Ganesh Asirvatham, an English teacher from Malaysia  won the  1st prize of Rs 2 Lakh at the 4th iGATE International Scrabble Tournament 2008 held at Whitefield in the city, the corporate headquarters of iGATE Global Solutions, the integrated technology and operations (iTOPS) company. Wellington Jighere from Nigeria and Ayorinde Saidu, also from Nigeria, won the 2nd and 3rd prize respectively.

The three-day war of words from January 11 to 13 saw 26 international players and 33 Indians compete for the prize purse of over Rs 4 lakh.

Word experts from the UK, Thailand, Australia, Nigeria and Pakistan and several other South Asian and Middle East countries participated in the tournament. Besides Ganesh Asirvatham other top ranked Scrabble players in the world who played in the tournament include Wellington Jighere from Nigeria and Akshay Bhandarkar from the UAE.

Representing India
Eleven-year-old Purav Shah, 15-year-old Vyoma Shah (both from Bombay) and Mohsin Ahmed, a 11th standard student from Bangalore also took part in the tournament and played against the top ranked players. A total of 24 games were played over the 3 days, in which each player got a chance to play the other one-on-one.  The tournament followed the King of the Hill (KOTH) format. Word source was the Collins Scrabble Tournament and Club Wordlist, the official dictionary reference source for World Scrabble Championships.

iGATE is promoting Scrabble as this mind sport fits well with its culture of nurturing and encouraging intellectual growth.  iGATE has been actively associated with competitive scrabble in India starting with a National Open Scrabble Tournament in Bangalore in 2003, besides the three Internationals in Bangalore in 2005, 2006 and 2007.

DHNS