Officials and players of the Qatar Scrabble League (QSL) are preparing for another play off round to determine the third finalist to represent Qatar in the 2009 Gulf Scrabble Championship. The news of the additional seat was received on the heels of the playoff round last Friday which saw Anthony Gomes clinching the second spot from the 8-game round robin play-off tournament. The QSL Committee has given a young boy player, Jacob Sunny, who is in Year 9 at MES Indian School, the first seat to the GCC event. Jacob, who is 14, has been in Qatar for almost 10 years. He began playing Scrabble at the age of 9 and bagged the third prize in the annual scrabble tournament held by Stafford School in 2005. Irfan Siddiqui, Bahrain Scrabble League (BSL) chairman, told QSL Chairman Judith Britten that BSL decided to give them another seat to compete at the Gulf Scrabble Championship. BSL poises itself as the organiser of the WESPA-rated Gulf Scrabble Championship with more than 30 Scrabble masters from Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, UAE, KSA and Qatar vying to be declared as one of the eight GCC entrants to the World Scrabble championship later in the year. Qatar is assured of one seat to the most prestigious Scrabble event that takes place every two years, in which 115 of the world’s top Scrabble players from 40 countries participate. Anthony Gomes started playing scrabble 10 years ago and is a veteran of the Gulf Scrabble Championship having represented the UAE in the Bahrain event a couple of years ago. Gomes has also seen board action in Oman, and India and has been pitted against the world-class players in an international tournament in Bangalore. Anthony had won seven straight games with the final game played against early favourite and fellow World Scrabble Championship player Loreta Alban. http://thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=Local_News&subsection=Qatar+News&month=April2009&file=Local_News2009042054032.xml

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