World Mindset Championship 2011

Nonii. I skipped the morning game because I couldn't choose between two bad things. I just arrived at the scene where Andres is racking his brains with a Turkmen girl. Today I'm playing hand-to-hand and poker. Events last night - I once asked Harri if he had any syrup. He didn't have any at the moment. A suspicious blue bottle appeared in the kitchen after a shopping trip. It stood next to the fairy bottle for several days. Last night I watched Harri drink something light blue. Later I discovered that the blue bottle was open. I poured some into a cup, added water and tried to drink it. It said Lemon on the label and the taste was a bit like that. But it mostly tasted like washing powder. Yet the label had a picture of a happy family running in a hay field. I don't know if it was because of the great energy the drink gave or because I was lucky that the dishes had been washed. After drinking the drink, I discovered that the dishes in the sink had the same liquid inside them. In the evening I gather my courage and ask if there is any syrup. The weather is pleasantly humid today. It's not raining, it's just foggy. Disgusting anyway. People run here every day. In sports clothes and with music in their ears. And so on every day, every hour. Ages 8-80 and in every color. Andres finished his first area, I'm starting to get ready to be the first. Longer summary at 8:30 PM or midnight. And I've also realized that the later the time, the more fun Andres and I have. I guess my brain is really at its limit. Andres is probably better at comparing last year's competition venue with this year's. I'll let him type it out. If you have any suggestions for dishwashing detergent flavors, please write them down. In the meantime, bubbly!

In the morning on the way to the tournament venue, I convinced myself that despite the Turkmen and other tough players (or rather because of them), playing English checkers is still useful. At least I'm learning something. In addition to the Durdyevs, the best English player Tony Boyle was also there, who is among the top 100 in the world rankings. In the first round, I unexpectedly won easily - I pushed for checkers on the left wing as best I could. In the second round, I was the first from Durdyevs. I had an advantage in the opening, but in the middle game it tended to slip out of my hands. However, my opponent made an unexpected number of mistakes and so came the second point. In the third round, I was able to play with Tony Boyle. After the opening, I was under pressure and the position tended to fall apart. In the last struggle, however, I found a beautiful combination (which I will probably demonstrate to everyone when I get back), which steered the game to a drawn endgame. In the fourth round, I was finally able to play with last year's world champion in mental sports, Paco Garcia - a relatively easy victory. The fifth and penultimate round brought a strong representative of Turkmenistan (but not Durdyev) as my opponent and after a long struggle, it was a draw again. Before the decisive round, I unexpectedly found myself in the lead, half a point ahead of the namesake Durdyev (Basham) and Boyle. The opponent was given the leading Durdyev himself. I quickly offered a draw, but my opponent refused. I kept the situation as simple as possible and my opponent went looking for complications. As a result, however, I already had the upper hand and, lacking higher ambitions, I steered the game into a draw. So at least the 1st place was up for grabs and things got even better when Boyle also settled for a draw in the last game. So a clear first place with 4.5 points out of 6, second and third were shared by Durdyev and Boyle, half a point apart. A completely unexpected 100 points, as if found on the ground! You can hardly believe that there is still eleven to hope for from this tournament. But since there is no good without bad, the result of the surrender (whatever it may be) is of no use - only the best from various checkers tournaments counts. But for some reason I don't really care about that right now :)

Excellent. Well done, Andres. A trumpet chorus just passed by my window here in Tartu - I started to wonder if it was your fans who were excited by the good news. Aliis

Actually, the reverse checkers are still going on, but I have a free round. After that, one more game. I beat GM Kotin, but I lost to IM Boyle. The last game will be with Kertu and I promised that if he has a chance of a medal, I will give him a point - I don't need them anyway (I have 100p in checkers and reverse checkers is such a cheap area that the winner only gets 80p). If last year Paco Garcia succeeded in everything, this year another old master Dario de Toffoli is doing the same. Everything he touches turns to gold - today he closed the backgammon tournament and is already moving with a score that should more or less win the gold. Since the battery is running out, the connection is over for now.

Good job! And with the last post, the back is also secured in case you can milk Kertult in the last round of surrender :) cunning, cunning. Pihel

As far as I remember, 1 of the Durdyevs became the world champion of the 100th youth, so they probably see the 100th combinations perfectly. English checkers is still a very different game, they can do something above average with their heads - they could be more dangerous when calculating long force variations - but there are hardly any real tops. I would rather be more afraid of some English guys there; one of them was a legend in his day - Marion Tinsley, and surrender is a completely different game, it has nothing to do with the logic of checkers at all, except for the rules of moving and capturing. A completely mediocre checker can easily be a liquid grandmaster, and a grandmaster checker can be a pretty poor liquidizer. There are always exceptions of course :)

The reigning Estonian champion in reverse (Russian) checkers is 11-year-old Andreas Tulva. I myself, as a mediocre checkers player, came in second place. We will probably compete again in the fall (in Tartu).

Today I failed at English checkers and poker. I've been saying for a long time that Hebbes brings bad luck. Every time I sit at the same table with him, I quickly get destroyed. Today in poker I wasn't last again, but I didn't make it into the first half either. Andres stayed to play, I ran home. I have 4 pairs of shoes with me and 3 of them have already started to rub blisters. Soon I'll be walking barefoot. On the way from a kiosk I bought some kind of pancake roll with meat inside. The foreign salesman looked at me, tapped the CD/DVD screen a few times, I gave him the amount indicated on the package and he gave me 5 pence more. I was honest and gave him the rest of the money back. During the day, Jameson asked me what I had done to my hair to make it a different color. I replied that the weather was rainy, nothing else. Actually, I washed it in the morning. If I had known that the water here changes the color of my hair so drastically, I wouldn't have washed it. And by the way - I don't understand it myself. Tomorrow is the most interesting day for me - I'll be playing games I've heard of before! Entropy and chess. At Andres' request, I've decided to give up poker tomorrow night and play chess instead, which I'm very good at. If I can't make my opponent look like a cowboy, then I've lost, because that's the only thing I know a little about in this game. There are definitely strong opponents in Entropy, but it's not bad; I hope that fortune favors my blindly taken pieces and I get a few points from them. The morning's rest is gone. The day was much happier and more active. Tomorrow will be a day full of entropy and 40 minutes of chess in the evening, which should end earlier than the previous poker nights. All the best. So be vigilant and keep your fingers crossed. Andres will be back soon with his own pile of medals and will give a quick and thorough overview of today. Enjoy the sun, guys!

Today the sun is finally shining over Asgaard again. Not golden, and probably not silver either, but bronze, perhaps. Before the start of tonight's poker tournament, I was going to start with these words when I was thinking about the post that would come up in my head. The sun came out of nowhere because of the English checkers gold, which I would never have dreamed of. And if Durdyev is even the world youth champion, then be proud. In fact, I have always had a special relationship with English checkers. When this game came to Vint, I won the first tournament (ok, it was unofficial, Tiit won the first official one). While training for this year's Estonian Championship, I rose to the top of Vint's rankings and was in the medal standings at Estonian Championship until the last round. That's a lot more than Russian checkers, not to mention the hundredth. That's why, despite the participation of the Durdyevs, Tony Boyle and other people, I couldn't turn my back on English checkers and was more interested in how I could compete with such well-known figures. It turned out that I did quite successfully. But the reason why the sunbeams only have a bronze sheen is primarily due to the good performances of the competitors. I already talked about Dario de Toffoli - he already has a result of 2*100, 96 and almost 90, and a couple of trumps to go. Defending champion Francisco Paco Garcia de la Banda won last night's poker and collected 280 points in one day. Considering that he has three areas coming up, from which he collected the maximum 100 points last year (go, entropy, creative thinking), he may even surpass last year's score and give de Toffoli a nose. And finally, surprise surprise, Tige Nnando was silver in poker yesterday according to Paco and his collection of points is also quite awe-inspiring. Only pre-tournament favorite David Pearce seems to be a little out of the game. This may sound a bit strange, as he won two games in a row today - kamisado and continuo - but they were both cheap games that pale in comparison to the big game. Now, coming back to the first paragraph of the post, I mentioned that I "intended" to start like that. I did, because the poker tournament forced me to make some adjustments. In poker, things started badly - I lost almost a third of the chips I was given at the beginning. But I soon earned them back and by the time I went to the second table, I was already in a slight surplus. The second table went well. Without any major problems, I managed to more than double the initial amount and thus made it to the top eight of the final table. Initially, I was more in the middle or back half in terms of chips, but a big win against Peter Horlock and chips "stolen" from the following games raised me to the chip leader for a while. Now I kept a low profile in order to hold on to the top three or four, which would already give me 85 points. The plan worked out more or less, although in the process I lost the chip lead to Martyn Hamer and Andrew Havery. With five players left, the antes were already so high that the poorer players quickly found themselves with their backs against the wall, and together with Hamer and Havery we methodically ate them out. I started with the smallest number of chips among the top three, but a pretty decent serve from Havery left him floundering and Hamer soon made things clear with him. We were left alone with the 2009 world champion, he had 3-4 times more chips. I thought it was hopeless, but to my surprise, I managed to outsmart my opponent beautifully in heads-up. Soon the tables changed and I took the lead. From that moment on there was no looking back or showing mercy - I turned poor Hamer into dust. So two defeats in one day and the maximum 100 points from both of us! What more could one wish for (okay, okay, 3 defeats and 300 points, but let's be realistic). More points today than all the previous ones combined. I would like to say that I'm good too and such a turn in fortune's favor came thanks to the high class, but it must be admitted that things actually started to turn for the better after Triinu promised to start keeping her thumbs up more strongly. The medal chances now mainly depend on how the second main event that counts (well, Triinu keeping her thumbs up too, of course). Currently, there is only one good result on the list and tomorrow is the last chance for second (in later main events like go and pacru, the probability of getting a useful result (which would exceed the 75 in front of chess) is practically zero and I won't be participating in them anyway). So there is much more at stake in tomorrow's entropy than I would like. Considering that last year I finished entropy with only a 50% result, the prospects are not very good, but I am undoubtedly stronger than last year. Should entropy fail, things are essentially dead and the absolute last straw will be grabbed tomorrow evening. Namely, we will have to decide whether to play all the remaining (four) pokers and hope for a good result in all of them, keeping in mind the overall poker score, or to try the long-time chess tournament that is taking place in parallel with poker, which is spread over two days (more precisely, late at night or even early at night). In principle, getting a good place in chess is of course more promising, but considering the time of its occurrence (late at night, at the same time as poker and over two more days), the number of participants will probably remain small, which in turn will put a serious strain on the points to be distributed. Hence, the decision point. After tomorrow, it should be more or less clear whether and if so what (gold) medal chances are still preserved.

Incredibly powerful result! But weren't English Checkers and Lines of Action both big areas? I thought you already had the necessary points from there. How many participants are there in poker tournaments? Good luck in entropy to both of you!