The Memoriad Memory Money List

I came away with a generous wad of money from the Memoriad - quite literally, the prize money was paid to us in US dollars at the prizegiving ceremony, in front of any potential muggers and villains, but luckily everyone there was honest and decent and I'm almost sure that everyone got home safely with their cash. In contrast to the first Memoriad four years ago, when the only 'real' memory athletes competing were Boris, Andi and Gunther and they basically split all the prize money between them, there was a lot more competition this time for those top-three places. I'm sure in 2016 there'll be even more!

Results are now available here for the world to see.

By my calculation, it went:

Simon Reinhard $3,000 - two first places
Johannes Mallow $2,500 - one first and two thirds
Ben Pridmore $2,250 - one first and one second
Tsogbadrakh Saikhanbayar $1,500 - one first
Jonas von Essen $1,500 - two seconds
Christian Schäfer $1,250 - one second and one third
Akjol Syeryekkhaan $750 - one second
Boris Konrad $500 - one third
Lukas Amsüss $500 - one third

Which is a nice sharing-out of the hugely generous prize money, don't you think? Tsogbadrakh also got another $250 for the world record in flash numbers - probably. I don't honestly remember, because I'd fallen asleep by that part of the prizegiving. It was very long, as these things always are. And I got a new trophy that was too big for my rucksack (although I got it home somehow anyway) and medals and certificates and everything!

The Mongolian invasion was the most interesting part of it - well, also the Swedish invasion, but Jonas already did that at the Friendly - because it means the upcoming world championship might be more multinational than I was expecting. I'm excited about it now! Akjol was also fourth in binary, with more than 3000, and fifth in hour numbers, so he's obviously an all-rounder. Both Mongolians are young, too, like so many people seem to be nowadays. If they don't make the next Memoriad earlier than four years from now, I'll be 40 years old! That just doesn't bear thinking about...