World Mindset Championship 2012

I got third place in Shacru and 78 points, which unfortunately doesn't help (my worst small area is 80). The underdog was James Heppell and second was David Jameson - these guys are really on a roll this year, quite surprisingly for me. Heppell increased his score by 12.5 points and is now on 468, 69. However, Jameson's small area results are so good that second place didn't help him at all. I really feel sorry for Paco, who got a terrible setback due to his schedule - two of his main areas fell on the same time. This means that he is not only out of the gold medal competition, but also out of the medal competition. It's a terrible shame, because in my opinion he is the most versatile mental athlete in the world. The last round of Azacru is about to start, where I will fight for second place. I will try my hand against the night, I will limb in and I will not make a preflop trip or bluff once :).

got a good lesson from Omaha :D let's hope for maximum points..don't fail :)

Someone on the ukpuzzles.org forum said that there were two 1.5-hour parts and both contained 8 puzzles, or 16 in total. I don't know how these points came about, it doesn't matter...

In Azacrus I managed to get second place and 88.9 points, or 8.9 points more, and I reached 443, which temporarily raised me to 6th place, but with Omaha still ongoing, Ankush will pass me again. I myself reached the final table in poker, but I couldn't get better than 7th place there. The rankings before the last day are: 1. Dario De Toffoli, ITA 2. James Heppell, GBR 3. Paco Garcia, ESP 4. David Jameson, GBR 5. Ankush Khandelwal, IND 6. Tony Niccoli, ITA 7. Andres Kuusk, EST 8. Tim Hebbes, GBR De Toffoli doesn't have the championship title yet, Heppell, Khandelwal and Paco have a theoretical chance to catch him, but to do that they will have to pick up two losses tomorrow, which is practically impossible. My possible score, which I could reach if I beat boku, is 454.12, which unfortunately the first three already have more points than. So goodbye medal, but hello Toffifee. I bet it tastes even better. If I really were to beat boku, I would probably grab the last straw and also try abalone, where the chances are not very good, but you have to fight like a lion until the end.

How many participants were there? It's a shame that this time the medal went to you. Next year I'll give you proper training in poker. I think that with your level of thinking ability, there should be a pretty good chance of getting a decent score (at least in one lottery tournament).

The game was played on three tables with 7-8 players, so just over twenty participants. There were fewer people than in previous tournaments, as there were several other areas going on at the same time.

I had to wait until the very last day of the competition, but luck finally came my way. Although it was already too late to win a medal, I was greatly consoled by today. I first felt the favor of the goddess of luck in the fifth round of boku, when I was already completely out of the opening against Alain Dekker (this can easily happen when playing with white in boku), but he kept putting off delivering the final blow and finally, when he went for the winning combination, he overlooked the fact that he had played four against me in a constant barrage of attacks. It is rare to feel bad when you win, but this time I really felt sorry for Alain, the poor man needed a good few minutes to recover and sit down at the table again. After two rounds, fortune continued to favor me when, playing with black against David Pearce, I forgot about the theory and managed to create a clear disadvantage on the board. Somehow I managed to equalize and instead of calmly drawing, Pearce took a risk and lost. After such happy results against the expected main competitors, I felt deep down that this had to be my tournament and this time my gut feeling was right - I scored 11 out of 14 points and beat Ankush by one point and Pearce by two. So the second defeat and the first maximum score. Unfortunately, the tournament table showed that there was no theoretical chance of a medal before the last session (so I was already dead and buried before today) and I planned to go to town during the last session, because I didn't feel like playing abalone and I didn't know anything about lost cities. Somehow, the others managed to convince me that it was a very fun game (lost cities, then), the rules of which can be learned in 5 minutes (exactly how much time was left until the start of the tournament). So I asked the judge for permission and he let me participate. I did learn the rules, but unfortunately not the strategy so quickly and in the first game against Ankush I was defeated by about 20-80. In the second game I started to understand what I had to do and lost with a minimal score of 31-32. What happened next, however, is already classified as a miracle. Of the remaining 12 games, I won 10, including against my old friend and tournament favorite Alain Dekker, and won the entire tournament. This game is said to be 50% luck and 50% skill, but I couldn't figure out whether I was just lucky or did something cunning in the meantime. So the tournament ended on a positive note and I rose to fourth in the overall standings. As you could have guessed a few days ago, the world champion was Italian Dario De Toffoli, who won his previous championship title exactly 10 years ago. Dario improved his score even further today and reached 489, which is exactly the same score I achieved last year. Despite the misfortune of the last few days, the second place was taken by the Spaniard Paco Garcia de la Banda with 467 points, the bronze was won by the Englishman James Heppell with 465 points. Similar to last year, 11 competitors exceeded the 400 point mark, and they were ranked as follows: 1. Dario De Toffoli, Italy 2. Francisco Paco Garcia de la Banda, Spain 3. James Heppell, Great Britain 4. Andres Kuusk, Estonia 5. Ankush Khandelwal, India 6. David Jameson, Great Britain 7. Tony Niccoli, Italy 8. Michael Dixon, Great Britain 9. Tim Hebbes, Great Britain 10. Matthew Hatthrell, Great Britain 11. Alain Dekker, South Africa. The award ceremony was very uplifting - with flags, medals, cups, champagne and the Italian anthem. Even without winning a medal, it was extremely great to be a part of it all. Compared to the previous two years, it seems that better times may dawn again in the field. After the official closing, Paco and Dario accepted the organizers' invitation to go to a pub. We were also joined by the other two Spanish representatives, whose names I unfortunately don't remember, but they were very likeable characters. The first place came with a prize money of 500 British pounds and Dario gave it to everyone. We chatted about the history of the tournament (the organizers had old bulletins with them), the most exciting rivalries and scandals, including various cheating accusations (one of the most common is the accusations of the mastermind counting the buttons of different colors (after setting the code) and the coder hiding some of the colors in his pocket to mislead his opponent). We also talked about football, the 2007 financial and Greek debt crisis, Paul Krugman and much more. I generally don't like sitting in pubs, but with this group it was a real pleasure. I also found that Paco has a fantastic sense of humor and that he is not only a great mental athlete but also a great person. He has only one, and rather decisive, flaw that I cannot tolerate at all - Paco is a fan of Real Madrid. If I try to summarize this year's tournament on a positive note, I made several new good friends. Perhaps the twixt champion Florian Jamain deserves a special mention, as he was already a bit used (that's what friends are for) in analyzing his unfinished twixt game. Florian participated in the event for the first time, but promised to definitely be back next year and give battle to all the old aces. It's great that the press was present every day for the second year in a row. Advertising the event and making it attractive to the media has been relatively problematic recently, so this is an important step towards improvement. I was invited to a photo shoot on a relatively bad day, when I had just officially lost the title and lost any real hopes of a medal. The photographer then mentioned that the English have a fitting old saying: there is nothing harder for a true champion to bear than the knowledge that he is no longer the best. There is probably some truth in this saying, but I would still end the summary of the final day with a piece of Estonian wisdom: a true champion may lose, but he will come back stronger than ever.

4th place at the World Championships is also a commendable result. And if 4th place is usually given a financial prize at the Olympics, then the Estonian state should do the same for this World Championships.

I have also competed so much that I can appreciate 4th place. I hope to see you, if not before, at the presentation of Stratego during the Tallinn Open. Then you can also personally encourage young renju players to come to London (we don't have any long and expensive trips planned next year). It is true that the Russian renju players wanted me to do another Karepa camp after the end of the renju World Championships (14.08. 2013) and then it will probably be too late to come to London, but we will consider it.

How many points did this last game give?