Nigel Richards (scrabble player)

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Nigel Richards in the final of the 2018 Scrabble World Championship

Nigel Richards (* 1967 ) is a New Zealand scrabble player who lives in Kuala Lumpur , Malaysia . He is in second place in the Elo ranking of the World English-language Scrabble Players' Association (as of 2019), but is generally considered the best player in English-language Scrabble and has won a total of five world championships. He is also a five -time American Scrabble champion and won the French-speaking Scrabble World Championship in 2015 and 2018. This made him the first Scrabble player to win the world title in both English and French Scrabble.

Life

Little is known about the life of Nigel Richards, who is considered silent and rarely gives interviews. Richards is said to come from the New Zealand city of Christchurch , where he worked as a technician for a water company. He lives in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia , where he saw footage from surveillance cameras for a security company. Nigel Richards is credited with a photographic memory ; he himself states that he can remember words as soon as he has seen them - he has thus acquired the words valid in Scrabble by simply reading through the dictionary.

Playing career

Richards first came into contact with Scrabble at the age of 28 and won the New Zealand National Championship straight away in 1997.

Although Nigel Richards had already attracted attention with his three world championship titles in English Scrabble (2007, 2011, 2013) and multiple victories in other English-language Scrabble competitions (such as the twelve-time winner in the Brand's Crossword Game King's Cup in Thailand ), he was particularly concerned his world champion title in the French Scrabble 2015 for strong media attention. Especially since Richards doesn't speak French. He is said to have memorized all the words in the French Scrabble dictionary within nine weeks without knowing their meaning. As a result of the Scrabble Association of has Iceland Richards to the Icelandic Scrabble Championships 2015 invited.

In the English-language tournament scrabble, Richards wins around three quarters of his games and scores around 460 points on average.

Richards' style of play is characterized on the one hand by the ability to actually discover the memorized words in the randomly drawn letters and those already lying on the board with almost no errors - for example, he scored in a competition in French Scrabble, in which the The most point-rich move in a given game situation is sought, points over several games that were close to the possible maximum. This allows him to find even complex moves that are very challenging for most players; A train attracted attention, for example, in which he formed the word CHL (O) R (O) DYN (E) using the letters O, O and E already lying on the floor. In addition, Richards is known for unorthodox strategic moves, such as those that sacrifice an extraordinary number of points in one move in order to prepare a very point-rich move that follows.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ WESPA Ratings ( English ) October 11, 2019. Accessed October 24, 2019.
  2. ↑ a b c Oliver Roeder: What Makes Nigel Richards The Best Scrabble Player On Earth ( English ) In: FiveThirtyEight . August 8, 2014. Retrieved July 24, 2015.
  3. ↑ Nigel Richards is again WESPA-Champion | Scrabble info. Retrieved on October 23, 2019 (German).
  4. ↑ Mike Ives: Scrabble's World Champion Masters the Tiles in 2 Languages . In: The New York Times . October 29, 2018, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed October 23, 2019]).
  5. ↑ a b Bill Chappell: Winner Of French Scrabble Title Does Not Speak French ( English ) In: NPR . July 21, 2015. Accessed July 24, 2015.
  6. ↑ Matt Cherry: Scrabble champ wins with vowel movements ( English ) In: CNN . August 12, 2010. Retrieved July 24, 2015.
  7. ↑ a b syd: Nigel Richards: The French Scrabble world champion cannot speak French . In: Spiegel Online . July 22, 2015. Accessed July 24, 2015.
  8. ↑ Mohan: MVC's Scrabble Study Log: Nigel Richards Article by Stefan Fatsis. In: MVC's Scrabble Study Log. August 24, 2009. Retrieved October 23, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Kim Willsher: The French Scrabble champion who doesn't speak French . In: The Guardian . July 21, 2015, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed October 23, 2019]).
  10. ↑ A way with words. Retrieved October 23, 2019 .
  11. ↑ Nigel Richards. Retrieved April 13, 2020 .
  12. ↑ On Nigel | Facebook. Retrieved April 13, 2020 .
  13. ↑ CHLORODYNE. Retrieved April 13, 2020 .
  14. ↑ Oliver Roeder: What Makes Nigel Richards The Best Scrabble Player On Earth. In: FiveThirtyEight. August 8, 2014, Retrieved April 13, 2020 (American English).
  15. ↑ Mohan: MVC's Scrabble Study Log: Nigel Richards Article by Stefan Fatsis. In: MVC's Scrabble Study Log. August 24, 2009, accessed April 13, 2020 .
  16. ↑ Prague 2013: Scrabble Champions Tournament: THE FINAL Game 2. In: youtube.com. Retrieved June 10, 2014 .
personal data
SURNAME Richards, Nigel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION New Zealand scrabble player
DATE OF BIRTH 1967