Sharing this from the Scrabble Association of Delhi NCR
Today we profile an academician from Bangalore:
Rajveer Rawlin
Of Fish, Finance, and Fiendish words:
A long-time aquarist and freshly minted Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D. to the layperson) in finance, Dr. Rawlin has been a competitive scrabbler for the last 15 years. Introduced to competitive scrabble in the UK when studying for his MBA in finance, he quickly realized he had a knack for the game. When he returned to India (Chennai) in 2006, he started playing with the Chennai Scrabble Club and was mentored by Mohan and Ranga, two stalwarts of the game. The time Mohan Chunkath (profiled earlier) spent explaining the finer aspects of strategy contributed immensely to improving his game.
Always lucky with mentors, he even had Akshay and Sherwin give him tips on improving his game while playing against them in the Nationals. After he lost to Akshay at the Nationals (in 2012), despite a 190-points lead he learned the strategy of blocking the board when ahead! He lost narrowly to Sherwin because he challenged a penultimate word (TOOTHS). That 5-point loss for the challenge lost him the game – another valuable lesson!
He moved from Chennai to Bangalore in 2010 and was soon completely immersed in analyzing games, working on strategy and board vision with the Bangalore Scrabble Club - particularly Radhika, Ishika, the Potnis family (Suchindra, Vidya and Yash), Lenny, Rex, Aubrey, and Mr. Syed. Irfan also contributed to his Scrabble training albeit remotely from Dubai). All this work and lots of play made Rajveer “a very bright boy”, and in 2019, he finished 4th in the Nationals and was the runner up in WESPAC A division.
An engineer by training, his natural inclination towards math drew him to the analytical aspect of the game and his academician’s thirst for knowledge through study, got him to focus on learning words. Some of the best advice he says he got (from Ranga) was to focus on the 2,3,4’s and 5’s and leave the 7’s and 8’s for later. Over the years, he mastered learning tools, his favorite being Xerafin. He’s mastered the inner workings of Xerafin and can provide tutorials on how to use the app. Even now, he does about 500 anagrams a day: 300 from his card box and 200 from the quizzes. Of course, now he covers all the word lengths – from 2-letter words to 9-letter words!
Having moved fairly easily from engineering in the US to studying finance in the UK and then coming back to (marry) and work in India, Rajveer feels that he sometimes ‘can get ahead of himself’. And unlike investing in the markets where you can ‘unwind a mistake’, once you make a mistake in a game, it’s done. With a Zen take on the game, Rajveer feels Scrabble keeps him grounded as he sees it as a great ‘evener’. Even the best players can lose games if their opponent has sufficient luck. That makes him keep his nose to the grindstone as he tries to minimize the element of luck, relies more on word knowledge, skill, and strategy, and overall, be better than he was yesterday.
Like Scrabble, his 7-year old daughter (pic attached) keeps him grounded and stops him from ‘getting ahead of himself’. Wanting to let her find her own way, he holds himself back to watch her make her own choices.
Apart from Scrabble, his other passions are finance and fish- the only commonality being the first two letters! He is a passionate aquarist (yep, valid scrabble word: it means one who keeps aquariums) and has 7 fish tanks. One really large one with about 70 fish (of 15 different types), 4 medium-sized tanks, and 2 smaller breeding tanks. The breeding tanks have lots of plants for babies to hide so that their carnivorous parents don’t eat them up! He breeds ‘live-bearer fish’ i.e. those that produce small fish (not eggs) such as Guppies, Mollies, Platies, etc. (pictures attached). He’s had aquariums since he was in his early teens, a hobby encouraged by his parents. At one point, to make a little extra pocket money, he bred and sold fish.
He also regularly blogs on Scrabble and on Finance. As blogs require a fair degree of work, he blogs only on the two subjects to which he is most deeply connected. Check out http://rajveersscrabble.blogspot.com/
One of the lucky folks who get paid for following their passion, Rajveer is paid to teach (also a passion) finance -his favorite subject. In fact, he has recently combined his passion for teaching with Scrabble and is in the process of opening a Scrabble club at his university. Having been the lucky recipient of mentoring from some outstanding players, he is keen to develop coaching programs for youngsters. While this is just an idea yet, if there are any youngsters out there who would like to be coached, reach out to Rajveer, and, who knows, you might be the catalyst to a youth mentoring program!
