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MSO XV Day 5
Day 5 featured many events but it was always going to be about who would win the Entropy World Championship.
Entropy World Championships
The 2011 MSO had a documentarian making a short program on the MSO and the obvious question arises: What makes Entropy so special?
The answer is that it is a game that requires great visualisation and is almost pure shape and middle game. As a result, the strongest all-rounders have been drawn to the game which is unique amongst board games.
Entropy has its own trophy : "The Eric Solomon Cup" named after the inventor and always attracts a competitive field. On the surface, Entropy looks like a game of statistics and luck but in fact the variance from chance is very small.
Looking at the medal summaries it would be easy to overlook the depth of the field. It is the only event that still warrants an appearance from the great Demis Hassabis. The player who once dominanated both the pentamind and Entropy had been struggling for form in recent years. There was a glimmer of his former brillance returning but he did not quite find his past form. Losing to both Paco Garcia De La Banda the defending World champion from Spain and Andres Kuusk from Estonia.
Demis's entropy rival 2 time past Entropy champion David Pearce also having lost form had a shot at the dreaded A - B - A - B - A - B - A that equals a 37 point line against Andres.The story in the end was mainly about the newly emerging talent of Paco and Andres. However, the competition had one final sting in its tail with the MSO tiebreak causing a shock outcome with the winner being Entropy Specialist Peter Horlock (England) holding Andres Kuusk to the Silver and Paco Garcia De La Banda to the bronze.
Other Medals
The day contained several other events. Backgammon was won by Steve Rimmer (England), Silver - Mahmoud Jahanbani (Iran) and Bronze - Andrew Brydges (England)
Mensa Connections: gold - Ankush khandelwal (England), silver - Mike Dixon (England) and bronze - Noel Burger (England)
Triolet like Entropy also had a contraversial tiebeak that resulted in Tim Hebbes (England) taking the Gold medal. Silver went to Martin Thompson (England) and bronze Ankush khandelwal (England).
The evening saw the poker - Pineapple where David Pearce managed to have an all-in decision on the first hand (not easy to achieve in pot limit) correctly worked out that he had only three outs and decided to play on the basis that he could catch-up with Demis...
A few seconds later David was eliminated only to realise that he had missed Demis by two minutes too! The final result was: Gold - Riccardo Gueci (Italy), Silver - Tim Hebbes (England) and Bronze - Martyn Hamer (England).
The final event of the day was the evening chess which concludes tomorrow.