The World English-language Scrabble Players Association is stepping in to conduct an enquiry into the case of Bahrain and Gulf champion Mohammed Zafar being evicted last Saturday from the Causeway Challenge in Malaysia.
The Bahraini, 19, was swiftly disqualified from the Causeway Challenge by tournament organiser Michael Tang, charging that he was not taking his tiles out of the bag according to the rules.
Zafar says that he was following competition rules by holding the bag at shoulder length when taking tiles out.
Wespa questions why the player had not been personally warned prior to taking such drastic action.
Roy Kietzman, Wespa acting chairman, said, as "an interested party" and chairman, he would not be taking an active role in the enquiry but leaving it to a panel to present its findings.
"Having been director for over a hundred national, regional and international Scrabble contests in Bahrain, India and Oman, I've never heard of a player being expelled from a Scrabble tourney, least of all by how he was holding the tile bag," Kietzman said.
With 10 five-player teams, the Causeway Challenge is considered the world's biggest Scrabble tournament with high-level players competing in a five-day event for a $j10,000 top prize.
Though Kietzman was planning to do a preliminary off-the-record investigation, Wespa members of the policymaking management committee suggested that the eviction action required an enquiry, and he deferred to that initiative.
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