George Lane (born 1964) is a British mental calculator and author. He is a five-time gold medalist in the Mental Calculations event at the annual Mind Sports Olympiad, [1] [2] and is one of only five Grandmasters of Mental Calculation, [3] as recognised by the Mind Sports Organisation. George is a regular facilitator at the annual Junior Mental Calculation World Championship. [4] He has written two books. [5] [6]
The Mind Sports Organisation (MSO) is an association for promoting mind sports including Contract Bridge, Chess, Go, Mastermind, and Scrabble. Since 1997 it has annually organised in England a multi-sport competition, the Mind Sports Olympiad.
Raymond Dennis Keene is an English chess grandmaster, a FIDE International Arbiter, a chess organiser, and a journalist and author. He won the British Chess Championship in 1971 and was the first player from England to earn a Grandmaster norm, in 1974. In 1976, he became the second Englishman to be awarded the Grandmaster title, and he was the second British chess player to beat an incumbent World Chess Champion. He represented England in eight Chess Olympiads.
A mental calculator or human calculator is a person with a prodigious ability in some area of mental calculation.
An abstract strategy game is a type of strategy game that has minimal or no narrative theme, an outcome determined only by player choice, and in which each player has perfect information about the game. For example, Go is a pure abstract strategy game since it fulfills all three criteria; chess and related games are nearly so but feature a recognizable theme of ancient warfare; and Stratego is borderline since it is deterministic, loosely based on 19th-century Napoleonic warfare, and features concealed information.
Ambrose "Rowdy" Gaines IV is an American former competitive swimmer, U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame member, three-time Olympic gold medalist, and member of the International Swimming Hall of Fame. He is a swimming analyst for television network NBC. He has covered swimming at the Olympic Games since 1992 in Barcelona.
The Decamentathlon is a multi disciplined games event that was created as part of the first Mind Sports Olympiad. It was founded to try to find the best games all-rounder in the world and hence possibly the best games player. It was given a prize fund of £10,000 for the inaugural competition, that equalled that of the highest funded event at the first MSO sponsored by Skandia. However, the other events were spread over multiple playing sessions whereas the Decamentathlon was held over just a single session. This event was initially hailed as the MSO flagship event. Although, the Mind Sports Olympiad's other new event the Pentamind has since become regarded as the more significant event despite not having a fixed format.
A mind sport, is a game of skill based on intellectual ability.
Bōku is an abstract strategy board game played with marbles on a perforated hexagonal board with 80 spaces. The object of the game is to arrange five marbles in a row. The game has also been sold under the name Bollox, and later Bolix and won a Mensa Select award in 1999.
Continuo is an abstract strategy game by Maureen Hiron which was first published in 1982 and now distributed in board game form by David Westnedge Ltd. In the U.K and U.S. Games Systems in the U.S. It is played by arranging patterns printed on a deck of 42 cards, each card being printed with a grid of 16 colored squares. The goal is to place cards so that the tiles match as many chains of color as possible. Continuo sold over 200,000 units in the United Kingdom alone within a few months of being launched. Continuo won a 1995 Mensa Select games award. The tag line on the box is "The one rule game for all the family".
Ben Pridmore is a former world memory champion, memory sport competitor and accountant.
The World Memory Championships is an organized competition of memory sports in which competitors memorize as much information as possible within a given period of time. The championship has taken place annually since 1991, with the exception of 1992. It was originated by Tony Buzan and co founded by Tony Buzan and Ray Keene. It continues to be organized by the World Memory Sports Council (WMSC), which was jointly founded by Tony Buzan and Ray Keene. In 2016, due to a dispute between some players and the WMSC, the International Association of Memory (IAM) was launched. From 2017 onward, both organizations have hosted their own world championships.
Detroit is home to four professional U.S. sports teams; it is one of twelve cities in the United States to have teams from the four major North American sports. Since 2017, it is the only U.S. city to have its MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL teams play within its downtown district and one of only four U.S. cities to have said teams play within the city limits of their namesake.
The World Junior Teams Championship is a bridge competition for zonal teams of players up to about 25 years old.
The World Mind Sports Games (WMSG) was a multi-sport event created by the International Mind Sports Association (IMSA) as a "stepping stone on the path of introducing a third kind of Olympic Games" after the Summer and the Winter Olympics".
Gert Mittring is a German mental calculator. He was inspired by the late Wim Klein. He has competed in the MSO mental calculation event every year since 2004, failing to win the gold medal outright on only four occasions. He has held numerous world records for mental calculation, such as calculating the 89247th root of a 1000000 digit number. He has doctorates in statistics and mathematics education, and is a member of the Intelligence Research Committee of Intertel. Mittring is said to have been poor in math during his school years. He has written several books on mental calculation.
Lines of Action is an abstract strategy board game for two players invented by Claude Soucie. The objective is to connect all of one's pieces into a single group. The game was recommended by the Spiel des Jahres in 1988.
The Mind Sports Olympiad (MSO) is an annual international multi-disciplined competition and festival for games of mental skill and mind sports by Mind Sports Organisation. The inaugural event was held in 1997 in London with £100,000 prize fund and was described as possibly the biggest games festival ever held.
Gert Schnider is an Austrian professional multi-talented board-game player. In chess he is an International Master, in Go a 5th Dan, in shogi an amateur 5th Dan in Japan and 3rd Dan in Europe, and in Abalone a grandmaster.
The 2012 World Mind Sports Games were held in Lille, France, from 9 to 23 August 2012. The meeting started during the 2012 Summer Olympics and ending shortly before the 2012 Summer Paralympics, both in London. This was the second rendition of the World Mind Sports Games, which was inaugurated in 2008 in Beijing. The mind sport games had about 2000 players from 95 nations—down from 2,763 competitors and 143 countries at the 1st Games. More than half of the gold medals were contested at draughts and Russia, with the strongest draughts squad, won the most gold and most overall medals. China won five gold medals—all five events contested at Xiangqi. Chinese Taipei won four gold medals—four of the five events contested at go.