Early talents
Chris was born in Adelaide, but now lives and studies in
Sydney. His strategic skills shone early playing in junior chess
tournaments in NSW. He competed in the NSW junior championships in 1999
and played for the senior team of multiple-time national school
champions, Sydney Grammar School, in 2000. But he was playing Scrabble
long before he played chess. His parents taught him Scrabble at the age
of four, soon after teaching him to read. He subscribed to the British
magazine Onwords when he turned twelve. Apart from regularly
playing with the Maven program, he played only with family
until 1999. Then he wrote to the NSW Scrabble Enquiry Centre and was
promptly directed to his first tournament the same weekend. His
interest in Scrabble soon completely superseded chess, and Chris hasn't
played competitively in chess since 2001, where he represented the NSW
GPS schools against the CAS team.
Chris won the NSW Intermediate Championship in his
second Scrabble tournament in October 1999. He won the Advanced
Division in his third tournament three months later. He then played in
the 2000 City of Sydney International Masters, where he came 20th in a
field of 60 and improved his rating to 1540. By his fifth tournament he
was already playing in the Masters Division. Chris has played regularly
in tournaments in NSW ever since, except for 2001 where he took ten
months off tournaments in order to complete his Higher School
Certificate.
Scrabble takes off
Chris's Scrabble highlights include third placings in
both the Summer and Winter Masters in 2004, narrowly missing out on the
2005 Summer title and winning the 2003 and 2004 New South Wales
Matchplay events. Over the two tournaments he won knockout matches over
world championship competitors such as Esther Perrins, Joan
Rosenthal, Rod Talbot, Paul Cleary, John Holgate and Bob Jackman.
Perhaps the biggest highlight was his 2004 Trans Tasman win, winning 21
of 24 games against New Zealand's best.
Something that keeps Chris humble is the dubious
privilege of having suffered the heaviest defeat in Australian
tournament history - a 435 point drubbing (688-253) at the hands of
Joan Rosenthal in July 2002. However, Chris also holds one of the
highest game scores in Australian tournaments - a 661 against Rod
Talbot in July 2004. He has also played in a game with one of the
highest all-time aggregates - beating Paul Cleary 567-483 in 2002.
Chris will be representing Australia for the first time in the 2004
Trans-Tasman.
Team Australia 2004
Player profiles
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Scrabble feats
Chris's favourite tournament plays include MISFOCUS and
DRUIDISM as winning outplays, ZYMURGY, TRISTFUL, COINCIDED through two
separate letters, ALCAZAR, EOLOPILE, going out with a 6-tile overlap
bingo (REASTED) to beat Naween Fernando in their first tournament game,
and prefixing TICAL with EME- in a tight endgame to win a game in the
2004 Matchplay final. He also managed to wrap seven letters around a
four letter word to make an 11-leter word COM(PROM)ISER. In
non-competitive games his favourite bingos have been DESUETUDE and
STRELITZI. One of the many amazing words Chris remembers played against
him (perhaps because he came back to win) is Paul Cleary's opening
reply of ZeLKoVAS to a starting play of VAC in 2003.
Chris hasn't ever really had much time to study for
Scrabble, and certainly hasn't had the time he'd have liked to improve
his game in recent years, although he has served on the NSW Scrabble
committee for two years. His Scrabble goals in the short term are to
find time to study for the Trans-Tasman so as not to embarrass himself.
He also hopes to qualify for the 2005 World Championships.
Other interests
A scholarship student at the University of Sydney, Chris
is in the third year of an Arts/Law degree. He is majoring in music and
will be doing an Honours year in musicology in 2005. In addition to
full-time study, Chris sings in the Sydneian Bach Choir, and will be
flying out from Brisbane the day after the Trans-Tasman to join them on
tour in Europe. He is also a founding member of the 9-voice a cappella
male group Back in Black, with whom he performs regularly
throughout Sydney. Chris also sings with the Renaissance Players of
Sydney University - Australia's longest established specialist early
music group. His major musical interests apart from singing are
composition, choral arrangement and musicology.
Chris's interests include sports and games of all kinds (squash and
poker as a serious player; cricket, tennis, bowling, most other card
games and table-tennis as a dilettante), literature, cosmology,
politics and sound editing. He also enjoys indulging in cynicism,
hedonism, alcohol, high-flown rhetoric, pretentiousness and good food
(to varying degrees). His goals include working out what he wants to do
with his life, and earning enough money to claim Youth Allowance in the
meantime.
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