AFTER leading for the first two days Moen Gafoor found himself overtaken by defending champion, Abigail McDonald, when the first half of the COURTS National Scrabble Championships came to a close on Monday evening at the Bank of Guyana Roof Garden.

After holding steady at second place for the first two days, McDonald propelled her way back to the helm on the final day of play after ending with 19 wins and a positive spread of 2 951 after three days and 22 matches.
Playing well enough to take the lead ahead of McDonald on the first two days, Gafoor still didn’t have what it took to outdo McDonald, trailing in second place with 18 wins and a positive spread of 3 955 points.
However Gafoor will still have a chance to prove himself this Saturday, when he comes up against McDonald in the finals, which is also scheduled to take place at the Bank of Guyana from 13.00hrs.
The two will go head-to-head and the ultimate champion will be determined by the best of five matches. The winner will be declared the 2013 National Champion and would have earned the right to represent Guyana at the World Scrabble Championships  in the Czech Republic in December.
Gafoor noted that he does not expect to have it easy in the finals when he comes up against McDonald. However, Gafoor was very pleased with his performance last weekend declaring it to be one of his best performances at a national championships, to date.
“Abigail is not an easy person,  so I’ll try to minimise my mistakes and I’ll be depending heavily on my word knowledge and adapt to a more defensive approach rather than attacking. With Abigail you have to be more on the defence.” Gafoor said.
It was Gafoor’s win in his final match against Grace Hercules, for 91 points, that allowed him to make it into the finals.
After losing 91 points against McDonald in the penultimate round, Gafoor’s win against Hercules permitted him to finish just ahead of former Caribbean champion, Fred Collins, who also finished with 18 wins, augmented with a positive spread of 2761 points.
Gafoor had suffered an earlier loss to Collins where he went under for 156 points, he also took blows against fourth-place finisher Devraj Deonarine that cost him 48 points. It was wins against Kapta Ramnarine (37 points), Anand Mohabir (126 points), and Wazir Dalipchand (594 points) that keep Gafoor afloat and still in a running for the title.
McDonald’s only loss came against eighth-place finisher Anand Mohabir, where she lost 981 points.
Deonarine took fourth place with 17 wins and a positive spread of 1420 points. Leon Belony, who entered the tournament ranked number two was relegated to finishing in fifth position with 17 wins and a positive spread of 3 041.
James Krakowsky followed with 15 wins and a positive spread of 1 982 points. Robert Williams finished in seventh with 15 wins and a positive spread of 1 850 points.