World Mindset Championship 2011

Tuule is right - how many times have you had the "I'm-going-to-jump-off-the-roof" feeling after a game of chess or bridge? And unfortunately, it's a given that if you continue competing, it will happen again and again. But there are also many nice and jubilant moments, like Kertu driving that handyman to the brink of a heart attack :) P.

Last year, I managed to make a good move against this same Othello player, which made him gasp for breath. But he still only had to win there, and quite convincingly. After all, this is the same person we are both talking about. So if you beat him, then that is a strong word. I think my result in Othello was 5th place at the time. I just didn't see a better place possible. It's not that easy to win these medals there, Andres is just good. Last year, I won 1 silver medal, and it was in English reverse checkers - thanks to the fink, I have learned to play reverse checkers a little and that's where it came from. Apparently, there were only 2 opponents who really knew this game, and one of them (Kotin) I managed to beat. In the other games, the maximum was 4th place, and quite a few times the honor of getting this place fell to me. There were even divisions from 1-4 places, where the odds were 4. for me:) So if you still get five fourth places, then come complain, then I'll share the worries with you:P Good luck with today's KenKen (probably no point in mentioning sudokus, because you do them so quickly that you hardly realize later that you had to do sudokus). But KenKen probably determines a lot today. It's like killer sudoku, only you can't forget that different rows and columns in one area can have the same numbers. You can still mess up your competition if you forget that. In a 3-piece, which gives a total of 7 , there doesn't have to be only 1 2 4, if it's curved, then there can also be 2,2,3. Trust me, even if you're experienced, you can still do this trick. So I wish you a sharp and calm mind, so that you don't make mistakes while cramming. Go defeat that logic then.

I discovered last night that I have been playing for the past 6 days without a break, a total of 72 hours. So I decided to skip today's logic (sorry, Regina and Tiit, you gave me a good training, maybe I will need it next year) and get a good rest. Since there is no area that I can play in the afternoon either, I should be fresh for the evening bridge tournament (I will also skip poker and take the opportunity to play in pairs with Triinu). The rest is all the more welcome because we have often only been able to sleep at 3 or 4 am (Estonian time), although I have to admit that after starting to follow Tuule's nutritional tips, I have much more energy. Kertul's main area today is logic, including sudoku. Since she is a top ten player in both sudoku and logic in Estonia, a medal is definitely a real possibility, but why not gold too. Although I am not participating today, there is still one area that is of great importance to me - acquire. Namely, Dario de Toffoli is a multiple winner in this area and should pick up 100 points this year as well, I practically have more. Tomorrow and the day after tomorrow there will be a series of trump cards from Paco Garcia and David Pearce, but I will write more about the tournament standings and opportunities in the next post. Now a little more in depth about yesterday's areas. First of all, Boku. Before the tournament, I considered Boku to be the area with the greatest hopes, it has been practiced to the point of boredom and the training games have been promising. A few weeks ago I decided to try the Tim Hebbes opening with white in a couple of training games (black starts and has a big advantage), which at first glance looks like a certain defeat (white does not place his first piece in close proximity to black), and the results were excellent - black only needs to make a few inaccuracies when white seizes the initiative. So I switched to the Hebbes opening, at least I don't have to passively pass in defense for a long time. I managed to win the first 6 games, with black the wins came relatively easily, with white there was some rattling, but it seemed that the opening was working. Then I faced the defending champion David Pearce. I confidently played the Hebbes opening again and on move 6 Pearce fell into thought. Later it turned out that I had prepared for this opening, but I used a different move 5 than Hebbes. Pearce continued with a strategy of securing the position, without making any battles for the initiative and soon his position was so strong that victory was only a matter of time (and that time came quickly). So I wrote the Hebbes opening into the stack and returned to the usual horizontally adjacent move. Of the subsequent games, the struggle against Alain Dekker with white was very interesting. My opponent simply did not give me any breathing space to make any active moves. But the defense held and I got a draw despite the fact that during the whole game I did not manage to play even a single open pair without a gap, let alone threes. I also got to play against Hebbes's opening once with black, and that was the only time with black where the opening failed - I lost both the pawn and the initiative - but I still managed to win the game in the end. All in all, the result is what I needed - all wins with black and 50% with white. Decamentathlon. It started with a memory task - I had to memorize a deck of cards and 50 numbers in 5 minutes. I have to say that 5 minutes is still a very short time, I couldn't do it. I managed to do it with the numbers, I reached 32, but I was completely destroyed with the cards. I had reached about 20-25 cards, but when I went to write them down, the 15th card had been erased from my mind, there was not even a faint idea left of what might have been there. And since according to the rules, the first wrong card ends the counting of points (so if you miss the first one and hit all the rest, it's zero points), then it was a dud. I was able to more or less cope with the chess and checkers problems, although not with all of them in checkers. My IQ went surprisingly well (I'm still not good with intelligence), I was able to cope with all of them. I did the easier ones in Othello, maybe even a few difficult ones. In mental arithmetic, I regretted not attending the lecture by Gearge Lane - one problem was about what day of the week it was (will be) on a given date. By the way, Alan Dekker told me how he was asked what day of the week it was on August 26, 1685 (actually there was some other date, but I didn't remember it and in fact Dekker didn't either), after which the world champion in mental arithmetic, Gerd Mittring, looked at the ceiling for 3 seconds and said: "Thursday" - of course correctly. The more difficult problems were such that you were given a 6-8 digit number and needed to take the cube root. Any notes are prohibited. Well, forgive me. Half of the Go tasks were about survival or killing - I could offer something there. For the more complex ones, I simply offered seemingly logical moves. In creative thinking, the task was: "Given the sequence 1, 2, 3, ... what is the next member? Come up with different alternatives with a short justification". And the second task: "Given the sequence A, B, C, ... what is the next member? Come up with different alternatives with a short justification". You can all try, how creative you are. I didn't have enough of it anyway. As a bad surprise, backgammon had been replaced with crosswords (not that I know backgammon). I didn't know a damn thing and decided to leave it for last. Unfortunately, time ran out and from there I got 0 points. Finally, mastermind. You had to solve 5 tasks in 15 minutes (given, not from the starting positions). Somehow I heard wrong and thought there was 5 minutes for the task. So I wasted too much time and barely got 3 done. At least I managed to finish them faster (in terms of the number of offers) than the others. There's not much to write about the late-night chess. I was almost as exhausted as the previous day and the result was again 2 out of 3 (I lost the first one right away, which essentially extinguished all hopes). So 4 out of 6 in total. Of course, the chess nights also fell on the toughest days - the first after entropy and the second decamentathlon. I also made some calculations of what would happen if all the competitors got the same number of points in the following areas as last year. It turns out that the defending champion Paco Garcia still has a real chance of passing him again at the finish line. Now I'm going to the tournament venue and using the ranking on the wall there, I'll write more about the predictions. PS. Tiit, you're right, it's really the same Othello player. Last year he came in second and I lost to him too, so anyway, good performance from Kert.

I'm just as happy right now as I was yesterday before the last round of Othello. I had to solve 6 Sudokus, 6 KenKen too. I started doing them from the beginning. The asphalt milling under the window was a bit distracting, but I turned the mp3 up to sing louder. The Sudokus were easy. About like 9*9 averages, here it is. When I got to the KenKen, I was glad that Andres mentioned on the plane that there can be several of the same numbers in the same square (just like Tiit explained!) and even greater joy was that I had tried to do three KenKen the day before yesterday, one of which I even succeeded! But I started doing them in a row and they didn't seem difficult. I couldn't really understand whether the harder ones were in front or behind, because in my opinion the first ones were very easy and the last ones were easier. There were a couple of KenKen in the middle that were confusing and which I had to do twice because there was a small mistake somewhere. Well, then 1 local ace finished at 12, and I finished at 12.15 (start time was 10.45). An hour later I went to take a peek - Garcia, Jameson and my friend Steven with the apple were still doing it. Only 1 person had left. So at the moment I'm glad that I finished second. But as you can see, some force majeure could easily take this medal away from me. I checked that no number was left unwritten and I hope I got everything correctly. Thanks to palmist Tuule, who predicted my result in advance and introduced me to my own world of thought. It's a little easier for me to go to the next competition now, but yesterday's Othello loss hasn't gone away yet. Lunch is free, and in the evening I'll bet on Texas Hold'em, if I don't get a medal there, then I won't get one anywhere else. Ken wasn't at the competitions for two days and I was already worried, but today he's here. On crutches, but still there! The sun is starting to shine on my yard, because there is so little time left until the return flight! PS. Andres promised to write an analysis of the tournament standings, but since there is a big roundtable, it will have to wait a bit.

I'll start with an in-depth analysis of the rankings, I probably have to finish soon, interview obligations await. The 426 points in the rankings from the day before yesterday (I don't bother counting the decimal places, although they may ultimately be decisive) I have collected as follows: 2x100 (checkers and poker), 95 (lines of action), 68 (chess) and 63 (hare&tortoise). The 94 I got in entropy now replaces 68, or 26 points more. Yesterday's boku win was the third in the 100 single-session events and replaced H&T's 63 points. So now with 489 points, a better result than that has only once in history left without first place, in 2009, when Tim Hebbes finished in silver behind Martyn Hamer. So the chances are good. The only downside is that the chances of getting extra points are exactly zero - I have the maximum points from the single-session disciplines combined and I have run out of all the main disciplines (I still have go and diplomacy left, where even if I participated, there would be no chance of a good result. (To be continued)

Huhh, it was pretty scary. Today's a long interview. Not one taken on the spot like the previous ones, but in a special room, with lights directed at your face and microphones hanging from the side. Pretty scary. I can't say I didn't stutter, it's damn hard to get those English words out of my mouth. How did you find information about MSO (Mind Sports Organisation)? What do you think about the Mind Sports World Championship? How long have you been doing mind sports and what field did you start in? What do you think about the future of mind sports? At least nothing was asked in German like last year. Back to the tournament table. Dario de Toffoli's chances are largely determined by the currently ongoing acquire. He currently has 2x100 (backgammon and oware), 95 (poker) and 80 (H&T). So he should get 100 points from acquire, he will reach 375 and there is still room for improvement from hare&tortoise - for example in mastermind, where he shared first place last year. Acquire second place would also give over 90 points, but from third on, the chances of winning are already very slim. I discovered a little unexpectedly that the main competitor is again the defending champion Paco Garcia. 100 points from poker, 94 from entropy, 88 from blocks and 86 from owares do not yet help him to the top, but his trump cards are not yet on the table. Last year he won both go and creative thinking, of which 100 points can be planned in advance for go this year. If you add mastermind, where last year he shared 1st-3rd place, then it is enough to repeat last year's results, if he is already on the same page with me. So in reality the situation is not much better than fifty-fifty. The Davidite duel in poker yesterday fortunately ended with Jameson's victory and Pearce's chances are therefore already quite small. In his case, however, writing him off is always out of the question, as there are still several potential winning areas ahead: acquire, mastermind, shacru, abalone. However, his form has been poor and it is hard to believe that he will get a super result from all of them. I just spoke to Tim Hebbes, who is also in the process of acquiring. According to him, he has the last chance to make a good result in the main area in acquire and have a say in the gold distribution. He is currently in second place, 1 point behind the leader, but to be honest, I don't believe in his chances even if he wins acquire. To have real chances, he would also have to win some poker, which is far from ruled out, as he is currently in a good position in the poker standings. Tige Nnando, who started as a comet, has not received any bonus in the last few days and also does not have the potential in the remaining days to threaten my points total, even if he succeeds perfectly. That concludes the circle of main favorites. Former champions Martyn Hamer and Alain Dekker are far behind and Matthew Hattrell and Michael Dixon should not expect much from the remaining areas. By the evening, when the acquire is over, it should be clearer whether there will be a two-horse race with Paco or someone else will intervene in the title hunt. PS. It seems that Kertu narrowly missed out on a medal in the most unfortunate possible scenario (someone made a mistake). So we probably won't be expecting a post from him in the near future and we should look for him on the London-Tallinn plane at best and on the Thames River at worst. It's a shame, but he made a big impression - according to David Jameson, he took the papers away so early as if he had simply given up and given up on solving the problem. PPS. Since every good film also needs representatives of the fairer sex, you can guess three times who was called to the torture chamber under the spotlights at that moment.

Kertu came back from the interview, whizzing past like the wind. I ran after her and asked "How are you...", when she interrupted me with a thunderous voice, "If you ask me anything about the interview, I'll beat you to death." So we never found out if she had a successful interview or not.

So now Andres, in addition to other stresses, you have to protect yourself from Kertu :). I admire your endurance, I know what it's like to sit at a gaming table for almost 12 hours in a row with short breaks for days. Since I'm like your legendary Othello star, a fat, sweaty turd, if the windows aren't opened, I usually go under the table. As for Boku - in some quick version, it could even be included in the Tallinn Open (26-29 or 30.12.) program in addition to rendžula, gomoku and pente, of course, if the best bokuta player in the universe supports our event with his presence. What do you think, Andres? MSO still doesn't want to include Gomoku in the program? Otherwise, maybe I should just play it once, it would be a stretch to fight with you and Tiidu for second place, after Kertu.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for both of you. Don't be sad, Kertu, because there are many Estonian athletes who came fourth at the World Championships. That's a great result. Let's try to follow suit. Good luck to you!

If Ants goes to the Mental Sports World Championships, I'll apply for a city permit myself and come with him!