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The Mind Sports Organisation (MSO) is an association for promoting mental-skill games (Mind Sport) including Contract Bridge, Chess, Go, Mastermind, and Scrabble. Since 1997 it has annually organised in England a multi-sport competition, the Mind Sports Olympiad main event.
The MSO was founded in conjunction with the first Mind Sports Olympiad. Beside the main event, always in England and usually in London, it has supported similar meets elsewhere, including Milan, Italy; South Korea[1], and Prague, Czech Republic.[2]
The first Mind Sports Olympiad was held in London's Royal Festival Hall in 1997. It brought together an unprecedented number of strategy games and events. William Hartston in 'The Independent said, "The biggest gamesfest ever to hit these (or perhaps any other) shores".[3]
The inaugural MSO along with a very large number of games, introduced two new events of their own creation the Pentamind and the Decamentathlon. These were two events to parallel the multi-event games in athletics of the modern pentathlon and the decathlon. This was part of the ambition to create an Olympics of the mind.[4]
The Mind Sports Olympiad returned to London with sponsorship in both 1998[5] and 1999.[6] Despite a falling out between the organisers (see controversy below) a successful event was held in Alexandra Palace the next year in 2000.[7]
During this time several satellite events were held around the world bearing the Mind Sports Olympiad name. These have occurred in Cambridge,[8] South Korea, Milan and Prague.[9]
The Mind Sports Olympiad main event continued to happen but without sponsorship the tournaments were held at a number of different universities. The event was still going strong for the years 2001 - 2006.[10] The main 2004 event featured a separate event for schools, featuring competitions and activities in chess, Go, quizzes and intelligence puzzles. But in 2007 the Mind Sports Olympiad was reduced to a much smaller venue in Potters Bar due to no sponsorship and no advertising.[11] In 2008 the MSO saw a revival returning to a central London venue, The Royal Horticultural Halls, Westminster and again on 21–31 August 2009.[12] The 2010 event was held at the Soho Theatre in London.[13] In 2011, the Mind Sports Olympiad moved to a bigger venue, the University of London Union. The 16th MSO will take place once again at the University of London Union in August 18-27, 2012.
The Mind Sports Olympiad main event has been annual since 1997 at the following locations in England:
The MSO consists mainly of single event competitions in the above and other disciplines. Most of these are for the nominal title Olympiad champion, though some trademarked games are authorised by the game designer and publishers as the official world championships. Although all of these games can count towards the Pentamind. Medals, and more recently trophies, are awarded for gold, silver and bronze positions in each competition as well as ranks, with similar awards for the top juniors in each event. In early Olympiads sponsorship allowed for generous financial prizes to go with many of the events, in recent years such prizes have been limited to a very small number of events, usually as a result of specific outside sponsorship for that discipline.
Notable games include (most other refs mention some of these) [22]: The well-known: Chess, Bridge, Draughts, Shogi, Backgammon, Chinese Chess (Xiang-Qi), Othello, Poker, Cribbage, Mastermind
And many newer games like: Abalone, Boku, Continuo, Entropy, Kamisado[23], Lines of Action (LOA), Pacru,[24] Twixt
At MSO tournaments, the Decamentathlon is a composite event in which players compete in ten separate mind sports: memory skills, mental calculation, IQ, contract bridge, chess, othello, 8 by 8 draughts, Go, Mastermind, and creative thinking.
The MSO introduced the Abstract Games world championship in 2008.[25]
This was one of the Mind Sports Olympiad's original events.[4] It was an attempt along with the decamentathlon to produce an event for all-rounders to parallel the Olympic Games with its events the decamentathlon and pentathlon. Unlike the decamentathlon's fixed format (see separate article)the pentamind has very little fixed format. It disallows using games that are considered too similar and normally requires a long event, but otherwise any five events from the schedule could be used. Despite its free choice of events where competitors use results from different events to each other, it became regarded as the mark of the best games all-rounder in the world.
The Pentamind champion is the player with the best score in "pentamind points" from 5 valid events. This is calculated using pentamind points 100 x (n - p) / (n - 1). Where n is the number of players and p is the player's position in an event.[10] The position is the position before tie-breaks and any split positions are shared amongst all of the tied players. Although players can use different results they still have the opportunity to play against their competitors in all of the events so can still influence the outcome using events other than their main 5 by reducing their opponents pentamind points.
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 dot coms, 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 .
There have been some commentators question the standard of events when first appearing at the Mind Sports Olympiad when considered in conjunction with the title that is awarded to the winner. An example of this was with the inaugural Amateur World Poker Championships in 1998 when the event was described as like a beginner's tournament.[26] However, this was before internet poker was common place and many all-rounders were not playing due to timetable conflicts. A more serious incident arose at the end of the 3rd MSO, which caused a public falling-out amongst the original organisers. And this led to open criticism being made of Raymond Keene by his brother-in-law David Levy and financial collapse.[27] There had been a decline in numbers in many events due to no sponsorship and no advertising that resulted in several events having very small fields in 2007 combined with being held in a small venue.[11] 2008 saw a slight revival with the event returning to a central London venue. The number of participants have continued to increase in 2009, 2010 and 2011.
This event has been won five times by Demis Hassabis.[28]