I really want to organise a UK Extreme Memory Tournament. Nelson and Simon are all in favour of having local competitions happen as much as possible; all I need now is for someone to give me really quite a lot of money in order to make it happen. I'm thinking of a three-day extravaganza, with the Friendly Competition in the WMSC style included in there as well.
Could I get 16 British competitors? Actually, probably quite easily, there's a lot more of us now than there used to be. Could I get 32, and expand it to World Cup proportions? I'd want to make it UK-and-Ireland, actually, so I can invite Conor Muldoon and Charlie Garavan. And for that matter, maybe we should add Americans and Australians, too, so that Nelson and Simon can compete? Okay, now it's the English-Speaking Countries Extreme Memory Tournament! If we spread our net any further than that, then those Europeans will just win everything again...
Okay, who's competing? I'm not, since I'm hypothetically running the thing and learning how Simon's software works so that I can keep it going while he's competing, but I'm sure there'd be plenty of interest!
Hi Ben, I haven't actually got anything to add about your UKXMT but I don't know how to contact you via other means. I was just mooching about the records page and I noticed that the oldest three World Records belong to you, dating to 2007, 08 and 10 (with Words 15 mins also 2010). Were they so far ahead of their time, are they in danger of falling anytime soon, do you have an explanation.........just wondered.
ReplyDeleteGreat write up about the XMT! You must have taken notes.
I gotta enter a regular competition before I do anything extreme!
Regards, Paul
I don't take notes. I'm too extreme for that.
ReplyDeleteAs for the records, there was a time, long long ago, when I was by some distance the best in the world, mainly because I had a really cool system that made memorising so much easier. 2008 was around the last time I seriously practiced, so I haven't improved many of my records since then.
I've generally been caught up and overtaken in most things by now - the marathon disciplines I still hold the records in remain untouched mainly because people only get a chance to do them in competitions once or twice a year, and they're mainly more concerned with setting a decent score to keep up with their opponents, rather than try for something big and possibly make a lot of mistakes...
I would love to compete in something like that, it sounds like so much fun.
ReplyDeleteI am also very interested in competing in UKXMT !!!
ReplyDeletewhenever, wherever I'd be there.
But don't put me against my brother!