World Mindset Championship 2011

This can definitely be considered a success. First of all, you get quite a few points for this 1-3 place, secondly, Paco didn't get 100 points, maybe they pulled him back a bit. So a double win (of course, the only even better option would have been a clean win - but considering the contingent that is there, it is quite a lot wanted). I think you could even consider this strategy, that if you don't manage to get anything from somewhere, then try to drag your competitors down. Apparently, that is the charm of the World Championship in this sense - if everyone did their area, and got 100 points from them, then the place would be divided. However, what is important is how much you can drag your opponents down. Easy to say, but hard to do apparently - the opponents are very strong in their trump cards. But still worth trying. Good luck in the future. How many points did you get for 1-3 places? Now you have to do 1 more so-called small area in a way that will bring good points, and of course, perform well in chess today. Once these goals are met, you should probably look for long-term areas where there might be even the slightest hope of earning something, and of course areas that you simply enjoy.

Since we are running late, then in 1 sentence. Today exciting areas that we are both looking forward to. For me, practically the last day to achieve anything. Planned boku, decamentathlon and chess, unfortunately I have to give up othello.

Information arrived from London that Andres also won the boku!

Whoa! Now there's already a result of almost 500. It's starting to create.

I'll start with the answer to Tiidu's question: entropy 1st-3rd place gives 94.1 points. It was indeed a double win, because in addition to my good result, I stole 5.9 points from Paco. It seems that word spreads quickly between London and Estonia, that I did achieve a minor victory in bokus. I secretly hoped for that, because I have been training hard, including in the Karepa camp with our gomoku and renju aces. So in the end, a good result came from where it was expected, the victories so far have all been pretty decent surprises. In bokus, I started with 6 points out of six, but then I lost to the defending champion David Pearce and gave him the lead. But that was only for one round, and although Alain Dekker caught me for a moment, I managed to tear him away from him again in the next round. A total of 9.5 points out of 12 and a full point ahead of Pearce, Dekker and Matthew Hattrell, who were in 2nd-4th place. That's 100 points more and now I'm really the favorite, no matter how you look at the table. Kertu also did well - 7 points and 6th place. I also gave a longer interview to the film crew today, which I'll probably have to share frequently now. Now the decamentathlon, news about which will be in 4 hours. Although it's also a multi-event, it can still be used in the overall standings due to its very different structure. If you don't know what a decamentathlon is, then http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decamentathlon.

My boku ended in 6th place. This is of course a very good achievement, but it could have been a bit better. The second game was othello. I don't consider myself skilled at this game at all. I've played a few times, but I don't know any tactics. Since Tige Nnando didn't show up, my first round was free. The organizer Josef came to play one game with me, which I quickly won. The second round started with Tim Hebbes, who asked me if I was any good at this game. I said I didn't know anything and beat him 41-23 (64 buttons are shared between them, 32-32 is a draw). Next, I immediately went to the first table against Andrew Havery. I thought he would be a tougher opponent, but I made a mistake out of carelessness and lost. Maybe it was also a matter of awe. In any case, the third round was against a local celebrity Arnold Roy - a very big man. Since he was the 1 favorite, I didn't expect anything from this game. The surprise was big when I only had 12 pieces and 12 minutes and he didn't have any good moves left. However, I still had two spare moves. Suddenly he grabbed his hair with both hands, rocked himself back and forth and panted loudly (like a steam locomotive). At that moment I felt like he was very close to having a heart attack. Well, I finally won that game 36-28 and Arnold ran into the corridor with his big collection to calm himself down. The situation before the penultimate round was such that we had 4 people leading by 3 points. In the last round I met Gueci Ricardo and the situation was very even. My victory would have brought me first place; Cueci's victory would have left him in second. The situation seemed to be turning in my favor, even the referee came and noted down our piece positions at the crucial moment. We then filled our corners and long rows and columns and started counting the scores. Cueci won with a score of 31-33. So the first place went to Arnold with a tiebreak, second to Guec, third was still open, because I had equal points with Andrew. The judges discussed for half an hour whether my victory over Arnold (his only loss, by the way!) or Andrew's narrow victory over me was more important. They added up the points there and suddenly Josef came looking for me and said that unfortunately I was fourth again. That was the saddest moment of the whole competition. One of my biggest hopes of getting a medal was just dashed. Maybe I'll even skip the London Lowball poker in the evening due to my great grief and go and think about what could have gone so wrong. If anyone has flight tickets for today or tomorrow on the London-Tallinn route, please let me know quickly. In addition, I also learned from the organizers that there will be no separate best woman award. Only the overall and juniors. Kotin asked if I would come to the Czech Republic next year, because he would like to see me there. Probably not! And the MSO will also be out next year. If I don't get a medal in sudoku tomorrow, I'll start voting for my home team. Depressed mental athlete.

A riddle for mental athletes: what do Dario "don't-think-about-the-situation" deToffol and Kertu "I'm-going-to-lose-there" Luha have in common? :P Kertu's game is clearly going uphill - starting with the last places, then sixth and fourth. So I predict second place in tomorrow's sudoku. Unfortunately, you can't go up two more places, so after sudoku you'll probably have to start the round from last place again. Anyway, the emotions of mental games are very familiar to me and well conveyed: sweaty palms and a pounding pulse in your throat when you're in good shape against a tough opponent, and the "you're-all-stupid-I-want-to-go-home" feeling that follows disappointment. It all goes with the game, and that's why (or despite it) we love games.

I entered the poker game in a bad mood. The real plan was to skip the game, but since it had been paid for and they kept asking me to do it, I agreed. I also said that I would only play one hand. If the cards were good, that was fine; if the cards didn't fit, someone else would get all my chips. Well, the young Polish guy fell for it. He thought I would just go home and give up my money. In fact, I had A2346, which is the best possible hand in Lowball. I doubled down on my situation and played three hours of fun poker. Finally, the card didn't run anymore and the chips also went down pretty quickly. Blinds and antes took their toll and he got through. I ended up at another table, I don't know the location at the moment. Tomorrow morning, sudoku and ken-ken. I still had a lot of thoughts to write about, but the sadness of Othello is still in my soul. When I recover and my thoughts gather, I will write again. Andres will play chess for another hour and write his post late at night or tomorrow morning, because he has the whole day off! Good night to you who are reading this.

Good night to you too! I'll just mention that it's great that you're writing about your adventures here like this and I'm rooting for you all the time!! Lots of success for the remaining competitions!

Today was one of the highlights of the World Championship - Triinu arrived to chip in with a big bag of gifts. Seriously, the first place in boku was the icing on the cake, now I feel like only extreme bad luck or Dario de Toffoli can take away the gold. The afternoon decamentathlon went rather poorly, the English language shift there is still too big. It is still very difficult to win crosswords and other similar games with the English. Chess, checkers, othello and IQ went well, in go I offered more or less logical moves at random. I messed up Mastermind because I thought there would be 3 tasks in 15 minutes, but there were 5 - I simply didn't have time for the last ones. I was destroyed in mental arithmetic and creative thinking and in memory as well, I didn't even start doing crosswords. Chess just ended. It became clear that after 8 hours of brainstorming, I am not a chess player. I played like a 19th century nerd. There's a heads-up poker tournament going on right now, where David Pearce and David Jameson are going head-to-head. My money's on David. Kertu says on the sidelines that she's keeping her fingers crossed for David again.