NAME:
Lester Schonbrun

AGE/LOCATION:
65, San Francisco, USA

OCCUPATION:
Legal secretary

ACHIEVEMENTS:

• Runner-up US Nationals 1991
• 48th World Championship 1999

COMMENTS:
Lester has been playing Scrabble seriously since the early 1960's, and feels he had something to do with helping to make the game popular. He was certainly a stalwart, marathon player in the early days, and enjoyed taking on all comers in the club he frequented, in New York's Times Square.

He is pretty sure he played in one of the first, if not THE first, tournament. It was sponsored by a man named Hidalgo, who ran a club on 72nd St. in Manhattan, and was trying to lure players away from 42nd Street. Lester has been rated in the top ten through much of his playing career, although he admits that it has been tougher to keep up recently.

His best finish was runner up in the US Nationals, in Washington DC in 1991. He has also been 4th, 6th, 9th in other Nationals. He won summer Reno a couple of years back, possible by the largest margin ever -- over 2,000 points in differential.

Lester's main interests outside of Scrabble and games is watching sports and arguing politics, decidedly from left of center. Way far left.