Nigel Richards (Scrabble)

Nigel Richards (Scrabble)

Nigel Richards is a Scrabble player who represents New Zealand in international competition. He is the reigning World Champion and a four-time U.S. National Champion, the only player to have held both titles concurrently. He is a nine-time champion of the Singapore Open Scrabble Championship.

Richards started playing competitive Scrabble at New Zealand's Christchurch Scrabble Club before moving to Malaysia in 2000.

Since beginning his competitive career in 1997, he has won about 75% of his games, collecting an estimated USD 153,000 in prize money. Richards, who now lives in Kuala Lumpur, is an eight-time winner of the King's Cup in Bangkok, the biggest Scrabble competition in the world.

Richards won the 2008 USA National Scrabble Championship and earned USD 25,000 by winning his last three games against the runner-up, 1998 champion Brian Cappelletto, for a record of 22 wins and 6 losses, with a cumulative spread of +1340 points.

Richards was the runner-up in the 2009 USA National Scrabble Championship in Dayton, Ohio, losing to Dave Wiegand but still winning 25 of the 31 matches.

Richards won the 2010 USA National Scrabble Championship in Dallas, Texas, again winning 25 games. His performance in this tournament was so dominant that he clinched the title before the last day of competition began.

Richards won the 2011 USA National Scrabble Championship in Dallas, Texas, winning 22 games, including his final two, to hold off a number of challengers.

Richards is the current USA National Scrabble Champion, winning 22 of 31 games at the 2012 National Scrabble Championship in Orlando, Florida, in August 2012. To win the title, Richards had to defeat past champion David Gibson by at least 170 points in the final game; he won it by 177 points. With this victory, Richards became the only person to have won the event four times, as well as the only player to have won it in three consecutive years.

Richards won the 2007 World Scrabble Championship and earned USD 15,000 by winning a playoff, 3 games to 0, against Ganesh Asirvatham of Malaysia. The two qualified for the playoff by leading a field of 104 international experts after 24 rounds of a tournament held 9–12 November in Mumbai, India. He repeated this success in the 2011 World Scrabble Championship in Warsaw, Poland, winning a closely fought final against Australia's top player, Andrew Fisher, and becoming the first person to win the World Scrabble Championship twice.