Home

The 21^st annual Gulf Scrabble Championships (GSC) will take place in Dubai on 24^th and 25^th June 2011 at the Etisalat Academy in Muhaisanah. The championships, which is recognized by the World English Scrabble Players Association (WESPA) as the official annual tournament for the region, has previously taken place in Bahrain and Oman and has now moved to the UAE. The main sponsors of GSC 2011 are Jashanmal Books and Thomsun Group of Companies.

Over 40 players of over nine different nationalities from the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Oman will compete in this premier tournament. As a WESPA rated tournament, every game played at the tournament will influence world rankings. Furthermore, the top performers at the GSC from each country will get a seat at the biennial World Scrabble Championship (WSC) to be held in Warsaw, Poland in October later this year. The UAE's best performance was at the 2007 WSC, when representative Akshay Bhandarkar placed 5^th in the global tournament.

According to Nikhil Soneja, organizer of the GSC 2011, “I am very pleased that the tournament is taking place in Dubai this year. The UAE has some of the best wordsmiths in the Gulf, who will keenly contest the top spot. In fact, the UAE contingent has won the team award at the GSC for three years running, and count amongst their ranks four past Gulf Champions as well as the best youth player in the GCC, 13 year old Dylan D’Souza.”

“We aim for this competition to be the biggest and most prestigious so far in the Gulf and lead the way for international tournaments to be held in Dubai. Scrabble has been played competitively in the Gulf since 1990 and we’d like to take this game to new heights locally as well as regionally.”

The reigning Gulf champion is the UAE’s Mohammad Sulaiman, who will be participating again this year. Mr. Sulaiman placed 20^th in the 2007 WSC and is one of the hot favorites to qualify this time via the GSC. The tournament will be directed by Ashok Bhandarkar, the Secretary of the Scrabble Association of India, who has previously directed national Scrabble tournaments in India. The two day event will culminate in a prize distribution ceremony on the afternoon of 25^th June, where the sponsors will be present to give away prizes.