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Commentary: Before the Tournament

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Go to: Before the Tournament, Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Round 4, Round 5, Round 6, Round 7, Round 8, Round 9, Round 10, Round 11, Round 12, Round 13, Round 14, Round 15, Round 16, Round 17, Round 18, Round 19, Round 20, Round 21, Round 22, Round 23, Round 24, Round 25, Round 26, Round 27, Round 28, Round 29, Round 30, Round 31, Round 32, Round 33, Round 34, Round 35, Round 36, Round 37, Round 38, Round 39, Round 40, Round 41, Round 42, After the Tournament.

For those of us who had the opportunity to arrive a few days early in Cape Town, the holiday is over and it's time to get down to work. Table Mountain and the ever-changing ocean will go back to being just magnificent backdrops as we focus on our favourite board game.

Almost all the players managed to make it to the opening reception, which featured welcoming speeches from Ata Sonday (ZAF), Sulaiman Gora Garba (NGA), Gerald Davids (ZAF), Elie Dangoor (Eng), Amy Byrne and myself, followed by a hot buffet and conversations that would be familiar to anyone who has attended a World Scrabble Championship. Friendships were rekindled as players who live on opposite sides of the world remet after years apart, and everyone anticipated the initial pairings draw with mixed emotions depending on where they stood in the seeding.

We will begin tomorrow at 08:30 local time (06:30 UTC) with a full 9-round day of predetermined pairings. Three groups of ten players, chosen at random from deciles, will play round robins; the remaining 16 players will play a partial round robin. This is to give everyone the chance to play players of all levels, and to demonstrate their own calibre on the first day of play, to be used to determine how the pairings will go on the second morning.

Thanks to Gwen Rea (ZAF), for contributing a large number of professional quality photos of the event this round.