World Memory Championship 2012 Results: Johannes Mallow New World Champion, Philippine Memory Team gets Bronze

This post should’ve seen the light of day more than a week ago but I’ve been bogged down by holiday festivities (Merry Christmas!). And before I get my hands blown at the coming holiday (Happy New Year!), I better have this out now. Since everyone pretty much knew already what went down in the WMCs over ten days ago, I’ll just mostly do a roundup of what people have posted regarding their experience during the three days of rigorous competition. The competition almost concluded as I predicted in my preview posts with only the odd performance by the Chinese Team and having England and Wales as separate countries that made it turn out the way it did.

WMC 2012 Results from Memocamp.com

For starters, here are the official results from the WMC Statistics Website and for a quick glance of the whole event, look here. And for a more firsthand feel of the events, the always entertaining write up by Ben can be found here. Nelson Dellis who ended up 7th overall also has his take on his performance in his website.

And the New World Memory Champion.. Johannes Mallow!

As everyone and their dog expected, the 2012 World Memory Championship concluded with Johannes Mallow of Germany emerging as the new World Memory Champion. But it didn’t finish though without a heart stopping showdown in the final event, the Speed Cards, to decide who will have the right to be called the Sharpest Memory in the World. With only 332 championship points separating the eventual champion from his compatriot, Simon Reinhard would have needed to repeat this kind of performance to get a chance of winning the title. He needed to log in less than 24.75 seconds to be exact.   

Breaking the Trifecta

Front row from left: Top 3 - Jonas Von Essen,
New World Champ Johannes Mallow, Runner-up Simon Reinhard
Back row from left: 7th Nelson Dellis, 6th Ben Pridmore,
5th Christian Schaefer 

Swedish Mnemostar Jonas Von Essen’s meteoric rise in the memory sports world continued as he cracked through the German domination on the podium. Following up on his second place finish at the Swedish Open, JVE capped his performance this year with a Bronze medal finish in his WMC debut, the highest rank by a rookie in their first ever World Championship competition. It is a feat shared only by former World Champions Andi Bell and Dr. Gunther Karsten. Not a shabby
 group to be part of, which means we could expect greater things to come from this guy given the company he’s in. For those who are wondering, it took three years before Andi won his first World Championship and Dr. Karsten did it in nine. Wang Feng was 5^th in his first WMC but became the World Champ the following year then defended his title once before retiring this year. It was the highest turnaround from any of the past world champions. We’ll see how Jonas will fare compare to them.

Even though the Germans didn’t complete the sweep at the medal standings in the Individual Championships, they still had four out of the top ten with Boris Konrad and Christian Schaefer finishing 4^th and 5^th respectively.

New World Record

Of the three events that I thought would be broken, only one was made in this year’s World Memory Championship. It was the Abstract Image event that was broken by Johannes Mallow and Simon Reinhard with 434 and 427 points respectively. The previous record was 396 points held by Simon Reinhard at the South German Memory Championship 2012. Another record was almost broken by Johannes when he tied Wang Feng’s five minute random numbers record of 500 digits. When I said that the Spoken Numbers might also be broken, it turned out that Mark Anthony Castaneda only managed to memorize 193 digits but it was enough for him to snag the Philippine’s first ever Gold medal! Yipee! (Technically, the first was Jamyla’s Gold Medal finish at the Hour Cards event in the Kid’s category, but I subscribe to the One Record/No Categories idea with rankings).

Better Than Expected

Bronze Medal: Team Philippines

As it turns out, the Chinese Team had an odd performance. Their representatives’ scores ranged from 4000-5600 points at their National Championships this year but they ended up way below that mark when their highest ranked athlete only had 2994 points at this year’s WMCs. It is noted that their National Tournament have the same events as the WMCs and having their performance dip by a thousand seems quite puzzling to me. But what the heck, that and coupled with having England and Wales as separate countries meant that my country eventually was fighting for the Silver Medal against Sweden! It was much better than what I projected of finishing around 4^th – 6^th. If it weren’t for that phenomenal performance by Jonas von Essen and some unfortunate circumstances that barred me from competing, we could have ended much higher. But hey, we did get to medal. I’ll just leave it at that.

Having said that, there was this comment at Ben’s blog that questions the validity of the competitions, stating that there should be an asterisk in the results as the World Champion didn’t compete; and none of the better athletes from China weren’t there. Much like what happened last year when the Germans decided to sit out in protest. But what can we do? Wang Feng decided to retire and the Chinese Team decided to let the kids have their turn, which I think is better for their long term success. These things happen all the time in any competition. We can’t always get to have all the best athletes compete with each other all the time.

New GMs…. and Double GMs?

Grand Masters of Memory 2012

Congratulations to the new Grand Masters of Memory, well done! To those who don’t know, you get to be a Grand Master when you achieved these three norms in any competition, 1000 random digits, 10 decks of cards, and under two minutes in speed cards. It doesn’t have to occur all at once. And these six people were able to complete the three norms for the first time this year:   

Chiwawa Chan
Erwin Balines
Jonas von Essen
Marwin Wallonius
Mattias Ribbing
Nelson Charles Dellis
Yudi Lesmana

And these current GMs were able to perform at a Grand Master level again:

Ben Pridmore
Boris Nikolai Konrad
Johannes Mallow
Simon Reinhard
Mark Anthony Pascual Castaneda
Ola Kåre Risa

Which makes them Double GMs? Nah, some of these guys would have been triple, quadruple, or whatever number of times GMs, as they did it multiple times already. That’s why I like Ben’s idea of a Double GM better. 2000 random numbers, 20 decks, and under a minute, you double the effort for a GM norm, something that only Wang Feng, Liu Su, Simon Reinhard and Johannes Mallow were able to do. For a further reading on the history and background of the Grand Master Title, I highly recommend you to read that link to Ben’s blog. It is worth the click.

That’s it for now, I’ll be posting some other time, if I still have my fingers with me. Happy New Year!

UPDATE: I just learned how to add Twitter buttons! So, please follow me at

Follow @MemoryCoachPHL

WMC 2012 Preview: A Different Take

Tomorrow is the start of the 2012 World Memory Championship. In anticipation of the said event, I’ve posted a preview and gave a prediction on who might turn out on top for this weekend. But my methods were a bit shoddy since it was only based on the athlete’s past performances and not their current feeling or perception on how they trained or might perform. As Tobiasz Boral of Poland points out, that "anything is possible!" Luckily, an astute observation was made by Dai Griffiths, a fellow mnemonist from Wales, pointed out to me a stat on the competitor’s list that may actually give a hint on how a participant may currently gauge their training, preparation, and performance. As Dai said (not his actual words), the number of cards brought or requested from the WMC, as seen from the competitor’s list, will give an accurate forecast on how each contestant expect to perform this weekend. Assuming that the same preparation went on with the other events, it will take into account their confidence going into tomorrow’s memory tilt, which we can then use to predict how the tournament will play out. So, what I did was get the average of three highest card requests from each country and rank them from the most to the least. Those with less than 3 members will still be divided by three, as per tournament proceedings. 

The Results: Team Standings Projections

Having done that, here’s how it looks:

Projected Rank	Country	Card Ave
1	Germany	28.3
2	UK	19.7
3	China	19.3
4	Philippines	16.3
5	Sweden	16
6	US	15
7	India	14
8	Hong Kong	12.3
9	Netherlands	10.7
10	Denmark	10
11	Indonesia	8.3
t12	Norway	8
t12	Poland	8
14	Italy	7
15	France	6.7
16	Australia	5.7
17	Finland	5
t18	Ireland	2.7
t18	Pakistan	2.7
t20	Singapore	1.7
t20	Malaysia	1.7

There you have it, it is pretty much the same as yesterday's prediction where Germany would end up as World Champions except for the major jump by Sweden from a projected SECOND, to a FIFTH place finish behind the Philippines. A definite order was also established between the US of A and the Philippines, where the US is seen to land at sixth, behind Sweden. This method also allowed us to rank the rest of the teams, unlike before wherein we were hindered by the lack of information on other competitors. 

See the Individual Standings Projections after the Jump..

Preview: World Memory Championship 2012

Alright, since I'm definitely will not be competing, I've decided to take break from training and do a short preview of the 2012 World Memory Championship instead.

As some of you know, this coming weekend, December 14-16, 2012, the world's best mnemonists will converge in London to pit their memory skills with one another to find out who has the World's Best Memory.

Who will be the 2012 World Champion of Memory?

I think this year's championship will be quite predictable. With the current World Champion, the Chinese Wang Feng opting for retirement, and the Top ranked Johannes Mallow and World No. 3 Simon Reinhard breaking the 2000 digit barrier (Random Numbers), the only Non-Chinese to do so, it would seem that the Germans will be battling amongst themselves for the title. It would also be entirely possible that there will be a full on sweep in the Individual Championship, as three out of the Top 5 in the world rankings comes from the Deutschlands.

But of course, we can't discount the former Three-time World Champion in Ben Pridmore, if he sorted out his motivation issues and got his Eye of the Tiger back again, and World No 10 Boris Konrad, another German. Other possible mentathletes to break into the Top 3 are Swedish break out star Jonas Von Essen currently ranked at no 13 and American Climber Nelson Dellis (Rank No. 24).

Having said all that, my money is on Johannes Mallow. Aside from being the World No. 1, he made this cool training video for the 2012 World Memory Championship: 

Team Championships: Country vs. Country

As I've mentioned above, it seems that it is a lock for Germany in Team Championship as well. For those of you who don't know, Team Championships are based on the cumulative scores of the top three performers of each country. That is how they edged out Team China in the 2010 WMC, even when Wang Feng did his monster performance, the Deutsche Team had more athletes with better scores. And now that the team sent by China lacks the usual top performers from the previous year's team, we'll try to figure out which team will possibly contest for the top spot. Or in other words, which teams are fighting for second. 

The easiest way of predicting which team may reach the podium is to get the average of the top three athletes of each country according to the World Ranking. Of course, it will not take into account how each athlete/team prepared for this year's WMC. We may (or may not) have some break out performance by some of newer memory athletes. 

So, basing on their current ranking scores, the German team has an average of 7, 967.3 points between their top three athletes. Followed by Sweden with 6,703, and rounding up the Top 3 would be China, with 4,971 The Chinese score was based on their recent performances on Chinese Memory Championship 2012, since some of them aren't ranked yet. It should be noted that their National Championship is in the same format as the WMC's. Coming in at fourth would likely be the UK (4,139.67), followed by the Philippines (3,358.7) or the US (3,346*), depending on how the other two American athletes perform in support of Dellis'.

There you have it, I would guess that China and Sweden will battle it out for Second, and the UK, the Philippines, and the US of A will duke it out for fourth. And of course, the Black, Red, and yellow flag will be flying in for the Gold.

Record Breakers

Almost every year, there are a couple of World Records being smashed in the World Championships. I bet it would be the same this year. The events rife for breaking would likely be the Binary digits, Abstract Images, and Spoken Numbers.

We've already seen Johannes Mallow getting reaaally close with Ben's long time record in Binary with a 4,095 in this year's Memoriad, just 2 rows short in breaking it. We'll see if doing it with Pen and Paper will make a difference this time.

The Abstract Images was recently broken by Simon Reinhard at the S. German Championship 2012 and it was almost rewritten by Jonas Von Essen at the Friendly Championships last October. I have no doubt it will be surpassed again this time.

The World Record in Spoken Numbers currently stands at 300 digits. If wasn't for a computer glitch that caused a disruption during the memorization phase for the 400 digit trial, it would have been an even crazier number. Although the German Superstars are close enough with a personal records around 250 digits, my personal bet to break the 300 mark would be my compatriot Mark Anthony Castañeda. Unless he is bitten by a jitter bug or actually frost bitten in -5 degree weather in London, my money is on him.

Other possibilities, Hour Cards can be broken by... Ben again. The Speed Cards event is a tricky thing to break in the World Championship. Unless you are not concerned with how you will end up in the World Championship Leaderboard, like Wang Feng who had captured the Gold by the time the event was ran, or someone who had no other intention but to break the record, you'd go all out and zip through the cards as fast as possible. Otherwise, you'll have to play it safe. With only three people that can do a deck in under 30 secs and most of them will probably vying for the World Championship title, it will unlikely be broken this year. But the exciting thing is that the Speed Cards event will most likely decide this year's World Champion.
 
Recap

There you have it. I know I may not be going out on limb with my predictions here but I think this is how it will go down. As a Memory Athlete sitting out in this year's competition, I'm definitely looking forward to how this event unfolds.

My predictions: 2012 World Champion: Johannes Mallow
                         Dark Horse: Jonas Von Essen  

                         2012 Team Champions: Germany 

That's it for now, I hope you enjoyed this, feel free to leave your comments below!





*If Dellis' fellow Americans added up to 5,000 points.