Mind Sports Organisation
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The Mind Sports Organisation (MSO) is a vehicle for promoting mental-skill games, including Chess, Go, Mastermind, and Scrabble. Since 1997 it has organised annual Mind Sports Olympiads in the UK, and has been involved in supporting a number of similar events elsewhere, in particular in Milan, Italy.
[edit] Structure
Initially the MSO was supported by some substantial corporate sponsorship, and was under the control of a company MSO Worldwide (MSOW), which had money advanced by venture capitalists (the money came mostly from Swedish sources). The second Mind Sports Olympiad saw the largest sponsor withdraw, and from that time onwards financial problems dogged the MSO . The board running it included David Levy, Tony Buzan, and Raymond Keene, David Levy being the original founder of the MSO concept.
A worsening financial position caused difficulties for MSOW, and schemes to become a leading force in games promotion worldwide came to little, as the invested money (exactly £1,000,000) was spent. This was the era of failed dotcoms, and MSOW went into voluntary liquidation in May 2001. At that point David Levy was the most important figure left in MSOW, Tony Buzan having withdrawn, and Ray Keene having acrimoniously split from the board early in 2000 . Keene was more interested in promoting high-profile events — he has been close to Garry Kasparov — and he left to organise the 2000 world chess championship between Kasparov and Kramnik .
[edit] Mind Sports Olympiads
The first Mind Sports Olympiad was held in London's Royal Festival Hall in 1997. Four more annual events were held in successive Augusts in London locations, with the largest being held at Alexandra Palace in 2000. The event moved to Loughborough in 2002, and then to Manchester in 2003-5. The 2006 event returned to London.
The main 2004 event featured a separate event for schools, featuring competitions and activities in chess, Go, quizzes and intelligence puzzles. Smaller satellite events now include a popular meeting at Cambridge.
At MSO tournaments, the Decamentathlon is a composite event in which players compete in ten separate mind sports: memory skills, mental calculation, IQ, bridge, chess, othello, 8 by 8 draughts, Go, Mastermind, and creative thinking.
