Mental Sports Olympiad in the 2013/2014 academic year

Hello, the Estonian Mental Sports Association is organizing an online mental sports Olympiad for schoolchildren this year. Similar to last year, there will be four competitions (chess, checkers, gomoku or 5 rows and solving sudoku). The competition will take place in three age groups (elementary school, basic school, high school) as a four-stage tournament series throughout the school year. Major changes compared to last year 1) The tournaments will take place in a new environment. It is no longer necessary to install Java on your computer, you can also participate in the tournaments with a tablet or smartphone. It is important that a newer web browser is installed on your computer: Firefox 11 , Chrome 14 , Opera 12.10 , Safari 6 or Internet Explorer 10 2) While last year all age groups solved the easy Vint.ee sudoku tournament (the medium one turned out to be too difficult even for high school), this year we will prepare a tournament suitable for each age group. Currently planned sudoku tournaments are: Elementary school: 6x6 Easy, 6x6 Easy, 6x6 Easy, 6x6 Medium, 6x6 Medium, 9x9 Easy, 9x9 Easy, 9x9 Medium Basic school: 6x6 Easy, 6x6 Medium, 6x6 Medium, 9x9 Easy, 9x9 Easy, 9x9 Medium, 9x9 Medium, 9x9 Easy Diagonal High school: 6x6 Medium, 6x6 Medium, 9x9 Easy, 9x9 Medium, 9x9 Medium, 9x9 Easy Diagonal, 9x9 Hard 3) We improved the solving of sudokus: We record the solution process, which allows organizers to check whether the sudoku has been solved in a logical way (the numbers have been entered in a logical order) or the answer has been written down. If it turns out that the student entered the numbers consecutively from the top left or in any order, the student will be disqualified from the tournament. One of the world's best Sudoku solvers, Tiit Vunk, will help analyze the solutions. 4) When registering students, you no longer need to add the area in which the student wants to participate. The student will be registered for all areas (in case the student wants to try another area in the middle of the school year). While last year 56 schools and 550 students participated in the competition, this year we hope to increase these numbers. Every Vint.ee user can also contribute here! If you have any teachers (or students) you know, find out if they have heard of such a competition. Everyone is welcome to participate. Even those who have never played checkers in their life. The main goal of the competition is to introduce and popularize mental sports. Schedule: 01.10 - 04.10. Notification to schools 01.11 - Registration deadline 09.12 - 12.12.2013 Stage I of the competition will take place Chess tournaments will take place on Monday (09.12) (3 tournaments will take place in the Vint.ee environment - a separate tournament for all age groups) Checkers tournaments will take place on Tuesday (10.12) Gomoku tournaments will take place on Wednesday (11.12) Sudoku tournaments will take place on Thursday (12.12) Stage II of the competition will take place on 20.01 - 23.01.2014 (tournaments will take place similarly to Stage I) Stage III of the competition will take place on 17.02 - 20.02.2014 Stage IV of the competition will take place on 31.03 - 03.04.2014 01.05 - 31.05 Delivery of prizes to schools Primary school tournaments begin at 13:00, elementary school tournaments at 13:30 and high school tournaments at 14:00. Competition Guide Marten Meikop Estonian Mental Sports Association

Hello, Yesterday's checkers tournament showed that although the majority of students were able to play, an estimated 30% of players still had technical problems. We decided that the tournaments taking place this week will not be counted. It seems that so-called trial tournaments will be needed in the coming years as well, for several reasons: 1) Getting to know the environment: many students have forgotten their username/password from last year; the tournament room cannot be found in time; people forget to register for the tournament. 2) Testing the technical environment (necessary for the Vint.ee team) Technical problems in chess and checkers arose for the following reason: The Vint.ee team has moved the gaming environment to a modern platform (the games work on both tablets and smartphones). However, new platforms require more server resources. Today, it is clear that the Vint.ee server is not ready to serve such a large number of students. The Vint.ee team started moving the game server to better hardware yesterday. This process will be completed by the end of November. I propose to organize a December stage outside the calculation (to find out whether the technical problems have been eliminated by moving to the new server). Participation in the December tournaments is not mandatory - if students want to play, there is an opportunity to do so. From January to the end of March, we will organize 4 official stages again, all of which would also be included in the inter-school calculation. The stages would take place approximately every three weeks. We apologize to the students for the inconvenience and hope for understanding. PS! Both today's gomoku tournament and Thursday's sudoku tournament will take place (we temporarily received additional resources from the service provider). Best wishes, Marten Meikop

Hello, Since the first stage of the Mathematical Olympiad failed due to technical problems, the Vint.ee team has been working hard in recent weeks to improve server performance (the solution has been moved to a new server and several software bugs have been fixed). We decided to act according to the instructions ("If technical problems arise with the tournament organizer, a new tournament time will be agreed upon and the results of the unfinished tournament will be canceled") and organize 4 stages again this academic year. The new times for the stages are: 09.12 - 12.12.2013 Stage I of the competition will take place Chess tournaments will take place on Monday (09.12) (3 tournaments will take place in the Vint.ee environment - a separate tournament for each age group) Checkers tournaments will take place on Tuesday (10.12) Gomoku tournaments will take place on Wednesday (11.12) Sudoku tournaments will take place on Thursday (12.12) Stage II of the competition will take place on 20.01 - 23.01.2014 (tournaments will take place similarly to Stage I) Stage III of the competition will take place on 17.02 - 20.02.2014 Stage IV of the competition will take place on 31.03 - 03.04.2014 Another important update concerns the time of the stages: Elementary school tournaments will start at 13:00, basic school tournaments at 13:30 and high school tournaments at 14:00. This change is being introduced for two reasons: We have received feedback from schools that primary school students get tired by 4:00 / 5:30. It would be better to start with them earlier. Secondly, this way not all 500 students have to come to vint.ee at the same time (we distribute the server load). In addition, starting next week, we will start organizing the "Practice makes perfect" tournament series in the Vint.ee environment. A chess tournament will take place on Mondays at 14:00, a checkers tournament on Tuesdays at 14:00, a gomoku tournament on Wednesdays at 14:00, and a sudoku tournament on Thursdays at 14:00. The tournament series will take place until the end of the academic year (or as long as there are enough interested people). There will be no inter-school ranking in connection with this tournament series (only official stages will be counted), but students have the opportunity to improve their skills weekly. The tournaments are public and anyone interested (including teachers) can participate. If students do not have the opportunity to participate in the tournaments during class, tournaments will also take place in the evenings on vint.ee every day: Gomoku tournament at 18:00, chess tournament at 19:00, and checkers tournament at 20:00 (weekdays). Please pass this information on to students - our big request is that as many students as possible participate in the tournaments in the next two weeks. This way we can monitor how the vint.ee server behaves under load and, if necessary, we can fix something before the 1st stage. We would like to remind you that schools can join the competition and add students to the competitions up to the last stage.