World Mind Games 2010 - Andres Kuusk won the silver medal!

I can't fight for medals, if you emphasize the plural of this word. Or maybe it was meant for Andres. So far, there is one and I'm super happy with this result. This brings me to Andres' post, where he said that my result is a disappointment - I wouldn't say that. I didn't expect any medals from here, but I got one silver medal. And at the same time, I also have 4th place. In my opinion, this is a good place. These places simply pale next to Andres' results. This 16th place is incomparable to the 18th place in Sudoku, because in my opinion, only 18 names were mentioned here in the overall score. So, I could surpass my sudoku result numerically. Anyone would do that in my place. Apparently, I am still a better sudoku solver than a mind gamer - and that is a fact, because I have simply been more involved with sudoku. But in summary, if I can summarize it - since I have never played any of the upcoming games in my life, it was a great experience and I recommend coming next year to everyone who has the slightest interest in mind games. This is a chance to try new and very cool board games. If anything else interesting comes up, I will write more.

In an hour, the 8th day of competition will start. My program includes Mastermind and Abalone, Tiit will play Pacrut. Diplomacy and Omaha poker are also planned in the evening. As a comment to Tiit's last post, considering his quick learning ability, his result would definitely be much better if he had as much training as I did. In most areas, he reaches a higher level somewhere around halfway through the tournament, and for example, Bokus already washed me out the next day after the tournament as he wanted. To clarify the number of participants: at least 5 areas have 30 players registered (the top 20 are simply posted on the wall), 3 areas have nearly fifty, and at least 130 players have participated in at least one area (120 were registered at the start of the competition, but the number has increased significantly).

Omaha - pot limit At the beginning, 4 cards are dealt to everyone. Then a betting round and then it goes like Texas hold'em, with a three-card flop and then 2 more cards face up on the table. 2 cards from your hand and 3 cards from the ground count. The best combination wins. As you can conclude from my early post, today was not a great result again. As I often went to play and mostly waited for the flop - an absolutely combination-free game. And if something came up a little, then as a rule someone had the better hand. I won one with a bluff and one was a hand where I dared to bet and got a little back, thanks to which I was still able to hold on a little. Since the experts in their field also drop out at the beginning, I dare to say that in the perspective of such a short tournament, poker is a game of luck (not that this excuses my loss), and in the long term, the one who can wins - that makes it a game of skill. Respect to those who can do something with it, I guess I'll just rely on love :P Otherwise, there was also a Pacru tournament. I managed to beat the reigning world champion in one match and until the last game I even had hopes of winning silver. But I lost and got 4th place. Since 4 players participated in the tournament, there's nothing so brilliant, but I got a really nice game experience. This game is something completely new and different and exciting. Tomorrow there will be other versions of this game, which didn't seem so exciting, but maybe I'll try something anyway.

My agenda for today was Mastermind and Abalone. A real expert was present in Abalone, the Frenchman Vincent Frochot, who also won the tournament with a 100% result. My tournament started with a devastating 6-0 loss (play to 6 points), but fortunately against a strong enough opponent, from whose game I learned a few tricks. Using this experience (and to be completely honest, I also did some secret training) I even advanced to the medal competition and was the only one who had a real chance of winning against Frochot - in fact, I had him in the bag (I clearly underestimated him), but as always, time got in the way. All in all, some 4th or 5th place. Since David Pearce was second, he added 90 more points to his account and was already getting pretty close to me. It's a good thing it went that way, at least he didn't get beaten. During the Mastermind tournament, the TV cameras were buzzing in the gaming hall again. This time, the microphone was not stuffed under the nose and so I didn't have to make a big fool of myself. The world's best calculators, the German Gert Mittring and the author of the bestseller on mental arithmetic, George Lane, were also participating, but both were disappointed - Lane barely missed a medal and Mittring, who had become the world champion in mental arithmetic about ten times, was completely destroyed. I was able to play Lane myself, and the result was a friendly 6-6 draw. Just after the game against Lane, I had two particularly important games against the former world champions Tim Hebbes and David Pearce, and I managed to win both of them (I was also lucky against Pearce that I hit the target with the 5th bid)! Then, however, I suffered a painful defeat from Dario De Toffoli and it seemed that the extra points would slip away from my hands again, but this time luck was on my side. David Pearce's opponent in the last round, Paco Garcia, already hit the code with his 4th bid, and so instead of winning the tournament, Pearce had to settle for 4th place. In the end, Toffoli, Garcia and I shared first place. Huhhh. This Mastermind result meant a very significant point bonus - I got 91 points and improved my previous score of 81 by 10, and I am now on 776. These 10 points could be decisive in the silver-bronze or even gold-silver competition. Not being able to actually medal would be a big disappointment. Tomorrow is the last full day of competition, with Azacru, Creative Thinking, Go, Hare and Tortoise and Shacru on the schedule. Since the areas are relatively unknown, we will take a break in the morning and consider in the afternoon whether to try Shacru or declare the competition over for ourselves (we will not play Monopoly on Monday).

Today we made a tactical move and did not take part in the morning program (there is no hope for a point bonus anyway), the same tactic will probably be used in the evening program. Unfortunately, the course of events in the tournament halls shows that things are not developing as expected. In the Go tournament, the Spaniard Francisco Paco Garcia is proving his status as the big favorite, who is leading with full success and the tournament victory is essentially already guaranteed. This means another 100 points to his account and his 4 best results are already 3 times 100 and once 91. Considering that my score is 476, he needs a 5th result of 85 to secure the world champion title. On the positive side, David Pearce's chances disappeared yesterday, when he had to settle for 2nd and 4th place in two areas with grandmaster titles. This meant over 30 lost points. So the words of reigning champion Martyn Hamer, who predicted that the winner would only be revealed on the last day with Monopoly, come true. Unfortunately, there is a wild crowd participating, which means that there are wild points in the game. Maybe you should even change your mind and sign up for Monopoly, even though you don't like these dice games at all. It's a shame to lose the championship title because of Monopoly, but what can you do when the system is like this.

Today, what had long been feared came true - the Spaniard Francisco Paco Garcia also won Creative Thinking and took over the lead. And worse, it seems that I wrote David Pearce's chances in the stack too early, because with today's Shacru victory he is still in the game and should he win Monopoly tomorrow, he may also whizz past. At least not being able to win a medal seems unrealistic, although it is probably theoretically possible (it is not quite sure what the worst result of Martyn Hamer and Tim Hebbes is at the moment). Today we skipped the morning program, but in the evening we still participated in Shacru - which is still four hours to pass and besides, we already needed to gain points for ourselves and not so much to hinder our opponents. Since I have not done any training in this game, I could not and did not expect anything more. I finished with 1, Tiit probably got zero (or -2, I do not know the result of his last round). On a positive note, I tied with the later winner Pearce, which of course was completely undeserved - I had a bad start to the game and I was already playing with 3 extra seconds from the middle game, but that just put Pearce to sleep and a few careless mistakes made sure I lost a sure win. Tomorrow the week and a half competition will finally come to an end. There is only one "relaxation area" planned (Monopoly) and this will be followed by the closing ceremony at 6:30 local time. I am already homesick, the 10 long days have also taken their toll on me mentally and I have clearly lacked focus in the last few days. A medal, be it silver or bronze, is certainly much more than I could have expected before the tournament started and it is only a pity that gold was close. Congratulations to Spain, in addition to the foot, now also the world title of mental sports.

Heads up - no limit We played Texas Holdem one-on-one. 5 rounds were played through the Swiss system. There was 20 minutes. 1000 was dealt, small and big blind were 10 and 20. After 10 minutes the blinds changed to 50 and 100 (i.e. the perfect opportunity to first get to know your opponent and then start playing). I managed to stay in the 1st-4th place with my one loss, and in the end the odds gave me - guess what - 4th place of course :) The loss in the second round, where I had a clear advantage over my opponent, was a real bummer. My opponent went all in and time ran out. I called because I just wanted the excitement and didn't expect to get very far anyway (knowing my poker skills). And in that situation my opponent had a little luck and then lost. But it doesn't bother me, because I won the rest of them all :) I would like to draw your attention to one interesting hand: So, with 20 each, in a relatively early position in the match, the following flop came: King of Diamonds, Queen of Diamonds, 10. I had some 5 of clubs and a 7 of pot. Nothing to say in a word. My opponent raised about 400 or 500, I guess. I boldly and out of pure instinct put all in right away, hoping that he would get scared and throw away his cards - in other words, a pure bluff. And since there was a suit on the board, he had the possibility of all kinds of combinations. We then opened the cards and lo and behold - he had an A of clubs and a K of hearts. Looking at this, I even wondered why he called, because I could easily have a suit or a straight. Anyway, the next thing I thought was that the situation was a bit of a mess, because I had no chance of winning it. But luckily, another 5 of diamonds, Queen of Diamonds came out and the pot was dealt. In the end, I managed to win against this opponent and I was a little smarter from then on :)

The World Mental Sports Championship came to an end today. There was a monopoly tournament, then an award ceremony and finally a round table. Nothing significant changed in the tournament standings, the silver medal came, with 476 points. At the same time, the gold medal was only 0.6 points away. A total of 155 people from 22 countries participated in the tournaments. Estonia took 5th place in the medal table with four gold, one silver and 5 bronze medals. England was on the throne in the medal table, gold was shared between 12 countries. The overall medalists were as follows: 1. Francisco Garcia 476.62 2. Andrs Kuusk 475.95 3. David Pearce 456.16 Tiit achieved 16th place with 309.14 points. All in all, it was a really great event and I definitely plan to be back next year. The 2011 World Championship will probably be held in Venice, Italy.

Very good result! Estonia's 5th place is also a very good achievement. We impress more during the summer days.

Congratulations!! Very well done :)