Fresh from winning the Uganda Scrabble championships in Jinja, Allan Oyende has set his focus to defend his East and Central Africa Scrabble Championships (ECASA) title and the Pan African Scrabble Championships (PANASA).
Playing for Kenya’s Stima Club in Nairobi, Oyende defeated hosts to walk home with the title to add on his Jamhuri Day title played a week ago at the Strathmore University.
He won the ECASA title in 2019 and it was canceled in 2020 and 202 due to the biting coronavirus pandemic.
“The win in Uganda and the Jamhuri Day has given me a good ending this year and my plans will be the ECASA and PANASA come next year. Winning two big titles within two weekends in a row was not easy but I managed to do it,” said Oyende.
Oyende amassed +1830 points to emerge victorious after losing only two games out of 18, the biggest range ever.
The Kenya One managed to lead in day one on Saturday and maintained the lead to be crowned the champion in the second day as he plans to maintain top position when the new Scrabble Kenya calendar kicks off in January.
He lost two, game one was against Scrabble Kenya chairman Bernard Amuke on Saturday and the second to Ugandan Richard Geria in game 16.
“The tournament was tough after playing with great players in the meeting. Despite the event being successful, the players had prepared very well to play a high quality game in the tournament,” said Oyende.
The civil engineer said he will be preparing for a new calendar as wants to defend his ECASA title in the Word Warriors team. ECASA will be staged in Jinja, Uganda while Panasa will be held in Lusaka, Zambia come October.
“My target will be to play well in the ECASA as well as Panasa. We have started to journey with hopes of better results in the new year,” he said.
Other Kenyans at the championships included Edgar Odongkara, who was third behind Ugandan Geria in second, Amuke who was 16th overall, Joash Manyasa and David Kimani