CASPA Coordinator Report - April 2001

Trevor Halsall CASPA Coordinator, 2000-2002

The Council of Australian Scrabble Players Associations (CASPA) met in Melbourne over Easter, just before the Australian Championships. Here are the main decisions (as well as a decision made prior to the AGM).

The meeting ran for four hours on Good Friday, and ranged over many topics. The new ATB editor, Anne Michell, was welcomed. Guidelines for the editor were discussed (this was an initiative of the previous editor, Michael Vnuk). The ATB should aim to reflect the total membership, fuller club details should be published each edition, and contributions received should generally be printed unless offensive or libellous. There should be consistency in the timing of publication, preferably towards the start of the month on cover.

The Australian Championships will be held in the Fremantle Italian Club in 2002, and in Adelaide in 2003.  The minimum rating of 1300, or top 10% in the state if lower, was reviewed, and considered appropriate for the 2002 Australian Championships.

Australian representatives currently require twelve months residency. This has been extended so that permanent residents are also eligible. Temporary visa holders are ineligible. For the Trans Tasman, the minimum rating for state representatives has increased from 1600 to 1700. Also, the top Australian finisher will not automatically qualify for the WSC.

To help combat problems with the rating system, ratings that fall below 500 will be altered back to 500.  A new Chambers publication, Official Scrabble Words International (OSWI), contains all of the current allowable word list. We expect this book to eventually be available via your state committee. It has one omission, to our knowledge - ANTEFIXAE. Feeling generous, the committee has decided to award a copy of OSWI to the first person who plays this word in a competition.

The CASPA committee consists of all of the state presidents, plus several officers. Amongst the latter, the following were reelected unopposed: Glenys Lawrie (Treasurer), Joan Rosenthal (Rules), and me. Anne Michell has taken over ATB from Michael Vnuk, Alistair Kane has taken over Ratings from Bob Jackman, and Steve Sunter is our inaugural Website Coordinator.

Thank you to the committee for their work throughout the last year. Issues discussed over the email during the year amounted to 25 in number, including more than a fair share of contentious topics.

Coordinator report 2002