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..