Preview: 16th German Open Memory Championship

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@MemoryCoachPHL Mostly or even only Germans. But then the top of the Germans are all there: Hannes, Simon, Christian, Annalena, Anna, me ..

— Boris Nikolai Konrad (@borisnkonrad) July 25, 2013

An All German Affair

According to Boris Konrad in our conversation over Twitter, it looks like it's going to be an all German affair at the 2013 Memo Masters  that will take place at Isny, South Germany this weekend. All the other Non-Germans at the top ten will most likely skip the 16th German Open Memory Championship, in what was anticipated to be a preview of some sorts to the mental battle that will happen in the World Memory Championship this November 30 to December 2 at London, England. But the lack of international competitors will not matter much as the international 10 discipline event will feature some of the very best memory athletes the world has to offer. 

2012 World Memory Championship Winners:

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 (Photo from Facebook)

The Germans, who have the most people in the top ten, will be headed by the current World Memory Champion and defending German Memory Champion Johannes Mallow Slovenian Open Champion, Christian Schafer; World Number 9 and last year's UK Open Memory Champion, Boris Konrad; and the juniors Annalena Fischer, 2013 South German Memory Champion; Anna Barwinski, 2012 North German Junior Memory Champion; and possibly Konstantin Skudler, multiple-time Kid Memory Champion and current World Junior Memory Champion.

Looking to dethrone the defending champion is his teammate two-time German Memory Champion Simon Reinhard, the second highest ranked memory athlete today, and current world record holder of a bevy of disciplines, such as the 15 minute names and faces (173 points), 15 Minute Random Words (300 Words), 30 Minute Random Numbers (1400), and the Speed Cards (21.19 secs). It was all established in this very same competition. Among the notable Germans who are also gunning for the top are World Number 6 and this year's

A Pool For World Memory Champions

This memory event is definitely one of the toughest championship out there. Looking at the previous German Memory Championships with my unscientifically trained eyes, we can see some pattern where the winner of this tournament will most likely be a top contender for the World Memory Championship or even end up being the World Memory Champion. As it was the case last year with Johannes Mallow and from 2005 to 2007, where Clemens Meyer won his back to back German Memory Championship and World Memory Championship in '05 and '06. Dr. Gunther Karsten did it as well on 2007. So, there is a lot riding on the outcome of the 2013 Memo Masters and many of the people in the Memory Sports Community are looking forward to it. 

And even though the other contenders for the World Championship like the hot streaking Swede, Jonas von Essen (4th), 5 Minute Binary Digits World Record holder, Ola Kare Risa of Norway, and of course the three-time World Memory Champion Ben Pridmore, aren't going to be there, we can still make a viable comparison, since they will most likely be competing in the 2013 UK Open International Memory Championships in less than a month from now. An international tournament that have the same format as this event and may very well be attended by the top German mnemonists.

I, for one, can't wait to see the results.

UPDATE: Full List of Competitors

Source: Memocamp.de

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2013 Memory Championships: Mid-Season Roundup, Results, and New World Records

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It's been a while since my last post. I've been quite pre-occupied by the Memory Workshops that I've been conducting these couple of months and while I'm away, there have been a lot of things that happened in the Memory Sports World.  First off, Memory Championship Updates! 

2013 Japanese Memory Champion
Yoshihiro Ikeda receiving his award.

I did a rundown of upcoming memory championships in the early part of 2013 and most of them have concluded already. We'll start first with the Japanese Memory Championship; as I said before, Takeru Aoki, the 2012 Japanese National champion wasn't able to defend his title and was defeated by someone. After doing some snooping around at the Japanese Memory Sports TeamFacebook Page, I found out through Tomoyuki Nakata's blog that that someone is Yoshihiro Ikeda pictured at the right.

Back at the states, the USA MemoryChampionship was regained by Ram Kolli, he dethroned the back to back Champion Nelson Dellis. It is to be noted that the US Memory Championship has quite a different format from the WMSC sanctioned events with only 3 events that are similar, 5 minute numbers, 15 minute Names and Faces, and the Speed Card event. It is also the only Memory Championship that is regularly televised live. Imagine how it would be telecast for the hour long events, 3 hours of people looking down at papers!

On the same day as the happenngs in the USA Memory Championship, the Slovenian Memory Championship crowned its fifth champion in Petra Vogrinec, her second time to win the title. 

Jonas Von Essen (Green Jacket) with fellow
Swede Florian Minges at the Welsh Open.

The Welsh Open was won by Swedish Memory King Jonas Von Essen, his first of many events to win in his 2013 Memory Tour, while John Burrows regained his title as Welsh Champion. 

We've also seen the coronation of the inaugural Italian Open Memory Champion in Johannes Mallow, the 2012 World Memory Champion, where he fought a tightly contested battle with Simon Reinhard. At the same time, Mara Brescianini became the first Italian National Champion. There were also four world records broken here, 3 by the current World Champion and the other one was by Boris Konrad. 

Another debuting memory event, the First Mongolian Memory Championship was surprisingly won by a Junior competitor, Namuuntuul Bat-Erdene, and a rookie none the less! She made a spectacular splash when she broke two world records in the junior division, the 5 minute binary (525 digits) and 15 minute numbers (580 digits).

One of the primary ways to find talent in any sport is through grass roots development. And in Memory Sports, Germany and China, are the only two countries that I know of that has established such programs. And last April we’ve seen new talent emerge from Germany’s Regional (North/South) Championships. The South German Open on the other hand was wrested by the Swede Jonas, his second championship for the year.

Winners of the 1st Italian Open Memory Championship:
(L-R) Boris Konrad, 3rd place , Italian organizer Matteo Salvo,
Simon Reinhard, 2nd, Johannes Mallow, Inaugural Champion (Seated). 

The latest international event to wrap up this year was the Friendly (Cambridge) Championships organized by the former three time World Champion, Ben Pridmore. This friendly event was dominated by the Scandinavian duo, Jonas Von Essen and Ola Kåre Risa, where they both broke world records on their way to top 1 and 2, respectively. The Norwegian Ola broke Johannes Mallow’s very young five minute binary digit record (975 digits) at the Italian Open with an astounding 1016 binary digits. He’s the first to break into the 1000 digits barrier in that category. The 300 digit spoken numbers world record set by the Chinese phenom Wang Feng in his last World Championship (2011) appearance was broken by Jonas with 318 digits. It made me wonder how far Wang Feng could have risen the bar during his 400 digit spoken numbers attempt last 2011 if the computer projecting the numbers did not skip because of a glitch.

Scandinavian record breakers with their world record recall papers,
Norwegian Ola Kare Risa (left) and Swedish Jonas Von Essen (right).    

Coming into the 9^th event, Ola was firmly ahead of Jonas with almost 200 points. But with his phenomenal performance at the Spoken Numbers event, Von Essen pulled away emphatically and lead ahead of the Norsk with 393 championship points going into the final event, the speed cards. Having posted almost an identical 45+ seconds, the Swedish Mnemostar took home his 3^rd championship for the year. His performance also shot him up the rankings into fourth behind Wang Feng, breaking the seven thousand point barrier with 7358. Being that the Chinese permanently retired from active competition, Jonas Von Essen firmly established himself as the third best active Memory Sports Athlete today. And with his current Memory Sports tour, where he seems to go and compete in every possible memory competition available to him, he is definitely setting himself up to be the 2013 World Memory Championship’s dark horse.

1st National Open on
Memory Sports Champion Erwin Balines

Last but definitely not the least, my country had its first ever memory competition with the National Open on Memory Sports. It was successfully held last May 25 at the Alphaland Southgate Mall in Makati. There were quite a number of people who turned up to compete in the event but the Philippines’ highest ranked memory athlete and its second ever Grand Master of Memory, Erwin Balines of Mandaluyong city, won the event comfortably. I only manage to land third, behind the other Grand Master of the Philippines, Mark Anthony Castañeda. I’ll be posting a more in depth write up about the event in another article.

This is just the first half of 2013 Memory Season and it is just heating up! There are more and more competitions popping up everywhere and for this coming July alone, there will be several memory events lined up, the Algerian Memory Championships, Thailand Open Memory Championships, the German Open Memory Championships, and another Philippine memory event!

This is gearing up to be an exciting memory season that will culminate with the 2013 World Memory Championship at the all familiar TBA.


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Photo Credits (in order of appearance):
Japanese Memory Championship
Swedish Memory Association
Boris Konrad
Ola Kåre Risa
Erwin Balines

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

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