KL Car VS Singapore Car

Singaporean no match for the rest

The Johor MSA mini , the first of the 4 MSA mini tournaments , ended in a blast on the 22^nd of March . Held a week after the Lim Boon Heng Cup in Singapore , a total number of 12 participants were present for this event . The somewhat diminished number of participants did not prevent the event from being a very exciting one .

In the intermediate category , 4 players from the English College of Johor , famously known for producing skilled Scrabble players such as Ching San Song , Ian Tay and Brian Lim , slugged it out in a 6 match challenge with Benjamin Choo emerging as the champion while Haren Mohanraj was the runner-up . Each of the intermediate players won some cash for their participation in the tournament .

The focus , however , was in the Masters category where 5 Malaysians and 3 Singaporeans battle it out for first place . The Malaysians ; veterans Tan Jin Chor and Jocelyn Lor , recent CNY champ Alex Tan as well as up and coming youth players Ramaraj Sundraraj and Chang Ching Wei were all able players and were a on par with the Singaporeans who came ; Ricky Purnomo , Tony Sim and Shim Yen Nee . All the Malaysians hailed from Kuala Lumpur , making this tourney a KL car vs Singapore car match . This was due to the fact that all the Malaysians went back in the same car while the Singaporeans came and went back in another car . After a grueling 15 games , Ricky Purnomo of Singapore managed to brush aside the other players to win the tournament with an eye-popping 13 wins and +1104 spread . Ricky only dropped two games in the first day , losing to fellow Singaporean Tony Sim and Malaysia’s Chang Ching Wei .

The 15 games were played in two round robins and a KOTH final pair-up . This was a good format as it enabled each player to play with every participant twice , giving them the pleasure of exacting revenge or just to enjoy another game with one another . On the first day , 10 games were played so that the players would be able to return home earlier on the next day . Ricky Purnomo dropped two games on the first day but still ended up on first place after the first day . He was closely followed by Tony Sim and Tan Jin Chor , each on 6 wins . It was a bad day for Chang Ching Wei as he only won two out of the ten games played ( winning against Ricky and Ramaraj ) despite putting up a creditable display in the CNY tournament a mere month ago .

The second day saw mixed fortunes for the players . Ricky Purnomo , still on his excellent form , produced a superb performance to win the last 5 games . Tan Jin Chor , who was just behind Ricky , dropped 3 games but still managed to hold on for second place . It was the battle for third place that was exciting . Tony Sim was clearly on his way to clinch the place as long as he did not lose to Jocelyn by more than 163 points in the last game . Alas , it was an unlucky game as he stumbled to a 188 points lose to Jocelyn , ultimately giving Jocelyn the third place . A post mortem on the game showed that he could have lost by less had he played a lesser point move to go out in two rather than being caught with tiles himself .

Chang Ching Wei , sore from his dismal performance on the first day stringed four wins in a row to pit himself against Alex Tan in the KOTH round . It was as though history repeated itself . Chang Ching Wei opted not to challenge Alex Tan’s move of ABYED [ phoney] but instead challenged ILKA , a valid word , resulting in his lose by six points . Even his 107 point move of VERIFIED did not help to earn his fifth win in a row . On another table , Ramaraj , having lost all his games before the 15^th game , played a niner DISASTER but it was not enough to prevent the disaster of losing to Yen Nee . Other notable plays were ZOOGLEA , DIOCESAN , PYRANOSE , QUASARS , AMEERATES and FORAMINAL .

For his efforts , Ricky Purnomo pocketed RM 300 while Jin Chor and Jocelyn each took home RM200 and RM100 respectively . All in all , a good job by the organizer , Othman Zakaria in making the Johor MSA Mini an exciting tournament . The next tournament in the Malaysian schedule will be the MSA Mini 2 , held in Berjaya Times Square . For further inquiries , you can contact K.Sundraraj at 012-3661555 .