Cham­pi­ons T&T, led by An­tho­ny Mod­este, was al­most im­pec­ca­ble as it re­tained the re­cent­ly-staged Tri-Na­tions Scrab­ble Cham­pi­onship, held at the Bank of Guyana build­ing. Mod­este, the tour­na­ment MVP amassed ten wins and 1059 points, steer­ing T&T to a com­fort­able vic­to­ry in the end with a to­tal of 43 points, to Guyana's 34 and Bar­ba­dos' 31 points. The ti­tle was se­cured when T&T swamped Bar­ba­dos 27 match­es to nine. On the open­ing day of the three-day tour­na­ment, which con­clud­ed just over a week ago, T&T suf­fered a sur­pris­ing de­feat when af­ter be­ing edged 20-16 by Guyana. It was the first time that Guyana had beat­en T&T in more than 14 years.

How­ev­er, on the sec­ond day, Bar­ba­dos whipped Guyana 22-14, which meant that T&T would have to de­feat Bar­ba­dos by more than 22 points on the fi­nal day. The ten­sion was high, but T&T be­lieved that the feat was at­tain­able, es­pe­cial­ly with the in­clu­sion of five for­mer na­tion­al cham­pi­ons in the team: Mod­este, Kurt Ross, Bri­an Yates, Pat John and Leslie Charles. On the third day, team T&T gave a spec­tac­u­lar dis­play of word pow­er and strat­e­gy. In the open­ing two rounds of 12 match­es, Bar­ba­dos won on­ly one.

At the end of the day, Charles won all of his six match­es, thus se­cur­ing him the Most Valu­able Play­er (MVP). Mod­este and Adol­phus Alexan­der won five match­es each. Ross and John scored four each. Yates won two and Eu­gene Capri­a­ta on­ly played one match and won it.

In the In­di­vid­ual Open Tour­na­ment held on Sun­day, T&T again racked up more wins. How­ev­er, the tour­na­ment was won by Bar­ba­di­an Or­let Bul­lock who had one more win than Charles (Leslie), who fin­ished in sec­ond. Third spot went to Fred Collins of Guyana.

Both Charles and Mod­este al­so won in­di­vid­ual prizes.

The 2014 com­pe­ti­tion will be host­ed by Bar­ba­dos.

prizes

High­est Game Score: T&T vs Guyana - Bri­an Yates (T&T)

High­est Sin­gle Play: T&T vs Bar­ba­dos - Pat John (T&T, 67 points)

High­est Game Score: T&T vs Bar­ba­dos - Leslie Charles (T&T, 544 points)

High­est num­ber of bin­gos: T&T vs Bar­ba­dos - Leslie Charles (17 bin­gos)

High­est num­ber of bin­gos for the tour­na­ment: Leslie Charles (25 bin­gos)

Tour­na­ment MVP: An­tho­ny Mod­este - T&T (10 wins, 1,059 points)

Chal­lenge Tro­phy: T&T

Tri-Na­tions Cham­pi­onship Tro­phy: T&T