Good grief

The US Memory Championship has just announced (at rather short notice) that it will be adopting a radical new format, with different events and a focus on things that look good on TV. I'm all in favour of this kind of thing if it gets a bit of publicity for the event, even if it is completely different to the way the big memory championships work.

Gunther, on the other hand, has suggested that the World Memory Sports Council might like to take legal action against the organisers of the US Championship to stop them doing it. It takes me back to the summer of 2004, when he was suggesting similar sanctions against Andi's Memory World Cup (although Andi was the first one to threaten other people with lawyers there). I don't see why anyone takes the whole thing so seriously, I really don't. It's just a bit of fun, for crying out loud!

Still, Dominic made the very valid point that some of the budding American memorisers would probably want to get onto the world ranking list, for which we need standardised competitions all over the world (something they've never yet had in the USA, preferring a shrunk-down version in the previous years). Not that there even is a world ranking list at the moment, because the WMSC haven't got round to working one out yet, but still. It is cool to be able to say "I'm Number X in the world!". It's even cooler to be able to say you're the number one in the world, of course, so I hope I end up on top again when they do release the new list, however they work it out (I have my own world ranking list based on past WMC performances, and I'm number two on that, after Andi).

After the 2002 world championship, I really enjoyed going around telling people I was number sixteen in the world of memory competitions. Of course, there were so few people taking part in those days that it was really easy to get into the world's top twenty, not like today. But you didn't have to tell people that, did you? For some reason, I was less inclined to boast about it when I got up to number four, and then number one - probably because I'm just completely unable to boast without turning it into self-mockery of some kind, and it's hard to do that when you've got an achievement you're genuinely proud of.

What I do like telling people is my position on the othello ranking list. If only someone would manage to put together a proper world ranking list including all those great players from Japan and elsewhere, it would be even better, but Number 141 with a bullet on the French European Rating List is still pretty cool. I had to look it up to see where I was, by the way. I was thinking 142, so now I'm quite happy with myself. But I notice I'm one place behind Joel Blackmur, on 1708 points to his 1709. I'll have to do something about that this weekend...