David Eldar has defeated Harshan Lamabadusuriya 4-3 in the finals of the WESPA Championship to become world champion for the second time in a thrilling match that was in the balance until the end of the deciding game.
The two finalists shared the first two games, with Harshan winning a close first game after challenging off David’s play of FARRINER. After opening game 2 with an exchange, David continued with an impressive sequence of high-scoring bonus plays as well as LUZ for over 60. Game 3 was a tight affair with a tense end-game as, with Harshan leading by around 25 with just 3 tiles left in the bag, David found a low-scoring play of TAN needing to draw A,E from the bag for a guaranteed win, but drew A,O allowing Harshan to out run the come back and take a narrow victory.
After the lunch break, in game 4, David had another barnstorming game featuring LUKEWARM, SUPREMO POSITIVE and LOITERING to win by over 100 despite Harshan’s double-double of EQUATING for 122.
Game 5 was a closer game again, with David’s early SOSATIE opening up a lead early on before Harshan hit back with VERMINED TEUCHEST and the out-play of RESEMBLE to win by 90 and put him one win away from the title.
Game 6 started with many high-scoring plays with David’s opening PROTEGE giving Harshan EPITAXES and David responding with SNIFTER. As the game neared the end game, Harshan played ENTASIA opening up a second triple-triple lane and although David played in both places, it wasn’t with a bonus and Harshan continued with TENIOID but David made a key play of CUT setting himself up to level the match at 3-3 and send it to a decider.
Harshan had the advantage of going first in the deciding game, courtesy of finishing the preliminaries with the best record and he opened with ECHOIER using the first blank, following with PEPONIDA. David immediately came back with ZEP for 67 and after struggling with vowel-light racks, used the second blank for VERSING. Unfortunately, faced with clunky vowel-heavy racks, Harshan played the phoney LUE which gave David the momentum and a late 30 point lead. As the end-game arrived with 8 tiles in the bag and a 10-point lead, David bonused with DAUNTERS and despite an excellent rack of AEILMRS and plenty of floaters, no bonuses would play and David outlasted Harshan, who played out with RAMILIES, but it wasn’t enough and so David won the final game narrowly to win the tournament and to be crowned a 2-time world champion.
David and Harshan contested the best-of-7 final after finishing in the top two places after playing 32 preliminary games over the previous 4 days. The field was one of the strongest in a world championship event in recent times, with over a dozen players rated above 2000 in an overall field of 134 competitors.
Four players were in with a shot of qualifying for the final contention going into the last round of the preliminaries, although none of them were guaranteed a spot. David and Harshan defeated two former world champions, Wellington Jighere and Adam Logan, respectively in win-and-you’re-in matches.
Lewis Mackay finished top of the other home nations players, and indeed all the other players in the field, as he finished in 3rd place overall after winning his final 9 games to finish 22-10, +1763 in front of Wellington and Andrew Fisher, with Adam Logan’s loss in the final round dropping him to 6th.
Neil Scott (19-13) was the highest-placed Scot in 24th place, one game ahead of Paul Allan (18-14) in 40th and Stu Harkness (14-18) in 114th. Northern Ireland’s sole representative, Rik Kennedy, finished in 84th place at 15-17. Team England had Jason Carney, Natalie Zolty, Jack Moran and Elie Dangoor finish with 17-15 records, Bob Violett with 16½, Fidelis Olutu with 15½ then 4 more on 15-17 (Femi Awowade, Wayne Kelly, Donna Stanton and Jared Robinson) with John Ashmore, winner of the warm up event, and Stewart Houten one game further back.
Apart from John’s victory in the Hearts event, James Wilkie and Ruth MacInerney finished 6th and 7th in the 24-game Diamonds event, with Sumbul Siddiqui just behind in 10th before going on to finish 6-2 in 3rd place in the Clubs challenge event.