Speed cards is fun to watch and exciting to compete in and makes a great finish to competitions. But what would the scores be like if it was the first of the ten disciplines? Or somewhere in the middle? A lot of the time, the competitors have to get an okay-but-not-spectacular score, to make sure they finish in the position they're aiming for, so there's not always a lot of opportunity to go for that record-breaking fast time.
And speaking of records, when will we see a sub-20-second pack of cards? And on a related note, why was 30 seconds seen as the "four minute mile" of memory competitions for so long? Yes, it's a nice round number, but back in the day, people were really really serious about it as being our Everest.
Long long ago, back in 2006, there was a competition called the Speed Cards Challenge, which consisted of nothing but head-to-head speed cards. It was great, and should happen again. The XMT comes close, obviously, and it'll be interesting to see how the speed cards times go in the future with that - memorising on a computer screen is probably a bit faster than memorising physical cards; it's harder to drop them on the floor, anyway.
I might not hold the record any more, but do I hold the record for the most sub-30-seconds packs in competitions? I probably do, but I don't want to count in case I'm wrong...
Just counted: :)
ReplyDeleteYou got 26.28, 24.97 and 28.00 s.
I had 21.90, 21.19, 22.13 (memocamp's 22.47 is probably calculated backwards from a rounded score), 27.21 and 26.99.
Looking forward to seeing you again soon. Already any concrete plans for China?
Bye!
Simon
Drat. Another record I thought I might possibly have, gone up in smoke. Oh well, congratulations! :)
ReplyDeleteNo concrete plans yet - I was thinking of not going, but I've changed my mind again. It just depends on whether I can find the money, somewhere...
Hope you can make it! Have a hunch that it might be quite an impressive event, with all the local government so closely involved in leading planning positions.
ReplyDeleteProblem is that there are not enough informations about the competition. I guess it is rather probable that there will be prize money, although this is only based on the fact that even at the Chinese Trials (12 tournaments in the 12 provinces and a big showdown among the best from those tourneys to get the 50 best Chinese for the WMC) there will be a hefty - for China - prize fund of roughly 20,000 EUR. Would be surprising if they did not at least try to match that for the "real" tournament.
Let us see.
Bye!
Simon
By the way, I did also do 29.71 at the South German championship in 2010, but it's not on the statistics sites. :)
ReplyDelete