A memorable match

The Online Memory League Championship is a great thing. Here's an example of a fun match I had today, just in case anyone reading this was still on the fence about joining the fun next season.

I'm up against Islomxo'ja from Uzbekistan, a new territory for memory games! We've played once before, in a relegation playoff at the end of last season - I won that one 4-1 (he was rather unlucky), but a shortage of players signed up for this season has led to us both in division 2 this time around.

The way Memory League Championship matches work nowadays is the opponents take turns to choose one of the five disciplines, and the first to 4 (with a lead of two or more) is the winner. Maximum of eight games, so a match can end 4-4 or 4½-3½ or 5-3.

I had the first choice today, so went for cards as usual - I can normally safely do a full 52 cards in under 30 seconds, and not many other people in division 2 can do that. This time, though, I started very sluggishly and forgot what one of my images was - which you'd think I wouldn't do after nearly twenty years of using these images, but that's a lack of practice for you. So it took me thirty-seven and a half seconds - but luckily, Islom was playing it safe and went more slowly, so I still got the first point.

Second game, Islomxo'ja's choice was of course names. I can't do names, it's universally known. So that made it 1-1. This is how my first two games in any memory match almost invariably start.

So my usual next choice, numbers, is a little bit more risky - it's easier to forget one images in numbers, because unlike in cards, you can't go back and make sure you've used each of the 52 cards once. But I memorised these ones smoothly in 24 seconds... but made a mistake at the end. I 'grab' the last six images (18 digits - or rather 17 with an imaginary zero on the end, since 80 digits doesn't divide neatly by three), just reading them quickly to myself and saying the name of the images to myself. And the problem is, 286 and 386 have basically the same names, and I wasn't certain whether I'd seen the one that starts with M or the one that starts with N. It's rather sloppy on my part there. Islom was playing it safe again, and took a 2-1 lead.

And he then chose images, which he's generally faster at than I am, and won with a very nice 18 seconds. 3-1, match point, and we're down to my third choice of discipline...

I chose words - and I'd got some terrible results in my previous match against Guillaume, just because I'm out of practice. I'd done a bit more training since then, but I found this set of words tricky, and didn't get up to the end of the list in the sixty seconds. Islom seemed to do the same, though, and I managed to get the win. 3-2. Still match point!

So Islom chose words again, and this time we both found it easier - which is interesting, since I normally have troubles when I do two words games in a row. 40 isn't a world-beating score by any means, but I was happy with it. I finished before Islom did, and watched his score ticking up - I thought it might be a draw, but I just barely won, 40 to 39, levelling the match.

So my fourth and final choice of discipline could only be images - I'm never going to choose names, am I? And I think we were both getting a bit tired after all this exertion! I was annoyed to get two pairs of images swapped around - I memorise them in groups of three, but I knew one couplet had interacted over the last of one group and the first of the next. I just forgot which one it was. So I ended up dropping four points, and Islom only dropped three, taking him to 4-3 and guaranteed at least a draw.

He had to choose numbers or cards for the last one, and sensibly went for numbers. I figured he'd go slowly, and decided to look at them all twice instead of once. And I still couldn't remember one image! Actually, I tend to make just as many mistakes if I review the data, so I don't know why I ever think it would be a good idea. It was all academic, anyway - far from going slow, Islom did a fast 27-second time and got them all right! So he ended up a very deserving 5-3 winner!

The day might eventually come when people who beat me in memory competitions no longer tell me I'm a legend who they admire, but it hasn't happened yet. I'll need to train harder to catch up with these new young legends again!