Mind Sports Pentathlon World Championships 2016

The final session continues and Ankush is leading, but if the arithmetic doesn't fail him, he'll be a few points short. A poker win proved necessary.

The last round of the last session of the last day has begun. Ankush and James Heppell are fighting for silver and bronze. But the gold will go to their people, nothing can change that :-)

A harsh word, but good luck to you,,, and for the future too

Congratulations!! Let Madli write a more decent news now, it can be shared everywhere ;)

The awards ceremony is over and it's official :-) Silver for Ankush and bronze for James. Ricardo Gomes couldn't add to his brilliant results from the first three days and ended up in fourth place. David Jameson and Matthew Hathrell completed the top six. And of course, most importantly: mell earned the beers :p Final standings: http://www.msoworld.com/2016-live-pentamind-standings/

Wow!! Congratulations!!

It's unbelievable that winning gold for the fourth time still makes me feel as emotional as I did the first time. It's probably because I believed the least in my chances of winning this time compared to previous years of winning. The fact that the entire previous year, including the World Championships, was a complete disaster, and this win makes everything even better, makes the victory even sweeter :) I practically realized my potential 100% and I couldn't have gotten a better result anywhere else. The only areas where I could have done better were entropy and lines of action, but even there the results were actually relatively good and the 88 and 87 points I earned were a disappointment only because there were some surprising super results elsewhere. I'm also very happy that the 2 best results came from the two most popular mind games in the world - chess and Texas Hold'em (poker) - and the next three from 100% determined games. It even feels like this title was more deserved than the previous two, where I wasn't really the best player, but I was able to enjoy the favor of fortune. This time, 8 competitors exceeded the 400 point mark: 1) Andres Kuusk 462 2) Ankush Khandelwal 456 3) James Heppell 452 4) Ricardo Jorge Gomes 429 5) Matthew Hathrell 428 6) David Jameson 428 7) Dario de Toffoli 415 8) Riccardo Gueci 412 Of course, I feel a little sorry for Ankush. In addition to being second for the second year in a row, on the last day he also missed out on the first-ever small trophy, which is given to the best in the so-called Eurogames (multiplayer games where the proportion of chance is small or non-existent). Ankush is an absolutely amazing multi-player competitor. He is a professional high stakes poker player, who is much stronger than me in chess and is on the British junior bridge team. And on top of all this, he is also a Eurogames specialist at the world level. All the more incredible that I managed to defeat him this time with some trick. Now that the tournament is over, we can talk about a joke, but at the same time a serious matter. Strangely enough, most of the match days were sunny and hot (this happens in London too) and the only way to be in the tournament hall was with the balcony door ajar. But the competitors were not allowed to go to the balcony, because ... you could be shot! When I first heard it, of course, I thought it was a joke, but no. There was also stricter security at the entrance than in previous years and the windows of the gaming halls were bulletproof. It seems that the terrorist attacks that hit Europe have made big cities almost paranoid and international title competitions are of course always a potential target. Such were the London diaries of this year. My gut feeling didn't disappoint, it even exceeded my expectations. Whoa!