Philippine Memory Championships 2013

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An athlete needs constant training to gain improvements. But it is not only limited to the practice room or the gym. They also need to train in live competition to test whatever they were practicing in an actual game and be able to tweak their performance.

Ever since I started competing in Memory Sports, I’ve always wanted to join as many tournaments as I can to test myself in an actual championship setting. But given the circumstances at the time, most of the memory championships available for mnemonists are at the other side of the world. We would have to jump through so many hoops just to compete in one international event. But not this year. Memory sports is sort of boomingthis year. I guess the sport is having a new wave of popularity as there are new memory championships popping up in different places. Here in the Philippines alone, there are two memory tournaments slated this year.  The first one was just a couple of months ago and tomorrow, we’ll be having another memory championship, the Philippine Memory Championships. It will be another opportunity for Filipino mnemonists to pit each other’s memory against one another. And according to Quinito Henson’sarticle, it looks like we’ll be having World Championship Standards cramped into two days. That’s two one hour events (Cards and Numbers) and a 30 minute Binary event. This could get interesting. Stay tune here as I’ll be updating this post about this weekend’s happenings, if I can get some internet access at the venue.

Other news

I have mentioned before that there are quite a numberof memory championships this July and I somehow overlook the other events that have happened or will happen in this month. Such as the Algerian Championships lastJuly 4-5 that was won by Meryem Yezza and the 17th German OpenMemory Championships this coming July 26-27. We’ll be taking a close look at the German Open as it may be a preview of things to come at this year’s WorldMemory Championships.

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Philippines Sends Two Teams at the 2013 Thailand Open Memory Championships UPDATE: Raj Jain Won TOMC

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July will be a busy month for eastern mnemonists as it will host two Memory Championships. Today, we’ll see the Thailand Open Memory Championships be held at Bangkok and this post will largely focus on its happenings and how it will turn out. But for those people who are interested to participate in a local memory tournament, this month’s second memory event, the Philippine Memory Championships will be held on the 20^th and 21st of July at Makati Medical Center Auditorium. Please go to their Facebook Events page to register.

Now, the sport where people, both young and old, and of various backgrounds, try to memorize as many random information as they can, is slowly growing its popularity every year in the Philippines. We started on 2010 with just two people that ballooned the following year into six guys. Last year saw kids, juniors, and women compete for the first time. And now it is grown so much that we are now sending not one but two teams to today’s 2013 Thailand Open Memory Championships. Yep, that's right; there'll be more than 20 individuals that will represent the Philippines at the 2013 TOMC. I guess we’re just eager to defend the TOMC title from lastyear that was won by Mark Anthony Castaneda, especially now that it will truly be an international open tournament where another country other than the Philippines will be competing. As of the moment, I’ve only confirmed that RajJain, 183rd ranked Memory Athlete from India, will be competing and the press releases have also said that the Japanese and Mongolian Teams will also be throwing their hats in the game as well. But without any of the Philippine’s (relatively) veteran mnemonists on deck, the Philippine delegation will have their hands, or should I say heads full when they head into today’s memory championship.

I’ve delved into writing a prediction about memory championship winners last year when I sat out that year’s World Memory Championship. Being that I’m not participating in today’s events as well, I’ve decided to make some prognostication again on how the tournament will end up later today. To do this, we’ll have to rely from the previous performances of the participants and base our predictions from that. It is a fairly straightforward process of looking for the highest rated participants and then throwing your dart towards the best ranked player and voila! We now have the tournament favorite that will most likely win this year’s Thailand Open Memory Championship.

Now, to begin, we need to have a list of participants and their respecting rankings, official or otherwise. Being that there are two teams from the Philippines, as there are two different memory councils that operate here, we’ll have them in separate groups. It will be Team Milo versus Team Antipolo. I think this will make this exercise a bit more exciting. And here it goes;

Philippines

Team Milo Photo by Philippine Mind Sports Association

Kevin Carl Aquino (Team Milo, A) 1804

Abbygale Monderin (Team Milo, A) 1773

Ydda Graceille Mae Habab (Team Milo, J) 1696

Mikhaila Paraiso (Team Milo, J) 2079

Rhojani Joy Nasiad (Team Milo, J) 1412

Kian Christopher Aquino (Team Milo, K) 1650

Miguel Landicho (Team Antipolo) 1192      

Rommel Landicho (Team Antipolo) 574

Ro Linus Jagua (Team Antipolo) 692

Khevin Christian Tenoso (Team Antipolo) 619

Juliana Beatrice Tunay (Team Antipolo) 395

Winners from Rizal Memory Championships
Photo by Marlon Bernardino

Ana Franceska Guillermo (Team Antipolo) 536

Maria Esteliza Beran (Team Antipolo) 616

Jan Ricci Munoz (Team Antipolo) 899

Hanz Christian Natividad (Team Antipolo) 583

Jamillah Nanzan (Team Antipolo) 454

Stephanie Fernando (Team Antipolo) 302

Denise Asuncion (Team Antipolo)

Pauline Asuncion (Team Antipolo)

Robin Simon de Jesus (Team Antipolo)

Yeisha Paculan (Team Antipolo)

Joi Ranz Munoz (Team Antipolo)

Daniel Inigo Soriano (Team Antipolo)

India

Rajendra Jain (A) 2725

So, by just looking at their past performances, it looks like we’ll have a strong favorite from India, Raj Jain (A), with a 2725 ranking from last year’s World Memory Championship. His closest rival is, surprisingly, a junior from Team Milo, Mikhaila Paraiso, with 2079 points. She may also be a lock to win the junior’s division when the next best junior is probably her team mate Ydda Graceille Mae Habab with her 1696 points.

Having said all that, let’s now look at the intangibles, those competitors that I don’t have much information on. As reported, there might be competitors coming from Japan and Mongolia, and of course, the local Thais that will participate in their Memory Tournament. Now, if the Mongolian Team will field in any of their top ten highest ranked players, they may have a strong chance of snatching the championship away from Raj, being that their top ten has a 2007 point ranking. Japan may challenge as well, but their highest ranked athlete is just above 2300 points. The Thais, on the other hand, have barely breached the 2000 point barrier and most likely out of the running for the Open class (I’m just not exactly sure if a local competitor can also claim a win at the open tournament.) There aren’t much information on the kids and juniors as well, so, it will be much harder to predict who may pull out a victory there. But of course, I’ll be cheering for my countrymen none the less.

So there you have it! I'm looking forward to see the results later. Good luck everyone!

UPDATE: Results!

As per Raj Jain's Facebook, he just won the 2013 Thailand Open Memory Championship! Congratulations!

And according to John Burrows in the Welsh Memory Records Facebook Group, Abbygale Monderrin won three golds for the Philippines.

UPDATE 2: Stats!

Thailand Open Junior Champion:
Miguel Iseah Landicho

Thanks to Ms. Goddard, the official results of the Thailand Open Memory Championship 2013 are now available. I've also included the picture of the Junior Champion, Miguel Iseah Landicho at the right. Also, the 2013 Thailand Memory Champion was Tawan Sunadwanichkul.

World Memory Statistics

       Junior Open
       Adult Open 
       Thailand Championships 

And here are some news reports from the Philippine Media:

Pinoys rule memory

Aquino, Monderin 2nd at 3rd sa Thailand Memory Championship
Pinoy memory athletes nab medals in Thailand

Aaand as usual you can follow me here:

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Remember This! Weekly Online Paper About Memory

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Hey! Wondering what's that thing on the right side? Well, it is my latest weekly memory publication, Remember This! It is a curated content, a collection of interesting stuff around the internet, about Memory Training, Learning, and Self-Improvement. It will also have news and previews about the World Memory Championship and other memory competitions. 

So, if you are looking for the latest on anything about memory training, learning, and self-improvement, you can check out my weekly publication of Remember This! It is a one stop shop for all things a self-directed learner might want to get their hands  on. If you blog, share, or tweet anything about memory training, learning, and self-improvement, you might get yourself published in it too!

This was the first one published last Friday:

If you liked it, you can share and subscribe to it by clicking these buttons on the right:

As always, you can follow me at the here:

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2013 Memory Championship Open Season!

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2012 Japanese Memory Champion Takeru Aoki
enjoying a memory boost.

The 2013 Memory Season has officially started with yesterday's Japanese Memory Championship where last year's champion faltered to 3rd place. Details regarding the competition are yet to be released by the organizers but I will update as soon as it is available. 

The Japanese Memory Championship is the first national tournament for the year but unfortunately, it is a closed tournament. Meaning, foreigners are not allowed to compete. It is also quite different from the format of the other national tournament, which, as one competitor noted, easier than your regular tournaments (I've lost track of their official website, but I'm guessing they have less rows of data in their memory sheets).

What are you waiting for?

The first open tournament of the year, where anyone can join, is usually the Welsh Open organized by Dai Griffiths. But with the new wave of popularity by Memory Sports, we've now seen two new open tournaments to be inaugurated this coming March. The first of which is the Mongolian Championship on the 9th, to be held at... again, as with most memory tournaments, details will be updated as soon as it is available. However, on the same month, merely two weeks apart, the second open tournament that will make its debut, is the Italian Memory Championship organized by Matteo Salvo. It will be held at Cicerone, Italy on the 23rd of March. And unlike most memory tournaments, and also a rarity in this niche sport of ours, it will be giving away cash prizes other than what I call "prestige" prizes. A whopping 1500 Euros for the top athlete and a corresponding prize for the second and third place winners. It is not clear though, if each winner of an event would get cash prizes too. Regardless, that's good news for those of mental athletes who've been waiting for a chance to gain some monetary return with their efforts. Full details can be found at the organizer's website.    

The third tournament to debut this year have set up shop in Hong Kong. It is set on the 28th and 29th of September. I love that Andy Fong and the rest of the Hong Kong Memory Sports Council were able to organize an open tournament here in South East Asia. Travelling will be a lot easier for us Asian Mnemonists. 

It looks like it is going to be a fun year for Memory Athletes. Memory tournaments are slowly popping up as more Mentathletes organize tournaments in their home countries. Another new tournament might also be launched this year, as there are rumblings of a memory competition being organized here in my country on April. So, we might also be adding the Philippines to the upcoming memory championship list in the near future. I just hope we're able to get ourselves organized.

Here's the complete list of announced memory tournaments for 2013. I just hope we could add the World Championships in this list already. 

Upcoming Memory Championships for 2013

Dates	Competition	Open Event?
Feb 3 2013	2013 Japanese Memory Championship	No
Mar 9 2013	2013 Mongolian Memory Championship	Yes
Mar 16 2013	2013 USA Memory Championship	No
Mar 23 2013	1st Italian National Memory Championships	Yes
Mar 30 2013	2013 Welsh Open Memory Championship	Yes
Apr 13 2013	2013 North German Memory Championship	No
Apr 26 2013 - Apr 27 2013	2013 South German Memory Championship + Open Competition	Yes
May 26 2013	2013 Friendly Memory Championship	Yes
Aug 22 2013 - Aug 23 2013	7th UK Open Memory Championship 2013	Yes
Sep 28 2013 - Sep 29 2013	2013 Hong Kong Open Memory Championship	Yes

Source: Mnemotechnics.org

Update:

Michael from the comment section pointed out that there's also a Slovenian Championship on the 16th of March. It will be the Fifth iteration of the tournament but World Memory Statistics only had just records for the 2009 event.

There are also two events to be ran by the Arabian Memory Council, the 2nd Algerian Memory Championship on July 3-5 and the 2nd Arabic Memory Championship on December 19-21 to be held in Dubai, UAE.

Thank you for reading!

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We are Champions!

This is an image of  a medal for a tarpaulin that I was making for my Memory Training Workshop on Photoshop. I was editing it on a separate file to lower my memory usage since my laptop can't handle huge files. While I was working on it, I had this idea to make it a separate piece altogether, much like a motivation pic that we often see go around on social networking sites. What do you think? How can I make this better?

The quote on it was from MMA pioneer Mario Sperry. He was heard saying this while motivating his athletes, The Blackzillians, specifically, Former UFC Light Heavy Champion Rashad Evans. Evans was training to reclaim his title. The way he said it and how his athletes reacted was very moving. It is glimpse on a champion's mindset going into battle, something that we can apply in our lives.

Here's a video of it (Too bad, I can't find the video where this excerpt came from.): 

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..