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BGonline.org Forums
Congratulations to Senk!!
Posted By: Paul Weaver In Response To: Grandmaster Award to Mike Senkiewicz (Rick Janowski)
Date: Friday, 19 August 2016, at 2:12 a.m.
During his forty-plus years on the backgammon scene, Mike has always been a soft-spoken gentleman. He was one of the very best Scrabble players in past decades. He was also an accomplished tournament table tennis player. Congratulations to Senk!
I googled Mike and found this paragraph written by Mike Baron:
http://thelastwordnewsletter.com/Last_Word/Mike_Senkiewicz_414.html
"Mike Senkiewicz may well have been Scrabble's first "legendary" player. After Macy's popularized Scrabble as a family game in the 1950s, it wasn't until the 1960s, in Manhattan's smoke-filled chess and checker parlors, that the Fertile Crescent of competitive Scrabble emerged. This was at a time when games had a 15-minute limit, tile-tracking was prohibited, and games were played for money. When the "Scrabble® Crossword Game Players, Inc." began (1972), Mike provided the first articles on strategy. He was instrumental in the creation of the original Scrabble Players Handbook (1974). It was his proposal of a Scrabble dictionary that forged what would later become the OSPD (1978). As well, Mike was responsible for establishing the first tournament structures. Initially a chess Master, Mike, now 68 years old, took to backgammon and has played professionally over the past 40 years, during which time he has been consistently among the top 32 players in the world, including ranked either first or second throughout the 1990s. I first met Mike in Las Vegas in 1995 at the Scrabble Superstars tournament. He and another former Scrabble expert, Nick Ballard, had just taken first and second place at a backgammon event and joined Brian Cappelletto (who Mike described as "the real deal") and me for dinner. Aware that Mike and Lester Schonbrun's games with one another in the 1970s were the stuff of legends, I contacted him to inform him of Lester's passing. I followed up with Mike by phone today (4/5/14), at which time he conceded some minor inaccuracies in his chronology. Herewith are my notes from my 3/1/14 phone conversation with him about Lester and Scrabble."
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