Scrabble Association, Singapore
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WESPA Championships (WESPAC) 2023 Qualification Criteria

The following are the criteria which will be used to select the Singapore players for the WESPA Championships 2023. Barring any amendments announced beforehand, these criteria will take effect from the start of the Qualifying Period (QP), with the Committee's decision being final in cases of dispute.

The QP starts from the 1st Sep 2022, and concludes with the 2023 National Championships or 31st May 2023, whichever is earlier.

The QP is divided into three sub-periods as follows:

  1. Start of QP to 30 November 2022 (3 months)
  2. 01 December 2022 to 28 February 2023 (3 months)
  3. 01 March 2023 to 31 May 2023 (3 months)

Eligibility

All selectees must be Singapore Citizens or Singapore Permanent Residents from the commencement of the QP until WESPAC 2023. They must also be paid-up SA members throughout this period. Any SA membership that expires within this period must be renewed before the expiry date. They must not have elected to represent another country when eligible to be selected for Singapore.

Each eligible selectee must play at least 54 (face-to-face) rated games during the QP, or 50% of all available[1] rated games in all local tournaments if there are fewer than 108 rated games during the QP.

Games from non-SA-rated overseas (face-to-face) tournaments may be included by players who reside outside Singapore during a particular sub-period[2], and who have a history of at least 100 SA-rated games.

The player must submit advance notice of the overseas tournaments to SA (email: ratingstoucanet.com), and submit the result within one week from the end of the tournament and before the end of the QP. The requests will be considered on an individual basis.

In addition, the following criteria shall apply:

  1. The player must play in the top division.
  2. There must be a minimum of 12 players counted across all tournament divisions playing to Collins Scrabble Words (CSW).[3]
  3. The division must be rated by WESPA, WESPA-recognized Scrabble body, or other bodies acceptable to SA (appended as Schedule 1), and played to Collins Scrabble Words 2021 (CSW21)[3].
  4. The Committee, whose consent may be withheld for any reason whatsoever, must agree to include the tournament for eligibility.

Games won by reason of opponent's absence (winning byes) count towards the minimum required rated games and determination of QR. Losing byes do not.

[1] for elimination-style tournaments (like SSSg), the minimum guaranteed games are considered as "available"
[2] SA reserves the right to request proof of overseas residence such as a letter from employer stating overseas company address and period of overseas posting.
[3] Updated on 27 Sep 2022.

Schedule 1[3]

SA will accept submission of results from tournaments rated by bodies listed below for the purposes of this QC.

The list may be amended by SA from time to time.

Qualifying via WESPAC performance

Eligible players finishing in the top 10 in WESPAC will be invited for the next WESPAC.

As WESPAC 2021 was held virtually and the qualification criteria were based on virtual games, the committee has decided to allow players who finished in the top 10 in WESPAC 2019 to qualify for WESPAC 2023 instead, subject to them meeting the eligibility criteria. Two SA members will qualify via this route based on results in WESPAC 2019.

Qualifying as National Champion

One invitation will be given to the 2022 National Scrabble Champion; and one invitation to the 2023 National Scrabble Champion. Both invitations must meet all eligibility criteria listed above.

Qualifying from Qualification Ranking (QR)

Eligible players not already invited as the 2022 or 2023 National Champion or WESPAC top 10 finisher will be invited in order of QR.

To determine QR, eligible players will be ranked by two metrics, in descending order of priority:

  1. NOP: Number of Periods with 16 or more eligible games (i.e. SA-rated games and admissible overseas games)
  2. QRP: Qualifying Rating Points

QRP computation is defined as follows:

  1. P1, P2, P3 are the peak ratings achieved during sub-periods i, ii and iii respectively. The peak rating for a sub-period is the highest of the ratings achieved at the end of tournaments within the sub-period. All SA-rated tournaments are included for computation. For multi-phase tournaments like SSSg, each individually-rated phase is considered as a rated tournament.

  2. QRP = (P1 + P2 + 2 × P3)/4, which is a weighted average of peak ratings in the three sub-periods.

  3. Px (x denotes the sub-period number) is 0 if the player played no SA-rated games in a sub-period (except overseas-based cases as per number 4 below).

  4. When an overseas-based player submits an admissible overseas tournament to fulfil eligibility criteria and he plays no SA-rated games in a sub-period, the player will be awarded value for the Px for the sub-period instead of 0. The calculation will be

    Px = Px' - (60 × number of sub-periods using non-SA-rated overseas tournament so far)

    where Px' is last recorded peak rating from SA-rated games, or last recorded SA rating so far if no such peak rating has been recorded yet.
    If the player plays a mixture of SA-rated tournaments and admissible overseas tournaments in a sub-period, both count towards eligibility but Px is calculated based only on SA-rated tournament.

The maximum NOP is 3, i.e. for players who play 16 games or more in all sub-periods. Since players will first be ranked by NOP then by QRP, all players with NOP = 3 will be ranked with higher QR than those with NOP = 2 regardless of their QRP, and so on for lower NOP.

If more than one player have the same QR, the tie-breaker is the greater number of rated games in the QP.

Acceptance of selection

Selectees must accept their invitation by two weeks after the end of the QP (14 June 2023), failing which, the place will be offered to the next eligible player with the next highest QR.

Selectees who decline the slot offered them by the deadline may choose to indicate provisional interest to be reinstated. If so, they may be considered to be offered a slot again, if and only if all other eligible players have declined the slot.

SA reserves the right to amend provisions if required by circumstances.

Updated 25 Nov 2022:

EXTENSION TO ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA

A question arose regarding eligibility of J Jeyaseelan ("Jeya") who joined as a member subsequent to, but was not a member as at commencement of QP. Following much deliberation the committee agreed on the following approach, which is also made available to others joining subsequent to commencement of QP and fulfilling other eligibility criteria.

1 to start Jeya's membership on the date which would be normal under usual working practice namely 1 November 2022.
2 to treat Jeya as ineligible under the QC as it stands
3 to grant Jeya an exemption from QC requiring membership to run from commencement of the QC. Using the QC definitions, qualification peak ratings points will be (P1 + P2 + 2 × P3)/4, provided Jeya plays the final tournament in QP 1, failing which it will be (0 + P2 + 2 × P3)/4. All games played will be counted towards the total numbers of games.
4 to state that this is a one-off exemption, and it is intended that the next revision of the QC will address issues that have come to light.

The committee regrets that timing issues have resulted in this being disseminated later than ideal given the specification in point 3 above.

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Last updated: 25 Nov 2022