World Mindset Championship 2011

Long live poker ace Andres! Long live thumb-keeping ace Trinka! Long live 200-point-one-day! Let's hope for Entropia gold and silver for Estonia! P.

First, some unanswered questions: English checkers did not make it into the large disciplines (100-square chess went), because it lasted 4 hours, but the mandatory duration is 8 hours. The tournament halls are much better than last year. An entire section on the 3rd floor of the University of London Union has been booked, and each discipline will take place in a separate room, with huge posters of the respective discipline leading to it. It's quite nice. Just in case, I'll write down the Durdyevs' first names: Basham and Maksat - maybe someone can comment (Dilbert, for example) whether one of them is also a world youth champion. Today, the competitions cross the equator and the most important individual discipline, entropy, will probably take place. Considering my tournament standings, it is of course still very important, but more generally, it is also one of the main disciplines. The point is that the absolute best in the world is present and the tournament is called the Entropy World Championship. There are some for whom the entropy gold is even more important than the first place in the overall standings. The game's creator, Eric Solomon, is usually also present, presenting the winner with a magnificent trophy. For those interested, the rules of Entropy are available at http://www.boardability.com/game.php?id=entropy.

I'll keep my fingers crossed and wait for news. Entropia is an exciting game and you play it very well. I'm especially looking forward to the result of the game between you and Dekker. It seems like you're playing very evenly, but reality is reality. Good luck to you and Kertu, if the paint runs well, anything is possible! And now, thumbs up! :)

Hello, Kertu and Andres! Yes, the second half of the tournament is here, you still have time to do some work! May the tornado be with you! I'll keep my fingers crossed!

Three games over, three more to go. Andres currently has 2 wins out of 3. But I'm empty-handed. If fate wants you to play last year's winner Paco Garcia at the first table, then obviously there are very few surprises to expect from there. Everything went according to plan and I managed to kill him miserably. Andres played the first game at the same table as me, but the opponent was another - Alan Dekker, who I also didn't have much hope against. Defending champion Garcia (who is also the defending champion in entropy) and five-time world champion Demis Hassabis are leading the way with full success.

The games continue. I've won one game in between these many losses. I'm tired, I can't even think clearly anymore. In the evening I'll play pineapple oker, which I don't have a picture of at the moment. Andres decided to stick to chess. I don't want to fight those Turkmen boys over there at chess. Especially considering the fact that the time for the game is 40 minutes! Poker will probably end earlier. And important information - my last phone battery ran out last night. I sent all the messages that were needed. Now there's no point in messaging or calling me anymore. I'm outside the network service area. I probably won't post anything at 8:30 PM, because I'm going to look for a grocery store, but maybe Andres will scribble something here! Good luck to me in the future!

Turkmens on the FMJD rating list (this is the top 100 list, of course): No. Name First name Country Title Rating List 1 Durdyev Mustafa TURKMENISTAN gmi 2289 2 Durdyev Hodja TURKMENISTAN 2156 3 Durdyev Parahat TURKMENISTAN 1998 4 Gaynarov Azat TURKMENISTAN 1938 5 Durdyev Bashim TURKMENISTAN 1834 6 Durdyeva Amangul TURKMENISTAN 0 For comparison - Vindi's top 100 R2maa FMJD rating is 2006. It should be taken into account that Turkmens rarely go to play due to the remoteness of the country, so this list should not be taken too seriously. Mustafa has tied for first place twice at the Junior World Championships, but lost in the playoff. source: http://fmjd.org/

If there are others here besides me who have been clicking the refresh button on the forum for hours and waiting for the entropy results, then I would like to inform you that I have heard rumors that 1-3 places were divided and one of the dividers was our flying wonder Andres. P.

Evening came. Today has been a day of ups and downs. Entropy was a complete disaster for me, as you already know. However, poker offered quite a few exciting moments. To start with, I was immediately put at the same table as my angel of misfortune, Hebbes. I tried to fight it off and was soon the leader at my table. Dekker wet his pants before the game started, but it was a joke to me throughout the game. In the meantime, Ankush came to us from the other table, carrying a couple of thousand chips. He played three quick hands at our table, two of them against me, and went back with half the chips. It's not worth playing so aggressively when I'm running out of cards. In the meantime, fatigue was creeping in, but I did as a good friend once recommended - if you feel like you can't and won't play anymore, fold until it passes. And he was right. It took a while before we moved to two tables. I was beating the boredom by listening to music and collecting chips. And suddenly I was at the final table. Ankush took back what was his and I was in last place. I was still holding my breath when I split the pot with one player - A6 each. Not an Audi. And then they went.. just all-in and crashed. I made a few more nice moves, but since the money was running out, I made a last desperate attempt to do something with a pair of aces. Unfortunately, I managed to stumble on 9 threes. That left me in 4th place, which is out of the medal count, but still a huge achievement. I consider today a success. 3 minutes after I left, poker ended. So almost to the end. And now the MOST important news - the current overall leaderboard was just posted on the wall. So as of August 24th. Andres Kuusk 426.52p Tige Nnando 389.17p Dario De Toffoli 375p Kenneth Ho 373.65p 7. Hebbes, 10. Pearce, 12. Hamer, 14. Dekker Chess is over, we're starting to walk home. He'll write about what happened to Entropia and chess in an hour. Sunshine to those of you who are still up!

Entropy went on for so long that there was no time to write - chess came next. But now for a bit more. First of all, the ranking. It's nice to look at, but unfortunately it doesn't reflect the real balance of power. Dario de Toffoli, who is in third place, has collected his 375 points in 4 disciplines, because he currently has only one main discipline (out of the two necessary). So in reality, he is a clear favorite (50 points are enough to pass me, which he of course surpasses by a lot). The same applies to the defending champion Paco Garcia - he has not yet completed any two-session disciplines and therefore has two zeros. By the way, while last year the competition was only captured on TV screens on a few days and that too in Germany, this time the cameras are there every day. Some film crew is making a documentary about the competition. Today, Dario de Toffoli was interviewed as the main favorite of the moment. I heard him talking about the typical athlete thing about playing one area at a time and not thinking about the overall situation at all. I believe it, yes - yesterday after winning backgammon, the first thing he did was to take himself off the rest of the backgammon tournaments (since he already has the maximum points in that area) and try others. I also heard a little of Paco Garcia's interview (he has to give them every day) and interestingly it turns out that he is practically a professional mental athlete. Paco is paid to teach people mental games. About entropy. As Kertu mentioned, the luck of the draw did not favor the Estonians - Kertu's opponent in the first round was the first-seeded Spaniard Paco Garcia and I was the second-seeded South African Alain Dekker. I was in the first game once and scored a mediocre 82 points (80-85 is a range that gives both sides roughly equal chances). Unfortunately, in the chaos, I was knocked out and lost 82-94. In the second round, an unknown opponent, against whom I played well as Kaos, limiting my opponent to 54. An easy win. The third round with David Jameson was tense. I started as Korra and everything went smoothly until the final game, where the extra points didn't really come much - a total of 82. Jameson played Korda very aggressively and straightforwardly - a relatively sure-footed strategy that always gives an average result. The winner was not known until the points were counted - he came home 82-74. Now I was back in the company of the top players and my opponent was David Pearce. Pearce has been on the fence throughout the World Cup so far and his poor form was noticeable even now - an unexpectedly easy 94-78 win. In the penultimate round, I got to play against Demis Hassabis himself - a five-time world champion in mind sports, whom George Lane described as "Mr Mindsports". In the previous round, Hassabis had lost to Paco Garcia in the leaders' duel, but had defeated Alain Dekker a round earlier. I started as Korra and managed to seize the initiative after about 15-20 moves. Hassabis defended accurately and everything was open until the last ten moves. Then the initiative finally paid off and I managed to create significant room for maneuver in one file. That was the deciding factor - I scored 20 points in the last four moves and a total of 97. The first act was in my favor. The opening was a chaotic success and the initiative was firmly in my hands. Hassabis found an interesting plan by attacking on the second file and soon got a white-black-white-black-white pattern there. Then there was red, but he placed black again at the bottom. Besides these three, the rest of the black pieces had yet to come. Now the whole fight was about whether I could block this red piece so that it could not move for a moment. Success. 97-88 win. The last round and the first board against Paco Garcia, who had been performing successfully so far. Since I didn't see any particular chances of winning, I already calculated that points would be awarded for sharing places from second to about sixth. Soon, however, a small ray of hope appeared - Paco was visibly exhausted from the long tournament. Entropy is a hugely energy-consuming game, at least at the top level, as concentration must be constantly 100%. That's why there were also huge breaks between rounds (in most areas, a new round ends immediately). I started again as Korra and everything went smoothly from the first moves. The opening and middle game were perfect, I felt my heart pounding and shivering because something big was coming. At the same time, I kept waiting for this winning streak to end, but it never happened. I had the initiative from start to finish and my opponent practically never had a chance to catch his breath. This game as Kaos was probably the most perfect of my mental athlete career. The result was 98 points. I was even a little disappointed that I couldn't get 100, everything seemed to be going so perfectly. The game started out as chaos, difficult, I was constantly struggling to stay upright with my defense. There was definitely a slip-up and after the opening it was clear that it was still too early to talk about victory (if the game gets out of hand, there is no question of someone like Paco getting 100 points). However, I forced myself to stay calm and tried to keep the game together. About a dozen moves before the end, it began to seem that Paco would not be able to make the necessary breakthrough. And so it was. He made the last moves resignedly and won 98-84. So after the loss of the opening game, only wins and 5 points out of 6. Since Peter Horlock won against Demis Hassab in the last round, he also finished with one loss and thus 1st-3rd place. Tomorrow at 6:30 PM local time, the Entropy awards ceremony will be held. I don't know what the comparison of the place coefficients (small points) was that drew me out (I immediately ran to play chess), but it can be assumed that the loss to Dekker was too big. Regardless of the exact order, the points will be distributed equally to all three. I played another chess tournament with a long time control overnight. Today 3 rounds, tomorrow 3 more. Entropy had drained my energy reserves so much that I could barely tell the difference between the chariot and the spear, and the game was more about the spinal cord. The result so far is 2 out of 3. I see that it's already 3:30 AM, I have to go to bed. Tomorrow there will be boku and decamentathlon, and tomorrow there will be chess again. Kertul will also play boku, but then othello and finally poker.