What we’re about
This is a sister group to the Hong Kong Social Scrabble Meetup, for those more experienced Scrabble players who would like to take part in competitive play.
We also very much welcome tournament Scrabble players from overseas who would like to join us whilst visiting Hong Kong. (Please WhatsApp Paul on +85291857028 to make arrangements if this is you.)
Primarily we organise "open" tournaments which are for anyone who wishes to play, provided that you are familiar with the rules of Scrabble and happy to play to the constraints of a timer. Our tournaments generally run with 25 minutes per player per game as the time limit . As a rule of thumb, if you don't regularly score over 325 points in 2-player games, and if you don't know the CSW19 2-letter word list, then you may find yourself struggling.
We play to the WESPA Tournament Rules (v5.1) (with a 5 point penalty per word for an incorrect challenge), and, from March 2025, using the UEW24 dictionary (which is CSW24 plus the words expurgated since CSW2019). We work with the Hong Kong Scrabble Players Association, and almost all of our tournaments are within their rating system.
We do occasionally organise "invitational" tournaments, where the criterion for an invitation is generally to have achieved a certain HKSPA or WESPA rating.
Please note also that this group runs a "two no-shows and you're out" policy. Tournaments are generally designed for a specific number of people and the organizers put some time and effort and stress into getting a good number of people. One person no-showing messes the whole thing up for everybody. Obviously, emergencies happen, so please let the organizer know (the contact number is always in the event description) if you are signed up and your plans change within 48 hours of the event.