Monthly report of May 2013

Hello everybody, here is the monthly report of the WASPA circuit. Link: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4_PpphlADgVNDU3MTY1ZGEtOGRiNS00YWYyLWIwMmEtYzJlOWM3ODRmOTA0/edit?usp=sharing

 May has been very interesting with 14 different tournaments and a lot of great news:
- we had the first tournament in Lincoln (England), hopefully the first of many more!
- the tournament in Michigan was fantastic with 17 players and a lot of great games. Canadian players travelled abroad for the first time in the WASPA circuit.
- there was a big surprise in Calgary where Riad Kadri managed to stop Shane Hoopfer's winning streak.
- Giorgos Zangylos is still dominating tournaments in Cyprus and he is now 3rd in the WASPA ranking.
- Fabrizio Fedele was strong enough to win the tournament in Chieti where subbuteo legend Andrea Di Vincenzo was taking part.
- Pierre Chastenais won the very first WASPA tournament in Montreal. Good to see the Province of Quebec has now some activity.
- Peter Sexton won in Hamilton and he is now 2nd in the WASPA ranking.
- Rudi Peterschinigg organized a very good tournament in Harrow Weald with 18 players taking part and Kevin Cordell made a sensational debut as he won the final.
- Geoffrey Marain won his 12th WASPA title!
- Chris Thomas won his second WASPA title in Thornaby. It's great to see such a big player is also competing in WASPA tournaments, which proves the love of the game is stronger than the need to cacth some world ranking points.
- The first tournament in Pretoria (South Africa) attracted seven players, which is very encouraging for the future.
- Antonio Carabillo (Hong Kong) was in visit in the US and played the tournament organized by MassimO Conturso in Connecticut. Andrea Gasparini won his third title.
- Warren Creighton came back to the game to win the Vancouver tournament.

Also, the very first promotional tournament was played in Templeuve with 5 players taking part. It was a great evening and the positive thing is that the local players who are not entitled to play promotional tournants were present to give tips to the new players and to be referees.

As for the statistics:
- Italy has now 30 titles (27 in regional tournaments, 3 in tournaments with the old rules)
- There are now 692 players ranked, it's 43 more than last month. For the first time 2 players have disappeared from the rankings as their last appearance was in May 2011.
- The ranking of nations is very close on top with Italy taking the lead for the first time with 178 points, Canada has 177 and Malta 175.

As for the rest of the WASPA news, here are some more points:
- the world map at http://goo.gl/maps/H3yLj has many more locations. Clubs and isolated players can be added if they are looking for new players in their area. We have just added several locations in South America;
- the first tournaments in Brazil is already in the agenda and there are now constructive contacts in Chile.
- tournaments in Northern Ireland, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Singapore, Canada, England and the USA are already in the agenda and it's not too late to add more events. The e-mail address to add tournaments is vincent.cop@rsca.com
- there are plans to create another category of tournaments in the near future. Events would be played only with Subbuteo material and the advanced rules. More details should be coming soon but feel free to contact me for any question.

Before the end of the message, I want to point out again that rumors are spread saying associations, clubs and players are not allowed to play in both FISTF and WASPA circuits. This is absolute bullshit. WASPA is not in competition with FISTF and our goal is only to attract new players, to give good games to every type of players and to offer something more than the elite tournaments where there is currently a lot of money involved and not many games are given to the players. So in no way people whould be scared to play or organize WASPA tournaments.

Well, that's all for now.

Please take a regular look at the blog (http://waspa-circuit.blogspot.com/) to check the news!

Thank you again to everyone for the support. it's a great source of motivation to see so many tournaments are played in so many different countries.

Cheers,

Vincent Coppenolle