Top Nigerian Scrabble player Philips Lukeman Owolabi scooped a cool R70 000 in winning the Cape Town International Scrabble Tournament 2018, which ended
yesterday.
“Owolabi is an extremely focused Scrabble player with a wide word knowledge and studies about two to three hours a day in preparation for international matches,” said SA Scrabble president and Western Province Scrabble Association chairperson
Gerald Davids.
He said Owolabi, who won the gold category, lives in Ireland and is an IT engineer.
Davids said the competition’s silver category was won by Zambia’s Isaac Maape, who walked away with R25000, with fellow Zambian Frank Chitimbala winning the competition’s bronze category and earning himself a cool R10000.
In the other categories, the highest game score of 683 points went to South African Trevor Hovelmeier, who also annexed the highest word score of 191 for one word.
Winner of the inaugural version of the competition in 2016 was the world’s current number one player, Nigel Richards from New Zealand.
Nigeria has some of the world’s top players and there are about three Nigerians in the world’s top 20 Scrabble players.
Davids said: “This is the second international scrabble championships where some of the world’s top scrabble players converged on Cape Town.
"The tournament was hugely successful and is considered one of the best
organised tournaments in the world.”