World Mind Games 2010 - Andres Kuusk won the silver medal!

Still a good result for Andres in Chinese chess. You're quite a beginner at it. And orientation in hieroglyphs is a plus. So what did 1st and 2nd place get in points there, when the result for third place is already so poor? The Settlers' tournament sounds particularly exciting, it's a shame you couldn't take part in it. Good luck to both of you in the future! Pihel

A quick overview of today's events, we hope to write more tonight. Today's first event, Lines of Action, was one of the most anticipated and most promising for me. During the training evenings, we had always managed to avoid the bitterness of defeat, so we were hoping for a good result. And, rushing ahead of events, we can say that a good result came, even exceeding expectations. In the case of today's skill events, Lines of Action and Blokus, it was positive that there were many participants (there was no scrabble as a side event, which steals the crowd, because everyone hopes to win there). The favorite for Lines of Action was definitely former world champion and last year's silver medalist Tim Hebbes, and the 2007 and 2008 world champions David Pearce were also among the participants. The remaining favorites in the overall standings, reigning champion Martyn Hamer, Italian Dario De Toffoli and South African Alain Dekker, were playing a Backgammon tournament at the same time (Hamer also won it, collecting a very unpleasant 100 maximum points). I started the tournament successfully, after 3 rounds I got on the first board against Hebbes himself. My opponent pressed with a firm hand from the beginning and I struggled with big problems in the middle game. However, I defended tenaciously and my opponent did not achieve a decisive advantage. When the time limit came, my opponent's nerves could not hold out - he had probably expected an easy move and when he didn't get it, his hand started to tremble visibly. But I don't have nerves, I seized the initiative myself and led the game to victory! This opened the way to the leading position, which unfortunately did not last long. However, I was still tied for first place with Hebbes before the last round, Tiit also showed a powerful game, who was 3rd-4th. I won the decisive game without any major problems and Hebbes' game was awaited. The entire game was dominated by Hebbes, but similarly to the game against me, his nerves let him down and simple mistakes in the time limit allowed his opponent to win. In terms of playing level, he was definitely the best player in the tournament, but I had the better nerves. But that meant 100 maximum points! Tiit also won his last game, but unfortunately he was only fourth in terms of odds. The afternoon block tournament didn't go so well, but that and the evening poker were already late in the evening. (to be continued)

I was eliminated from poker in the 3rd place, and that's why I now have the opportunity to write something here. Any poker was the 5-card poker known from movies, where you are dealt 5 cards, then there is a betting round, and then everyone in the game has the opportunity to discard any number of cards from their hand and get new ones. To me, it seems like a very unpleasant game. You can only guess completely blindly what the opponent has in their hand. I managed to get a straight once, and that was my only achievement. Lines of action: When I sat down at the table in the morning, I had played it once with Andres in Tartu, and then it was just moving the buttons to understand the rules. So I started my life with the second game (the first serious game). Of course, I lost to a player who ultimately remained among the last. By the second game, I had already got a little familiar with it and, with great difficulty, I managed to win it. In the meantime, I was about to give up, because my opponent was threatening to win from several sides - but still, there was only one way to defend this thing, and defend it so that I was able to make my opponent's position look very bad. The third game was definitely mine, and the fourth game was against Andres. Apparently, I played the game of my life, because I managed to turn this game in my favor. I was a little worried that maybe Andres would lose points in the overall standings, but fortunately his main competitor lost in the last game. Thanks to this victory over Andres, I managed to stay in a 2-4 place, where the odds were the worst thanks to the first opponent. Of course, I was also hoping to win against last year's favorite, but he managed to surprise me in a very unpleasant way and I had to accept the loss. So 2 losses, 4 wins and a decent 4th place. Blokus: This is a game where 4 players place Tetris shapes on the board in order so that their pieces are not together on the sides, but they must be together on the corners. The opponent has to take away space and you have to find holes through the opponent's gaps to develop across the board and use as many pieces as possible. There were probably 21 pieces in total if I remember correctly. In addition to the usual pieces, there were also five pieces that formed different shapes. (For those who are aware, all the variants of pentomino pieces were available). However, this game seemed to be such that the beginner has the biggest advantage, since everyone started from their corner and the first one simply managed to reach the middle of the board first and start developing there. I believe that I did a slightly below average result there, despite the fact that in one game I managed to pick up a win (because I started first). I'm trying to get to the place to stay and I'm also helping Andres carry these medals, because they're quite heavy and too many for one person to carry :P

Great news! I'm already waiting for it as impatiently as I am for Baruto's results every morning :) And I'm glad you're doing well, good luck in the future!

To explain my small score for 3rd place in Chinese chess, here is a brief introduction to the scoring. Over the years, the following formula has been used: Result=(nk)/(n-1), where n - the number of participants in the tournament and k - the competitor's place in the tournament. In addition, the fields are divided into 4 categories according to the popularity of the field and the importance of luck/skill, where category A means a very common and purely skill-based field and gives the most points, and category C, on the contrary, contains a large share of luck and thus earns less. The last category D is pure games of chance, which cannot be used in the top 5 results of the overall standings. This year, each result also has a coefficient of n/(n-1), which means that the number of participants is even more important. For 3rd place in Chinese chess in a tournament with 6 participants (of whom, apart from me, only one was not a tournament player), I therefore received 6/7¤(6-3)/(6-1)=51 points. I have deliberately stayed away from the overall scoreboard so that I can take tournaments more freely. At the moment I have 100 points from LOA, 94.4 from chess and 82.2 from Blokus, which I suspect will position me very close to the top three. The best result should be for Englishman Matthew Hattrell, who only scores in areas requiring less skill, but has been well rewarded with 2 victories in areas with a large number of participants. Of today's areas, I was set on Fischer chess, but a good result in regular chess makes participating there pointless (you can only use the result of 1 chess tournament) and I will try reverse checkers instead, where as the reigning Estonian champion the chances should not be the worst, but unfortunately they play here with English rules, not Russian checkers, so it is probably not worth expecting too much.

I accidentally came across this, what a great discovery. Good reading and great results, good luck!

The reverse checkers (surrender) tournament just ended. Finally, one such area where we have a clear advantage compared to the locals - reverse checkers are popular especially in Eastern Europe and are still very much in hand for Estonians thanks to Vint. So we were quietly hoping for a double victory. Expectations were slightly dampened by the participation of Grandmaster David Kotin, who is also from Eastern Europe - so there was a fear that he would share the game. However, it soon became clear that these fears were not entirely true. Interestingly, regular and reverse checkers are so different in nature that a very good checker may not know reverse checkers at all, as confirmed by last year's Estonian championship, where the aces of checkers turned out to be completely middle-class players. Most of our opponents were still completely unfamiliar with the most important tricks of reverse checkers, which we have learned with Vint's school over the past two years, and so we consistently forced our game on everyone. GM Kotin was the only one who had a drawn endgame against Tiidu, but in the end he beat the clock. So the expected goal was achieved and a double victory was brought to Estonia. I was awarded 88 points in the overall standings for this tournament, which is a very helpful bonus. Today's second competition area - Continuo - will start soon, but we will probably skip it and spend some time in the city. Yesterday we had 2 more important events. First, the award ceremony for the Sunday chess tournament, in which I had shared first place, took place. Kudos to the winners, the medals are really great and they are awarded to the best in each individual area. Second, we moved to a new hostel. And we can say right away that we are already looking forward to Friday, when we can move back to the old place. The conditions are truly Spartan - there is no room in the room for anything but six beds. In fact, there is only room for three beds, so the other three are on bunks under the ceiling.

Since Andres spoke extensively about English Reverse Draughts (Losing Draughts), there's nothing left to add except that it was great to sit against Andres in the last round - both have only wins behind them. This time Kotin fell a bit of a victim of his own rules the day before yesterday. He ran out of time faster, he did say something about a draw at the end, but then he managed to make a mistake. So I beat him, and at the same time his time also fell. Since he was right up against me in the first round, it was grist for my mill, and wire in his spokes. Kotin also lost in the second round, and in the end he already had 4 of them. But it's extremely nice to bring home his first medal :) But as the title of the post suggests, I'd rather talk a little about London. The first thing that characterizes London is that everything is expensive here. A 0.6l bottle of soft drink in a store costs, for example, £1.29, or about 26 EEK. If you want to eat out, then the cheaper than average and definitely filling "Fish & Chips" costs about 7-8£ and if you take juice on the side, the bill tends to exceed 10 by a few pounds, so over 200 kroons. "Fish & Chips" means fish and fries in British English. The word "French Fries" is not very common here. Since I was warned about it, I immediately dared to order it :) The most mysterious thing about London and England in general is that they have 2 taps at most sinks - one with hot water, the other with cold water. So if you want to wash your hands, you run hot water for a moment, then quickly run cold water to cool your hands and the water in them. Very strange anyway. And on top of all that, this hot is often still really hot :D Regarding hostels, we have now learned what you can get for 300.- per night. 5 great roommates, and hot nights. Since all the roommates are probably of different nationalities and genders, and they all have different plans, it happens that some go to bed at 10, some come at 1, some get up at 6 and some stay until noon. Anyway, I think it's a pretty cool experience in itself. We left our big suitcase and things that we probably won't use during these 4 days at another place to stay, and all the rest of our things are portable - so there's no risk that someone could steal anything during the day while we're away. When we got to the competition site, we also saw these red guards with big black hats on their heads and who march proudly and who are not allowed to move. At this point, I'm sure that one of them looked away for a moment, but when we got to them, they stood like mannequins. It seems that it's a very big honor for those who get to stand there. It looks gorgeous anyway (of course, a bit funny at first glance) and gives such a gorgeous impression of London.

Since we decided not to play Continuo (neither of us can play it and the element of chance seemed to be there at least when we got to know the rules), we had time to wander around the city in souvenir shops (shopping is my favorite activity, of course). First, the checkers grandmaster Kotin took us to a restaurant for lunch. It was a Chinese restaurant, which, as Tiidu mentioned in his previous post, was much cheaper than all the previous places we had been to - a buffet for 5.50 (just over 100 kroons). Full stomach and shopping. And as always in my case - go into the first shop, put the souvenirs in a bag and declare shopping over. Now we have been hanging out at the tournament venue for a long time and are watching Continuo and Fischer chess tournaments. A little bit about the tournament standings too. My 5 best results at the moment are 100, 94, 88, 82 and 51. If I could get a result over 80 instead of 51, I can already expect a place in the top six (I haven't looked at the rankings yet, it seems like I can last long without it; ... ok, actually I've already decided - I'll get myself up to speed tomorrow evening). However, there's still a long way to go before I can think about a medal - last year's bronze winner Dario De Toffoli scored over 90 points in all five tournaments that count, and world champion Martyn Hamer took the throne with a perfect 500-point result (for the first time in the history of the World Championships). Tomorrow, a long 8-hour Entropy tournament is planned, one of the most unique in the entire program. One of the players is Kord, who must try to create symmetry, and the other is Kaos, whose goal is to hinder Kord in every way. It all works like this: Kaos places colored balls one by one on the 7¤7 game board (7 different colors, 7 each; the color of the ball placed on the board is random, Kaos chooses where he places it), then Kord can move one of the balls in the direction of the move of the familiar chess rook. The shapes formed from the colors, which are exactly the same on both sides (vertically or horizontally), give Korra points according to how many balls formed the corresponding shape. The points received from all the shapes are added up and that is how Korra's result is revealed. For the second act, the roles are switched and the exact same thing is repeated. The winner is the player who earned the most points in the role of Korra. Browsing the competition program further, it turns out that for me the culmination will come the day after tomorrow - then the Boku and Othello tournaments are planned. From there, you have to collect as many points as possible and hope that not too many people will pass by during the remaining days. PS. Readers who can't post comments here, it's because only registered users are allowed to post comments. Registration itself is super easy and only takes a few minutes. Keep commenting, support is really, really being used up right now.

Well done, Tiit and Andres. Keep up the same pace and come home with a pile of medals.