Thoughts on Mind Sports, Part 3: Mind Sports in Estonia

Historically, there have been three popular mental sports in Estonia: Checkers, Chess and Bridge. They all have a sub-union that is engaged in popularizing the field. In addition (largely thanks to the efforts of Ants Soosõrvu), gomoku and rendzu are also quite popular in Estonia, and the Estonian Rendzu Union is also active. Sudoku has also gained great popularity recently. In addition, you can meet people who know something about Othello, Go or some other less popular field. There is no sub-union in these fields, and would it be necessary? The Estonian Mental Sports Union is trying to bring together all those mental sports fields that do not have a separate sub-union. In addition, we organize championships in fields that sub-unions do not do so: Fischer chess, Reverse Checkers, English Checkers. The success of a mental sports field in Estonia can be measured in at least two different ways: The number of enthusiasts in the field in Estonia and the achievements of our athletes in the international arena. Who is an enthusiast of the field? For example, how many checkers enthusiasts are there in Estonia? It is difficult to give exact figures, but rather we are talking about orders of magnitude. A person who engages in the field at least once every few weeks could be considered an enthusiast (hence the Vint rating system - to be in the rankings you have to play a game within two weeks). The estimated number of chess players is 2,000, checkers and Bridge 1,000, gomoku and rendzu players around 200, and people who occasionally sit at the Othello / Go table around 20. The matter is a little more complicated when it comes to solving Sudoku. If you include my grandmother, who solves one Sudoku every day between Õhtuleht, then there may be 10,000 solvers in Estonia. However, if we talk about Sudoku as a sport, then there are probably around 200 solvers over time. Looking at our achievements on the international stage, the picture is a little different. Chess and checkers players have not had a chance to reach the top of the world for over 15 years (Ehlvest in chess and Arno Uutma in Brazilian checkers, respectively, who was third in 1997 and fourth in 1999). Our rendu players have been much more successful. Estonia has several world-class players in rendu and even 2 world champions – Tunnet Taimla and multiple world champion Ando Meritee. In 2008, they also managed to win the team world championship! In the last year, Tiit Vunk has risen to the top of the sudoku world, having achieved 3rd place at the 2011 World Championship. This is (considering the number of sudoku players in the world) one of the best achievements in Estonian mind sports in recent years. Naturally, we cannot forget our current Mind Sports World Champion Andres Kuuske, who will defend his title in just a month. This is my picture of Estonian Mind Sports today (I realize that this picture may not be complete, so any corrections are welcome!). The general public does not have such a picture today. The main reason is that mind sports are not attractive to the media. Recently, the (national) media has mainly covered mind sports in connection with disagreements in the chess association. We have reached such a point with the events of the Estonian Mind Sports Association (Fischer chess, Inter-School Online Tournaments and Mind Sports EMV) that at least local newspapers cover the events. There is still a lot of work ahead to communicate information about mind sports to an even wider audience. More on the influence of the media in popularizing mind sports in the following chapters.