After four harrowing rounds Ashwant Satamand emerged the winner of yesterday’s Junior Scrabble Competition organized by the Guyana Scrabble Association and held at the Malteenoes Sports Club, Thomas Lands.

Satamand, of the Enterprise Scrabble Club, ended with four games and a positive spread of 816 to beat Ricardo Punwasy, who ended with three games and 371 points into second place.

Sharing the same amount of wins with Punwasy was third place finisher Jennelle Cadogan who ended with a positive spread of 83 points and fourth place Tevin Skeete, who ended with a negative spread of four.

Romario Gonsalves, who won two of his four games, accumulated a positive spread of 553.

The only one of the 12 participants to win all four games, Satamand added to that achievement by recording four bingos during the tournament.

However, the prize for that feat went to Rashad Hussain, who recorded five bingos from his four games.

Satamand opened with a win against Cadogan where he gained a very promising 149 points.
He gained another 213 points from Hussain and also played Wazim Dilipchand gaining an additional 355 points.

Tevin Skeete helped him to put in the final 99 points to round out his participation in the tournament.

President of the GSA, Moen Gafoor presented trophies to the first four finishers as well as to Hussein for the most number of bingos (i.e. using all seven of the letters in one turn).

The trophies were fully sponsored by Oasis Café and the winners will also be in receipt of gift vouchers sponsored by Giftland Office Max.

They are expected to receive these at a later date.

Additionally, all of the participants will be given GSA T-shirts compliments of Abdool and Abdool Insurance Brokers.

Gafoor expressed the hope that such tournaments would become a consistent part of the agenda of the GSA.

He also acknowledged Satamand’s “wonderful performance” at the tournament.

Satamand was a member of a five-man team from the Enterprise Scrabble Club which participated in the tournament.

The club is headed by scrabble enthusiast, Kamta Ramnarine.

According to Ramnarine, this was the first time that members of his club had ventured out to participate at a GSA tournament.

He expressed pleasure at being given the opportunity to display the skills of his wards and said he hoped that future tournaments would be played in the East Coast Community.