General information about the 9th Mind Sports Olympiad

It is an Olympiad for "thinking" games. The competitors play each other at a variety of well known strategy games, such as Chess, Bridge, Draughts (Checkers), Backgammon, Scrabble, Othello and Go, and compete for gold, silver and bronze medals, and for other prizes.

Why organise a Mind Sports Olympiad?

There has been an explosive growth of physical sports in the 1980s and 1990s. Now, with increased leisure time and more people working from home, MIND SPORTS will be the great growth area into the 21st century. And above all, the Mind Sports Olympiad is great fun for the players and spectators.

Who is eligible to take part?

Anyone in the world!

How many games and skills may each competitor enter?

Most participants enter only one competition, though it is possible to take advantage of the scheduling and compete in several tounaments. Also, there is a ‘Pentamind’ competition for those who are adept at five different games, and a ‘Decamentathlon’ where players can test their wits on situations from ten different games and skills.

Which games and skills are there?

In addition to the best known, classic, thinking games, there are tournaments for a number of more recently invented games, which have achieved world-wide popularity, including Abalone, Continuo, Hexdame, Lines of Action, Mastermind and Twixt. There are also tournaments for some of the best strategy games from Asia: Chinese Chess, Japanese Chess and Go. Creative Thinking monitors the contestants’ speed, flexibility and originality in verbal, conceptual, imaginative, artistic and engineering thought. Intelligence (set and marked by Mensa) tests the standard Intelligence Quotient skills including verbal skills (vocabulary, word relationships, etc.), numerical skills (calculation, number relationships, etc.) and spatial relationship skills. Speed Reading competitors are tested on an unpublished text to determine their average number of words read per minute and their percentage comprehension (determined by a questionnare on details from the text). Mental Calculations finds the world’s best at mental arithmetic. Memory Skills includes the ability to remember whole packs of playing cards, as many digits as possible of a long number, passages of text, etc.

Who organises the event?

David Levy, International Master at Chess, President of the International Computer Chess Association, and founder of the Computer Olympiad. In 1978 David won a famous 10-year bet with four Artificial Intelligence professors that no computer program would win a Chess match against him. The Mind Sports Olympiad was David Levy's idea.

How is the Olympiad organised?

There are different competitions to cater for each game and skill. The format for most tournaments is the Swiss system, in which all of the contestants play in every round. None of the contests are knock-out tournaments. In Go we use the McMahon system.

What are the prizes?

Gold, Silver and Bronze medals are awarded for the top adults and the top juniors in each competition. In addition there are cash and other prizes.

Where is the event held?

The ninth Mind Sports Olympiad will take place at the Manchester Conference Centre; we have a separate page full of information about the venue, how to get there and what facilities you can expect to find there. We expect the weather during the event to be mostly cloudy but with occasional sunny spells and occasional showers. Daytime highs are likely to be between 18 and 26 Celsius (roughly 65 to 80 degrees Farenheit) with night-time lows of between 8 and 16 Celsius (roughly 45 to 60 degrees Farenheit) - but for a more accurate preview, take a look at a 5-day forecast for Manchester provided by the Met Office.

Can you help with accommodation?

In order to help participants from outside Manchester who are looking for cheap accommodation during the period of the Mind Sports Olympiad we are providing information on this web site.

Abalone, Continuo, Lines of Action (LOA), Mastermind, Mind Maps, Othello, Rummikub, Scrabble, Stratego, Twixt and Zatre are all registered trade marks.