Nigel Richards (Scrabble player)

Nigel Richards (born 1967) is a New Zealand–Malaysian Scrabble player who is among the most successful players of all time. Born and raised in New Zealand, Richards became World Champion in 2007, and repeated the feat in 2011, 2013, 2018, and 2019, and remains the only person to have won the title more than once. He also won the third World English-Language Scrabble Players’ Association Championship (WESPAC) in 2019.[1]

Nigel Richards

Richards is also a five-time U.S. national champion (four times consecutively from 2010 to 2013), an eight-time UK Open champion, an 11-time champion of the Singapore Open Scrabble Championship and a 15-time winner of the King's Cup in Bangkok, the world's biggest Scrabble competition.

In 2015, despite not speaking French, Richards won the French World Scrabble Championships, after reportedly spending nine weeks studying the French dictionary. He won it again in 2018, and multiple duplicate titles from 2016.

Renowned for his eidetic and mathematical abilities, Richards has been described as a reclusive personality and has been rarely interviewed.

Playing history

Richards started playing competitive Scrabble at New Zealand's Christchurch Scrabble Club. Since beginning his competitive career in 1997, he has won about 75% of his tournament games, collecting an estimated USD200,000 in prize money.[2] In 2000 Richards moved to Malaysia.

2007

Richards won the World Scrabble Championship[3] and earned USD 15,000 by winning a playoff, 3 games to 0, against Ganesh Asirvatham of Malaysia.[4] The two qualified for the playoff by leading a field of 104 international experts after 24 rounds of a tournament held 9–12 November in Mumbai, India.

2008

Richards won the USA National Scrabble Championship and earned USD25,000 by winning his last three games against the runner-up, 1998 champion Brian Cappelletto, for a record of 22 wins and 6 losses, with a cumulative spread of 1340 points.[5]

2009

Richards was the runner-up in the USA National Scrabble Championship in Dayton, Ohio,[6] losing to Dave Wiegand but still winning 25 of the 31 matches.

2010

Richards won the USA National Scrabble Championship in Dallas, Texas,[7] again winning 25 games. His performance in this tournament was so dominant that he clinched the title before the last day of competition began.

2011

He repeated his success in the World Scrabble Championship[8] in Warsaw, Poland, winning a closely fought final against Australia's top player, Andrew Fisher.

Richards won the USA National Scrabble Championship in Dallas, Texas,[9] winning 22 games, including his final two, to hold off a number of challengers.

2012

Richards won the USA National Scrabble Championship,[10] in Orlando, Florida, winning 22 of 31 games. To win the title, Richards had to defeat past champion David Gibson by at least 170 points in the final game; he won it by 177 points. At the time of the victory, Richards became the only person to have won the event four times, as well as the only player to have won it in three consecutive years.

2013

Richards won 24 of 31 games to finish first at the National Scrabble Championship in Las Vegas, Nevada, in July.[11] The championship was not decided until the last game. Though he lost the game to Komol Panyasophonlert, Richards kept the score close enough to retain the title for a record fourth consecutive time (and record fifth overall).

He became World Champion for a third time, beating Panyasophonlert in the final; as of 2013, the World Championship has been renamed the Scrabble Champions Tournament and will be held annually.

2015

On 20 July, Richards won the nonduplicate portion of the 2015 French World Scrabble Championship in Belgium after two months of studying the French lexicon.[12] He does not speak French.[13] He won 14 of the preliminary 17 games before defeating the 2014 runner-up Schélick Ilagou Rekawe in the final, two games to one.[14][15] In the duplicate (rarely played in English, but played in French since 1972) he finished second, just one point behind the winner, Switzerland's David Bovet.[16]

2017

Richards competed in the World Championship and became the first seed after the regular 30 games, but lost in the quarterfinal to the 8th seed David Eldar, who won the tournament.

Richards won the 2017 WGPO Word Cup.[17][18]

2018

Richards won his fourth World Championship. He also competed in the NASPA Championship, losing to Joel Sherman in the final round.[19] He competed in the French Championship and won his second Classique Championship[20] and his second Elite Duplicate (without conceding a single point), Blitz Duplicate and Paires titles.

Richards placed 2nd at the 4th Niagara Falls International Open.[21][22]

Career achievements

World Championship
No.YearStageOpponentResult
1 1999 Preliminaries – –
2 2005 Preliminaries – –
3 2007 Finals Ganesh Asirvatham 3–0 (1)
4 2009 Finals Pakorn Nemitrmansuk 1–3
5 2011 Finals Andrew Fisher 3–2 (2)
6 2013 Finals Komol Panyasophonlert 3–2 (3)
7 2014 Preliminaries – –
8 2015 Preliminaries – –
9 2016 Preliminaries – –
10 2017 Quarter-finals David Eldar 0–2
11 2018 Finals Jesse Day 3–1 (4)
12 2019 Finals David Eldar 3–1 (5)

U.S. National Scrabble Championship
No.YearResultRunner-up
1 2002 2nd (1) –
2 2004 3rd (1) –
3 2005 7th –
4 2008 Won (1) Brian Cappelletto
5 2009 2nd (2) –
6 2010 Won (2) Brian Cappelletto
7 2011 Won (3) Kenji Matsumoto
8 2012 Won (4) David Gibson
7 2013 Won (5) Komol Panyasophonlert
8 2014 16th –
9 2017 3rd (2) –
10 2018 2nd (3) –

French Scrabble
No.YearFormatOpponentResult
1 2015 Classique Schelick Ilagou Rekawe 2–1 (1)
2 2017 Blitz Duplicate – Won (1)
3 2017 Elite Duplicate – Won (1)
4 2017 Paires – Won with Hervé Bohbot (1)
5 2018 Classique Zingbe Gueu Mathieu 2–1[23] (2)
6 2018 Blitz Duplicate – Won (2)
7 2018 Elite Duplicate – Won (2)
8 2018 Paires – Won with Hervé Bohbot (2)
9 2019 Blitz Duplicate – Won (3)
10 2019 Elite Duplicate – Won (3)
11 2019 Paires – Won with Hervé Bohbot (3)

Other achievements

References
  1. Nigel’s WESPAC title
  2. "Nigel Richards – Player Profile". cross-tables.com. Retrieved 23 February 2014.
  3. John J. Chew, III. "WSC 2007: Nigel Richards [#82]". Live.wscgames.com. Retrieved 23 February 2014.
  4. John J. Chew, III. "WSC 2007: Finals". Live.wscgames.com. Retrieved 23 February 2014.
  5. "National Scrabble Championship : Division 1 Results". Cross-tables.com. Retrieved 23 February 2014.
  6. "National Scrabble Championship : Division 1 Results". Cross-tables.com. Retrieved 23 February 2014.
  7. "National Scrabble Championship : Division 1 Results". Cross-tables.com. Retrieved 23 February 2014.
  8. John J. Chew, III. "WSC 2011: Finals". Live.wscgames.com. Retrieved 23 February 2014.
  9. "National Scrabble Championship : Division 1 Results". Cross-tables.com. Retrieved 23 February 2014.
  10. "National Scrabble Championship : Division 1 Results". Cross-tables.com. Retrieved 23 February 2014.
  11. "National Scrabble Championship : Division 1 Results". Cross-tables.com. Retrieved 23 February 2014.
  12. Chappell, Bill (21 July 2015). "Winner Of French Scrabble Title Does Not Speak French". National Public Radio.
  13. Lichfield, John; Goodwin, Harry. "The new Francophone Scrabble world champion doesn't speak French". The Independent. Retrieved 12 August 2016.
  14. "Louvain 2015 French World Scrabble Championships live". French Scrabble Federation.
  15. "Le champion du monde de Scrabble francophone est néo-zélandais et ne parle pas français". France Tvinfo.
  16. "Louvain 2015 French World Scrabble Championships live, duplicate final results". French Scrabble Federation.
  17. Steele, Brian (1 August 2017). "Scrabble tournament draws players from around the world to Springfield". MassLive. Retrieved 1 February 2019.
  18. "WGPO Past Tournaments". Word Game Players. WGPO. Retrieved 1 February 2019.
  19. "Wordsmiths unite in Buffalo for Scrabble Championship". 10 August 2018. Retrieved 17 April 2019.
  20. FFSC.FR
  21. Langley, Alison (30 July 2018). "Niagara to host international Scrabble tourney". Niagara Falls Review. Retrieved 1 February 2019.
  22. "Niagara Falls, ON (CSW)". Cross-tables.com. Retrieved 1 February 2019.
  23. "Championnats du Monde 2018 – Élite Classique". French Scrabble Federation. Retrieved 21 July 2018.
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