Woohoo, great news from the Extreme Memory Tournament!
Hello Extremers, finally some updates concerning next year's competition. Here are the new and sexy facts:
1. Dates: May 2nd and 3rd, 2015
2. Location: Same as last year at the fabulous Dart NeuroScience center in San Diego, CA.
3. New event: 1-minute Images (and no it's not silly Abstract Images). I'll let you guys try and imagine what that might be...more specific details to come soon.
4. XMT training website to go live in December. So you and everyone else can get their practice on.
5. Bumping up to 24 competitors, instead of 16. See #6.
6. Qualifiers: The top 8 competitors from last year will be automatically invited. The remaining 16 slots will be determined by a series of online qualifiers (on the XMT training website). Literally ANYONE can attempt to be qualify for the XMT.
7. Money: The prize fund has been bumped up to $76,000. Oh yes! No travel stipend this year, but everyone who qualifies will get SOME money, with many more incentives during the 2-day competition as well. See HERE for the specifics.
The Basics
•The Competition will be...◦two-day event held on May 2nd and 3rd, 2015
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held at the Dart Neuroscience Convention Center in San Diego, CA
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sponsored by Dart Neuroscience and Washington University in St. Louis (WUSL)
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offering money prizes from a pool of $76,000
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24 of the top mental athletes in the world will be competing to ensure that the competition is at the highest level. The top 8 from last year's XMT will automatically qualify for the 2015 XMT. The remaining spots will be determined by qualifying rounds, which will be held over 5 consecutive weeks starting mid-December 2014 (see below).
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The competitors will be split up into 6 groups of 4, mixing the best and worst in each group to maintain fairness.
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The competition will be run first in group stages (Day 1) and then single-elimination Round of 16, Quarterfinals, Semifinals, Runner-up Match, and Finals (Day 2).
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All matches will be head-to-head competitive style, with competitors facing each other (1-on-1).
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All events will be digital. All memorization/recall will occur on a laptop. For XMTs, a laptop may or may not be used (this will be announced prior to the task).
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Qualifying Rounds
Starting mid-December (exact date TBD) and spanning over the course of 5 consecutive weeks, those who wish to compete in the 2015 XMT will have to submit their best scores on to the XMT training website for each of the 5 events. Competitors will have limited attempts and time to complete their BEST performance of the selected event of that week (the events will be the same ones from the competition: Names, Numbers, Cards, Words, and Images). The best 16 total scores over all events after the 5 weeks will be invited to compete in the 2015 XMT. More details to come...
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More on the site, go and check it out!
First thoughts, apart from the general "yay!"... six groups of four, five disciplines, still one day for the first round, we must be doing it with four matches simultaneously. That'll give us 45 rounds, as compared to the 48 we had this year.
How does the seeding work? And will it take into account that I barely whined, moaned and complained at all about ending up as fifth seed for the 2014 event because Ola landed one measly point ahead of me in the recalculated world rankings, and then ending up totally in the Group of Death, and everything. Here's hoping it works out a bit more easy for me in 2015, but then on the other hand I do love a challenge...
Top eight from last year qualify for this one - sorry about that again, James.
And the qualifying tournament is what intrigues me the most, even if I don't have to qualify. I mean, it's really easy to cheat at online score-recording. And if there's a prize for just turning up, surely someone out there will be tempted to qualify dishonestly? There's some very strange people out there, after all - remember Evil Eugene Varshavsky?
Incidentally, how the heck did I remember Eugene Varshavsky's name after five years without even having to look it up? Maybe I'm turning into a name-memorising expert!
The new discipline "images" sounds an excellent choice! When Nelson started talking about adding a fifth discipline, I thought it would destroy the balance between system-memory and more-natural-ish-memory, but if the images is a completely-natural-ish-memory thing, it works! I'm looking forward to it!
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