 22 points (+2083) while Eta Karo came third with 21 points (+88). Four other Nigerians were also placed in the top ten (10) positions at the end of the 32-round tournment ensuring that Nigeria also successfully retained the Best Team title won in Ghana in 2016.
The new champion Moses Peter (who was also team captain of the squad) displayed the strong form that won him the National Scrabble Championship title earlier this year (July 2018) and runner-up at the WESPAC Championship last year (November 2017) from the start of the tournament. He won his first 5 games and was consistently among the top 5 on the standings to the very end, a feat that ensured he had effectively won the title by round 30 with 2 games to spare.
Other members of the team performed brilliantly, with members of the team in the 5th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 15th, 25th, 26th and 38th positions ensuring that 7 Nigerian were in the top 10 prize table. Sixty-two players from seven African countries attended the tournament. The countries are Nigeria, hosts Kenya, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Tanzania and Zambia. At the end of the event, team Nigeria topped the team performance charts with a mean spread of +1722, an average rank of 3.8 and a win rate of 63.73% playing against players from other countries. Kenya took the team runner-up position with a average spread of -626.2, an average rank of 10.0 and 46.98% performance against others.
