OLYMPIAD NEWS
Issue 8 Sunday 29 August 1999
Out of Thin Air
Contents
Out of Thin Air 1
Young Gladiators 2
Everest Conquered 2
Brotherly Luck 2
Mind Sports Council 2
Beating the Olympics 3
Results Section 4
Today's Events 4
'Look at me - you can do better. Look at Nikki - you can do as well.'
International Chess Master Michael Basman's inspirational words to young
chessplayers wowed by awards presenter Gladiator Nikki 'Scorpio' Diamond.
The first thing Mark Lefler does upon his arrival at the Mind Sports
Olympiad is to start producing coins out of thin air. Although prestidigitation
is just a hobby, Mark has played a central role in conjuring up the new
MSO website. Zillions Development Corporation President Lefler and his
small team have accomplished the unlikely task of completely rebuilding
the new MSO presence on the Internet in about two months.
The alliance between Zillions and the MSO is the proverbial match made
in heaven. 'We had several other offers, but the MSO was the best since
it is devoted to the mind. We weren't interested in companies who wanted
to add Chess to their portfolio of shoot-em-up games,' says Lefler.
The Zillions universal games engine is the brainchild of games aficionado
Jeff Mallett. Simple and elegant, the program is an articial intelligence
engine which acts upon a script - a very simple programming language. This
enables it to quickly learn, and improve at, an almost infinite number
of games. The simplicity of the input language means that avid users are
increasing this number of possibilities every day by typing in new scripted
rules. The current commercial version of the program can play over 600
variants and games, while Mallett categorised over 3,000 abstract games
during the research stage.
'Zillions can never be as strong as, say, a dedicated Chess engine,
but it plays anything and everything. This is not necessarily a weakness,
as specialised programs are often much too strong for the average games
enthusiast. The ideal ratio is that the computer wins about two out of
three, which gives players an incentive, and improves their game,' Lefler
explains.
The team is currently refining a special version of the Zillions engine
for the MSO website, which is designed for painless on-line play. 'Zillions
gives MSO Worldwide a huge advantage as we can add new games overnight.
Users can suggest games and we can give them what they want, fast,' says
Lefler, who manages to give the impression of being totally relaxed, while
simultaneously bursting with energy. 'The whole idea is to have fun, and
to stretch people's minds.'
The web team also illustrates the benefits of the new virtual workplace.
Some of the team is in California, one is in Canada, Lefler is based in
Berlin, and MSO web manager Chris Dickson works from Middlesbrough. Chris,
who has won two medals in previous MSOs, oversees the lists, archives and
information on the site, as well as filling in wherever else he may be
needed. He was discovered as a student volunteer at MSO II, who offered
to put news from the event online, and then took on the huge task of maintaining
the first website. Now it has become a full-time job.
A scattered global force has some advantages: 'It means that we can
have a 16 to 24 hour development day. As one man knocks off work, another's
day is starting. It's all possible because of the web,' says Lefler.
To get an idea of the potential of the future of game-playing at MSO,
visit: www.zillions-of-games.com.
Young Gladiators
The biggest Chess tournament ever held came to a climax to day at the
Mind Sports Olympiad. More than 35,000 youngsters entered Saitek's UK Chess
Challenge 1999 and the finals make a fitting climax to this year's MSO.
The last 16 of the nation's most gifted Chess prodigies (many of them
champions in their own right) included eight-year-old David Howell from
Seaford, Sussex, who recently completed a spectacular double when he became
British Under-9 and Under-10 Champion.
David is one of four finalists who are members of the England Junior
Chess Squad. Another player hotly tipped for future stardom is nine-year-old
Sarah Hegarty from Bisley in Surrey. Sarah also completed a recent double
when she claimed both the British Girls' Under-10 and Under-11 titles.
However, on the day these two young stars were eclipsed by Thomas Rendle
who took the overall gold medal in a thrilling and close fought final.
Everest Conquered
Kevin Horsley of South Africa, Grandmaster of Memory, convincingly broke
the world record in what has been called the 'Everest of memory tests'
- recalling 100 randomly chosen 5-digit components of pi. The first 10,000
digits of pi - an infinite non-repeating number - are divided into 2,000
5-digit blocks. The testers call out one of these 5-digit sequences, and
the candidate must reply with the 5-digit numbers on either side of the
number chosen. This happens 50 times. Kevin completed the task on his second
attempt in 39 minutes, 14 minutes ahead of Philip Bond's mark from 1994.
Horsley, 27, finished eighth in the World Memory Championship and confesses
to a weakness in the card events. He says he is determined to do his best
to topple Dominic O'Brien from the throne, but admits it may well never
happen - 'But everybody has that dream.'
Kevin was, like several other memory champions, dyslexic. A former policeman,
he has recently finished studies in neuro-linguistic programming and now
hopes to open a memory school in South Africa.
Brotherly Luck
'That was a bit lucky!' - all-rounder Demis Hassabis couldn't keep still
as he watched younger brother George raking in the chips en route to a
poker triumph. Demis, 23, who was denied the gold medal after a last move
Entropy loss to George, is not having a good Olympiad. 'I've lost three
crucial games to three juniors. I'm getting old! I'll be really worried
when I lose three times to the same junior,' said Demis, hurrying off to
yet another event.
Mind Sports Council
A major development for the Mind Sports Olympiad and games players worldwide
has been the formation of the Mind Sports Council. Saturday witnessed the
inaugural meeting of this body and featured many of the key players in
the organisation of Mind Sports worldwide.
Dr Evan Harris gave an exposition of the steps he was taking to encourage
the British Government to accord to Mind Sports a status equal to that
of physical sports. Mr Walter van Beek then asked whether this initiative
need be confined to the UK. Sir Brian Tovey warmly agreed, and suggested
that, in parallel with the approach to the British Government, the issue
should be raised at a European level with the authorities in Brussels (Commission
and European Parliament). This would be with a view to having a Directive
put in place that would oblige all members of the European Union and, by
force of example, other European states, to enact legislation putting Mind
Sports on a par with physical sports. General agreement was reached and
a sub-committee of the Mind Sports Council - Sir Brian Tovey, Walter van
Beek, Philip Nelkon and Paul Smith - was set up to pursue the matter further.
Delegates to the Mind Sports Council Meeting
H. Alkhalifa (World Dama Federation Patron)
Seth Bonti (World Oware Federation Chairman)
Peter Boswell (British Mensa Director)
Tony Buzan (Mind Sports Council President)
Phil Chambers (Learning Technologies Ltd. Director)
Elaine Colliar (Buzan Licensed Instructor)
Michael Crane (British Backgammon Assoc. Director)
Aubrey de Grey (British Othello Federation Chairman)
Dr Evan Harris (Member of Parliament)
Ray Keene (MSO Chief Executive Officer)
Jim McCarthy (London Draughts Assoc. Secretary)
Jae Young Kim (MSO Korea President)
Keith Masters (BNDC Ltd. {Dominoes and Crib})
Linda Masters (BNDC Ltd. {Dominoes and Crib})
Trevor Montague (British Quiz Assoc. President)
Kevin O'Connell (MSO Ranking and Titles Officer)
Philip Nelkon (Scrabble Clubs UK Manager)
Vanda North (Buzan Centres Managing Director)
David Pritchard (Mind Sports Council Vice-President)
Stewart Reuben (British Chess Federation Chairman)
Paul Smith (British Go Association Youth Co-ordinator)
Michael Tipper (World Memory Championship Director)
Lady Mary Tovey (MSO Organiser)
Sir Brian Tovey (MSO Council Member)
Walter van Beek (FMJD {Draughts} President)
Martin van der Beek (ISF {Stratego} Secretary)
Beating the Olympics
David Levy is the chief organiser of the MSO. Olympiad News spoke to
him about the plans for next year.
How and when did you get the idea for the MSO?
The idea came to me in the mid-1980s. As a chessplayer I had always
enjoyed the Chess Olympiads more than any other event in the Chess calendar.
Chess Olympiads bring together national teams from all over the world (nowadays
around 100 countries) and are played in a very festive atmosphere. We played
for fun (there were no cash prizes) and in the evenings we relaxed with
friends we had made at various Chess tournaments around the world. The
whole thing was like a gigantic Chess party. So I thought of creating an
Olympiad for all Mind Sports because games enthusiasts are very like-minded
people - you often find chessplayers who enjoy Backgammon, Bridge or Othello
for example.
And how did you get the idea off the ground?
I asked Ray Keene what he thought and he was very enthusiastic. So
we decided to go ahead and try to get sponsorship. We even printed some
brochures announcing the 1st Mind Sports Olympiad in 1989. However, we
had absolutely no success in raising any sponsorship interest. Then, in
1990, Ray introduced me to Tony Buzan, who is the guru of mental skills
such as Mind Mapping and memory skills. Tony travels the world and lectures
to major businesses and, as a result, he has a lot of high level contacts.
So we felt that with Tony we had a better chance of attracting sponsorship
and we invited him to join our venture. For a while all we had was near
misses but finally, in 1997, we got lucky. Ray struck a great deal with
the Royal Festival Hall, allowing us to hold the first Olympiad there on
the condition that we would pay for the venue only if we attracted significant
sponsorship. This encouraged us to make the decision to run the event using
our own resources. But soon afterwards one of Tony's contacts bore fruit
- the Swedish insurance company Skandia gave us £350,000 in sponsorship.
What are your plans for next year's event?
Next year we are planning something really spectacular for the Millennium.
It will be far and away the most enormous Mind Sports event ever conceived,
with many more entries than at the Olympic Games. In fact, participating
in Mind Sports is already more popular than taking part in physical sports,
so in a sense we are already larger than the Olympic movement. At Mind
Sports Olympiad IV we hope to have in the region of 12,000-15,000 entries.
At the moment the Olympiad record is 10,744 - for the 1996 Atlanta Olympic
Games. But we know we can beat that.
How can you be so sure?
We already have preliminary agreements with a number of games federations
and organisers to create major events in their particular disciplines.
In Bridge, for example, we are looking at tournaments with 2,000 players
or more, and the numbers will be similar in Chess. Even in games such as
Cribbage and Dominoes we are informed that 500-1,000 players per tournament
can be achieved with the right planning, given that we will have an even
bigger prize fund than this year.
When will MSO IV take place?
As yet we haven't decided definitely how long the MSO should be next
year. If it is still nine days, the dates will almost certainly be August
19-27. But we may well extend the event to include the August Bank Holiday
(the 28th) and we are even considering extending a few days beyond that.
What other goodies do you have in store for us next year?
We are resurrecting the Computer Olympiad, an event we ran from 1989-1992.
So many people have asked for it to be revived that we have decided to
accede to their requests. In the Computer Olympiads the participants are
all computer programs, not people. The programs play against each other
to determine the strongest program in each discipline. We used to have
around 100 programs taking part, across some 15 disciplines. Next year
I expect 200 or more programs, though the number of disciplines may go
down because a few games have already been solved - Connect 4, for example,
is known to be a win for the first player.
And what else?
There are a number of ideas being developed which we don't want to
discuss at the moment because we don't want to give them away. But we are
not the only ones who can have good ideas. We want anyone who has a suggestion
for a new event at MSO IV to pass it on to us - the best new idea will
win a bottle of champagne and free entry to MSO IV. And we aren't just
looking for good ideas for new tournaments within MSO, we're also on the
lookout for ways to improve what we do now.
How are you going to fund all this? Do you have sponsorship lined up
already for next year?
We are not a sponsorship driven organisation. Of course, sponsorship
would be very nice at the right level and with the right sponsors, by which
I mean companies whose own corporate image would tie in well with our philosophy
for the development of the Mind Sports movement. Right now our organisation
is investment driven. Our aim is to build, very, very quickly, in just
a couple of years or so, an organisation with a huge following amongst
Mind Sports enthusiasts. Our investors are delighted with the way things
are going - we have a great new website and the number of entries for MSO
III looks like being significantly ahead of our forecasts. We believe that
just about everyone in the world who is interested in Mind Sports will,
sooner or later, come into our ambit.
Day Eight Medal Winners
Backgammon Olympiad Gold Ch
1 J. Clark (England) gold
2 G. Brittain (England) silver
3 C. Baker (England) bronze
Backgammon Olympiad Silver Ch
1 P. Rastan (England) silver
2 L. Powell (England) bronze
Backgammon Olympiad Bronze Ch
1 J. Slattery (Scotland) bronze
Bridge Ladies' Pairs
1 S. Sepahbodi (England)
H. Shapiro (England) gold
2 E. Caplan (England)
L. Phillips (England) silver
3 P. Leslie (England)
S. Cohen (England) bronze
Bridge Men's Pairs
1 D. Smerdon (England)
P. Tobias (England) gold
2 N. Sandquist (Sweden)
P. King (England) silver
3 T. To (England)
R. Rowlands (England) bronze
Bridge Novices' Pairs
1 T. Glover (England)
M. Syed (England) gold
2 S. Hands (England)
V. Crawford (England) silver
3 N. Dent (England)
T. Manser (England) bronze
Bridge Seniors' Pairs
1 T. Turnage (England)
J. Cruickshank (Eng) gold
2 R. Samani (England)
M. Samani (England) silver
3 D. Solomons (England)
E. Samuels (England) bronze
Bridge Swiss Pairs
1 A. Priday (England)
V. Priday (England) gold
2 R. Harper (England)
M. Hoffman (USA) silver
3 I. Pagan (England)
H. Anoyrkatis (Eng) bronze
Chess 10-Minute Saturday
1 B. Lalic (England) gold
2 J. Hodgson (England) silver
3 A. Summerscale (Eng) bronze
Chess 10-Minute Saturday Junior
1 D. Ruter (England) gold
2 C. Hanley (England) silver
3 D. Tan (England) bronze
Chess 5-Minute Saturday
1 J. Hodgson (England) gold
2 A. Chernaiev (Russia) silver
3 J. Emms (England) bronze
Chess 5-Minute Saturday Junior
1 D. Tan (England) gold
2 C. Harris (England) silver
3 R. Keiran (England) bronze
Chess Terafinal
1 T. Rendle (England) gold
2 A. Hunt (England) silver
3 T. Sharp (England) bronze
Cribbage British Open Individual Ch
1 P. Hayden (England) gold
2 M. Wakefield (England) silver
3 D. Edwards (England) bronze
Cribbage British Open Individual Junior Ch
1 J. Heppel (England) gold
2 C. Heppel (England) silver
Cribbage British Open Pairs Ch
1 K. Lloyd (England)
J. Collier (England) gold
2 D. Wade (England)
J. Wade (England) silver
3 D. Follows (England)
P. Hayden (England) bronze
Intelligence World Championship
1 M. Isaac (England) gold
2 A. Walker (Scotland) silver
3 P. Smith (England) bronze
Intelligence World Junior Championship
1 Z. Hussain (England) gold
2 R. Bhatti (England) silver
Oware Beginners
1 D. de Toffoli (Italy) gold
2 R. Mazumder (Bangladesh) silver
3 T. Lemuel (Dom Rep.) bronze
Stratego World Team Championship
1 J. van Geffen (Holland)
R. Helmus (Holland)
G. Franka (Holland)
A. Pols (Holland) gold
2 S. Meyer (Belgium)
D. Vekemans (Belgium)
K. Daelemans (Belgium)
K. de Jong (Belgium) silver
3 J. Winkler (Germany)
D. Krapp (Germany)
M. Blockhaus (Germany)
M. Ruch (Germany) bronze
Today's Events
Backgammon Weekend pm
Bridge Swiss Teams am/pm
Chess MSO Masters pm
Chess 10-Minute am
Chess 5-Minute pm
Chinese Chess Euro Ch am/pm
Dominoes Straight Pairs am
Dominoes 5s and 3s Pairs pm
Draughts 10x10 Blitz pm
Draughts 8x8 am
GIPF Olympiad Ch am/pm
Go 19x19 Rapid Play am/pm
Learn and Play New Games am/pm
Poker Olympiad Hold 'Em am
Olympiad News Team
Editor: Jon Tisdall
Production: Byron Jacobs and Andrew Kinsman
(First Rank Publishing)
Mind Sports Olympiad
PO Box 13388,
London NW3 5FB
Tel: 01707 659080
Fax: 01707 661160
http://www.msoworld.com/
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