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WSC 2007 Commentary:
Final Round 1

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Go to: Before the Tournament, Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Round 4, Round 5, Round 6, Round 7, Round 8, Round 9, Round 10, Round 11, Round 12, Round 13, Round 14, Round 15, Round 16, Round 17, Round 18, Round 19, Round 20, Round 21, Round 22, Round 23, Round 24, Final Round 1, Final Round 2, Final Round 3, After the Finals.

9:00 Because of production and uplink deadlines, we filmed two brief award ceremonies, one where Nigel Richards (NZL) won, and one where Ganesh Asirvatham (MYS) won. Ganesh got quite into the spirit of things, prancing gleefully around the stage when he "won", and trudging dejectedly up to the stage when he "lost". Nigel was more subdued in each case, and resisted repeated calls for him to perform a haka. We'll see how the real winner behaves at the end of the day.

9:57 Preparations are more or less complete for the first of the best-of-five finals between Nigel and Ganesh. In the finals room are a large number of A/V staff, TD Wilma Vialle, the players, the four annotators, and Adam Logan (Wsc) assisting me. In the audience room, Allan Simmons (Sco) is acting as emcee, Jason Katz-Brown (USA) is running Quackle and communicating with me through the annotation 'DOoM' server.

10:28 Players have taken their places. Annotators are Liz Fagerlund (paper), Jocelyn Lor (electronic), Radhika Mahalingaiah and Nakul Prabhu. Nigel will be playing first.

Howard Warner (NZL) tells me that Nigel and Ganesh have faced each other at tournaments 20 times, and that Nigel has beaten Ganesh only once so far.

Nigel wins this game 412-316. Nigel bingoed AIRSTV?; Ganesh bingoed sERINGA. Nigel's opening placement of GAVOT was curious; Ganesh missed OUTCRAWL and should perhaps have played a nine-letter bingo ending in -TE rather than sERINGA.