The Spanish World Scrabble Championship is an international Scrabble

Scrabble

Scrabble is a word game in which two to four players score points by forming words from individual lettered tiles on a game board marked with a 15-by-15 grid. The words are formed across and down in crossword fashion and must appear in a standard dictionary. Official reference works provide a list...

 tournament organised by the Federación Internacional de Scrabble en Español (FISE). The competition takes place each year in a different city in a Spanish-speaking country. The first championship was held in Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

 in Spain. The number of players has varied, from 32 players in 1997 to 70 in 2007.

Players only play with two players at a board, never more, and the tournament uses a Swiss tournament system

Swiss system tournament

A Swiss-system tournament is a commonly used type of tournament where players or teams need to be paired to face each other for several rounds of competition. This type of tournament was first used in a Zurich chess tournament in 1895, hence the name "Swiss system". The Swiss system is used when...

 to decide who plays against whom. In 2007, the players played 18 games with the winner being Benjamín Olaizola of Venezuela

Venezuela

Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...

 with 14 wins from 18 games. Internationally, the players are rated by the Elo system

Elo rating system

The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in two-player games such as chess. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-born American physics professor....

.

List of winners

Year	Host City	Winner	Nationality	Runner-up	Nationality
1997	Madrid Madrid Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...	Joan R. Manchado		Josep M. Martí
1998	Mexico City Mexico City Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...	Blai Figueras		Claudia Amaral
1999	Caracas Caracas Caracas , officially Santiago de León de Caracas, is the capital and largest city of Venezuela; natives or residents are known as Caraquenians in English . It is located in the northern part of the country, following the contours of the narrow Caracas Valley on the Venezuelan coastal mountain range...	Amanda Gauna		Joan R. Manchado
2000	Santiago Santiago, Chile Santiago , also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile, and the center of its largest conurbation . It is located in the country's central valley, at an elevation of above mean sea level...	Roberto Aguilar		Miguel Rivera
2001	San José San José, Costa Rica San José is the capital and largest city of Costa Rica. Located in the Central Valley, San José is the seat of national government, the focal point of political and economic activity, and the major transportation hub of this Central American nation.Founded in 1738 by order of Cabildo de León, San...	Benjamín Olaizola		Carlos González
2002	Buenos Aires Buenos Aires Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...	Carlos González		Rocco Laguzzi
2003	Xcaret Xcaret Xcaret is a Maya civilization archaeological site located on the Caribbean coastline of the Yucatán Peninsula, in the modern-day state of Quintana Roo in Mexico. The site was occupied by the pre-Columbian Maya and functioned as a port for navigation and an important Maya trading center...	Joan R. Manchado		Carlos González
2004	Panama Panama City Panama is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Panama. It has a population of 880,691, with a total metro population of 1,272,672, and it is located at the Pacific entrance of the Panama Canal, in the province of the same name. The city is the political and administrative center of the...	Claudia Amaral		Héctor Klíe	USA
2005	L'Alfàs del Pi L'Alfàs del Pi L'Alfàs del Pi is a Valencian town and municipality located in the comarca of Marina Baixa, in the province of Alicante, Spain, lying at the foot of Serra de Bèrnia....	Antonio Álvarez		Enric Hernández
2006	Montevideo Montevideo Montevideo is the largest city, the capital, and the chief port of Uruguay. The settlement was established in 1726 by Bruno Mauricio de Zabala, as a strategic move amidst a Spanish-Portuguese dispute over the platine region, and as a counter to the Portuguese colony at Colonia del Sacramento...	Enric Hernández		Rocco Laguzzi
2007	Bogotá Bogotá Bogotá, Distrito Capital , from 1991 to 2000 called Santa Fé de Bogotá, is the capital, and largest city, of Colombia. It is also designated by the national constitution as the capital of the department of Cundinamarca, even though the city of Bogotá now comprises an independent Capital district...	Benjamín Olaizola		Airán Pérez
2008	Buenos Aires Buenos Aires Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...	Enric Hernández		Airán Pérez
2009	Isla Margarita Isla Margarita Margarita Island is the largest island of the state of Nueva Esparta in Venezuela, situated in the Caribbean Sea, off the northeastern coast of the country. The state also contains two other smaller islands: Coche and Cubagua. The capital city of Nueva Esparta is La Asunción, located in a river...	Luis Picciochi		Claudia Amaral

Multiple winners

• Joan R. Manchado : 1997, 2003
• Benjamín Olaizola : 2001, 2007
• Enric Hernández : 2006, 2008