The 3rd All India Open Scrabble Tournament - 2006 organized by Scrabble Association of Goa in collaboration with Sports Authority of Goa, was inaugurated by Fr. Peter Martin Rodrigues, Director, Agnel Technical Education Complex, Verna in the presence of Mr. Brahmanand Sankhwalkar of SAG on 29th April 2006
In all 36 participants from Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Hubli, Bellary, Chennai, Kochi and Goa were in the fray for top honors in a mind boggling battle of words with 8 games on the first day and 7 on the second.
Mr Udayan Grover from Pune with 12 wins from max. possible 15 with a spread of 937 points stole the show with a convincing lead of 1.5 wins over his nearest rival Mr. Shaik Ahmed from Hyderabad with 10.5 wins and a spread of 385 points.
It was a tight contest for the next four berths where all the contenders had 10 wins each but on the basis of better spread (15 games net aggregate of points by which a game is won/lost), Ranganthan C. from Chennai (623 points) was placed third, closely followed by Mohan Chunkath, Chennai (607 points) in the fourth place. Jose De Abreu, Bangalore (429 points) was fifth and Sam Joseph, Kochi (313 points) sixth.
The highest game score prize went to Shaik Ahmed who scored 636 points. The highest word score prize went to Abdul Waheed who scored 158 points. The maximum bingos (7 lettter words) in a game went to M V Niranjan who had 5 bingos.
Spot prizes were won by Hariprasad, Nancy Miranda, Joe Rodrigues and M.A. Savanur.
The Chief Guest Mr. V M Prabhudesai, Director, Sports Authority of Goa in his address congratulated the winners and the participants who had come from all over India. Further, he suggested taking this game, which is a mind sport and helps in improving word power and vocabulary, to all parts of Goa especially to the children in schools and colleges for which he assured full support from SAG. The prizes were awarded to the winners by the Chief Guest Mr. V.M. Prabhudesai and the Guest of Honor Fr. Peter Martin Rodrigues, Director, Agnel Technical Education Complex, Verna, Goa. Earlier Mr Mukesh Adhia, Secretary, Scrabble Association of Goa, welcomed the guests. Mr Jacky Fernandes, Treasurer proposed the vote of thanks.