THE VERSATILE MIND
One of the MSO's most distinctive features is the effort to find a crossover champion in an attempt to find the world's single best mind sports player. Two tournaments unique to the MSO are the Decamind and the Pentamind.
The Decamind is a four-hour examination which tests your skills by setting you practical tests in the 10 mind sports of memory skills, mental calculation, IQ, bridge, chess, Othello, go, draughts (8x8), Mastermind and creative thinking. Each of the 10 sections is scored on a 100-point scale, and the standard is tough enough so that someone who scores half marks across the board is a serious medal contender.
The Pentamind is a tournament of tournaments: you must enter competitive MSO tournaments in at least five different mind sports. You score Pentamind points according to your success in each one, 100 points for a gold medal, zero for finishing last, intermediate credit for finishing in the middle.
Demis Hassabis has been nearly untouchable in this, finishing behind only Wales' Kenneth Wilshire at MSO I and undefeated in the last three years. Year after year, Demis notches up at least two or three gold medals to achieve near perfection in the Pentamind.
A rare test
There aren't really any other events anywhere in the world, apart from the Mind Sports Olympiads, in which participants of many mind sports can gather to compete. We have recently heard of tournaments in the Netherlands which test skill in both chess and 10x10 draughts; some include bridge or go as well.
Furthermore, there are rumoured to be "three chess" events in the Orient for players of shogi, xiangqi and western chess. None of these test the depth of skills explored in either of the MSO multi-game tournaments, though.
There are only a few MSOs around the world every year, though, so few chances for multi-mind-sports fans to test their skills across the board. One way for these prodigious gamers to keep in practice is a new initiative offering tournaments by e-mail in a wide variety of mind sports. Step forward organiser Paolo Fasce and the E-Decamind.
The E-decamind
Paolo has a unique qualification to run the tournament in that he has organised annual tournaments finding Genoa's best game player since 1996, testing skills in games from Othello through Hearts and Monopoly to miniature golf.
Games are played by e-mail on the extremely popular gamerz.net PBeM server under the control of mail guru Richard Rognlie. The E-Decamind tournament has been taking place since September and looks likely to become the first installment of an annual tradition.
The scope of the competition is impressive. There are tournaments being run in 16 different mind sports: Abalone, Amazons, Ataxx, Backgammon, Darkchess, 9x9 Go, Gravity, LOA, Maxcheckers, Rothello, Trax, Wari, Hex, Neutron, Pente and Twixt. Some of these will be familiar to you. Others are variants of established MSO events.
The online MSO game servers here offer over 100 variants of 12 of the world's most popular mind sports, and the gamerz.net PBeM server is nearly as prolific. One advantage of offering variants rather than familiar mind sports is that there aren't strong computer players in the variants, so you know you're facing man rather than machine!
The field
There are 20 contestants in the tournament: some are taking part in all 16 events, others only 10 or 12. As each player can be involved in up to four games at the same time in each tournament, you can see how big a commitment participation can be.
The participants include some very familiar MSO names: David Pearce and Pietro Rossi are experienced participants in the physical Pentamind tournaments. Gianni Cottogni has been to all four MSOs and the recent MSO Italy as well. Carl Johan Ragnarsson may be familiar to you from MSO online contests as well. The rest of the participants are MSO friends we haven't yet met in person.
As we write, the 16 tournaments in the e-Decamind are just finishing their first round. We'll soon know who will be taking part in the 16 sets of finals. A little later, we'll know the 16 winners of the tournaments and will be able to compute the final scores. The scoring system for the e-mail contests is exactly the same as for the physical one. We'll add up people's top tournament scores in order to produce a winner.
The MSO
Furthermore, MSO Worldwide Ltd. are sponsoring the tournament! What better prize for a proven winner in mind sports aplenty than the chance to take part in the physical Pentamind contest at MSO 5? The overall winner of the e-mail tournament will earn free entry into the MSO 5 Pentamind tournament, worth an estimated value of 75 pounds sterling or US$ 125.
We'll follow the tournaments as they happen on our site here, and we look forward to following the progress of the e-mail tournament winner in the Pentamind final next year. This is the only way to find out once and for all: are the Pentamind tournament contestants at the MSO the best overall mind sports players in the world?
Interesting related links:
- MSO staff
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