WESPA Championship (WESPAC) 2025 Qualification Criteria (QC)

Scrabble Association, Singapore
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WESPA Championship (WESPAC) 2025 Qualification Criteria (QC)

The following are the criteria which will be used to select the Singapore players for the WESPA Championship 2025. 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 01 Oct 2024, and concludes on 31 Jul 2025.

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

Start of QP to 31 Dec 2024 (3 months)
01 Jan 2025 to 31 Mar 2025 (3 months)
01 Apr 2025 to 31 Jul 2025 (4 months)

Eligibility

All selectees must be Singapore Citizens or Singapore Permanent Residents from the commencement of the QP until WESPAC 2025. 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 60 rated games during the QP, or 50% of all available^[1] rated games in all local tournaments if there are fewer than 120 rated games during the QP.

Games from non-SA-rated overseas 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:

The player must play in the top division.
There must be at least 12 players in the tournament, including all divisions.
The division must be rated by WESPA or a WESPA-recognized Scrabble body.
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) will count towards the minimum required rated games and determination of QR. Losing byes will 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.

Qualifying from Qualification Ranking (QR)

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

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

QRP computation is defined as follows:

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.
QRP = (P1 + P2 + 2 × P3)/4, which is a weighted average of peak ratings in the three sub-periods.
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).
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 one month after the end of the QP or 14 Aug 2025, whichever is earlier; 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.

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