MSO 2020 ONLINE

For sure there is no comparison: playing live in London is much more exciting, but Covid this year must make us like this situation too and so with a positive attitude we play with determination nevertheless.
To summarize everything is different, but we play no matter what ?

Now it’s time for the chronicle.
The first two days started with the qualifier and finals for Bridge and Catan, but also Hive and Chess 3′ Arena.
In Bridge I play, surprise, with my grandson/student Manfredi Barbaro and exceeding every better forecast we won Final B (that of the second 24 qualified couples. they were 155 in total). And I must say that for 24 haours thank to a website that was not so clear, we thought we won the Gold ?. That would have been a little bit too much, to be onest, but I’m very satisfied.
In Catan between the 111 players our best one has been Dario De Toffoli (59°), then Alessio Salzano (65°) and Marco De Simone (95°).
In Hive between 35 players very good final standing for our Francesco Salerno, 11° Gianni Cottogni, 19° Stefano Teatini.
In Backgammon (1 pt KO) the first italian satisfaction: Piero Zama makes it to the semifinal and gets the Bronze.
This against 80 players. Also Pietro Ermando Cucci reached the round of 16, while all the others got out before.
Then the Carcassonne tournament took place (4 players) where 59 players competed. The best italian this time has been Leonardo Caviola (11°), seguito da Dario De Toffoli (17°), Carlo Metta (29°), Daniele Ferri (36°), Piero Modolo (42°) and Manfredi Barbaro (44°).
In the Stone Age tournament a very good Silver by Stefano Teatini (but, as for the Backgammon (3pt KO) no result is published yet, so details will come with the next report).
Finally Chess: in Arena no italian player partecipated, in swiss Blitz (5’+3”) and in Chess960 (10′) both me and Piero Mazzilli tried something. In the first tournament, out of 77 players I reached the 14the position throwing the last match when it was almost won, while Piero peaked at 31st, nervous himself to have thrown his match too, while in Chess960 (10′) out of 54 players Mazzilli reached the 6th position, while who is writing reached the 9th. We played not greatly, leaving behind many good opportunities that could have led us to a medal, but it will be for the next time.
In the Pentamind ranking, just to change things up, Ankush Khandelwal is way ahead, winning Bridge and getting good results in 4 other tournaments (435 points), while the best of the italian is myself in 6th position (163 points with 2 tournaments), then at the 11th place Manfredi Barbaro (148 with 3 tournaments), at 19th place Dario De Toffoli (129 with 3 tournaments), 33rd Daniele Ferri (101 with 2 tournaments), 62nd Piero Zama (95 with 1 tournament).
bye bye

Round One: According to the latest available figures, there are 26,935 passenger airliners in the world and 1.4 billion cars. At the height of this year’s locked most of the planes were grounded and most of the cars were inactive. You are therefore asked to come up with ideas for what could have been done with 26,935 empty airliners and 1.4 billion motionless cars.

Round Two: Seventy years ago, CS Lewis wrote a novel about a Lion, a Witch and a Wardrobe. I found this rather unconvincing and have always felt that there must be a better way to bring together those three items. You are therefore invited to come up with a synopsis for a better story in which a lion, a witch and a wardrobe are linked in the plot.

Round Three: We have all been challenged to find things to do during lockdown, but few if any new inventions have appeared to make life easier or more enjoyable. You are therefore asked to produce a patent application for a new device specifically designed to make any future lockdown period more fun or easier to cope with.

Round Four: The Creator has decided that the World has not really lived up to expectations and the construction has revealed many problems. You are invited to tender for the creation of a new World, giving specifications of the new designs and details of the ways it will improve things. For reasons of expense, small but significant changes are likely to be preferred.

After this premise, in 2017 they made a documentary about Pentamind and I had the honour to be one of the 5 protagonists, together with real champions like Khandelwal, Kuusk, Heppell and Pearce.
This documentary won the Best Documentary at the recent Gen Con Film Festival and this evening at 22:30 it will be live on Youtube. In this page the link and the triler: https://msoworld.com/2020/08/pentamind-documentary/
It starts with my voice while I’m speaking english… shame!
Who wants can watch it.

Round One: According to the latest available figures, there are 26,935 passenger airliners in the world and 1.4 billion cars. At the height of this year’s locked most of the planes were grounded and most of the cars were inactive. You are therefore asked to come up with ideas for what could have been done with 26,935 empty airliners and 1.4 billion motionless cars.

Round Two: Seventy years ago, CS Lewis wrote a novel about a Lion, a Witch and a Wardrobe. I  found this rather unconvincing and have always felt that there must be a better way to bring together those three items. You are therefore invited to come up with a synopsis for a better story in which a lion, a witch and a wardrobe are linked in the plot.

Round Three: We have all been challenged to find things to do during lockdown, but few if any new inventions have appeared to make life easier or more enjoyable. You are therefore asked to produce a patent application for a new device specifically designed to make any future lockdown period more fun or easier to cope with.

Round Four: The Creator has decided that the World has not really lived up to expectations and the construction has revealed many problems. You are invited to tender for the creation of a new World, giving specifications of the new designs and details of the ways it will improve things. For reasons of expense, small but significant changes are likely to be preferred.

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Answers by Riccardo Gueci:

1) The recent lockdown highlighted realities that nobody ever thought to use differently from the primary purpose they were designed for: airplanes and cars. The lack of usage of such a large number of vehicles represents a waste that can be easily corrected by a resourceful and advanced society. Here I present some innovative ideas for the immediate employment of these resources, in the perspective of a long period of lockdown, that would not jeopardize their primary functionality in a future where we can go back to our normal lives. I want to stress that these proposals are intended for specific societal needs that, in this way, would have a solution. First of all, prisons. During a pandemic, one of the weakest links of the humanitarian chain are the inmates that requires isolation. Considering the ever present overpopulation of prisons all over the world and the difficulty in isolating infected inmates from susceptible ones, the unused airplanes could be repurposed to act as isolation chambers for infected individuals who do not require further medical attentions. It would be sufficient to  remove the majority of the seats (that could be easily be reinstalled at the end of the lockdown) and to equip the interior of the planes with the bare minimal number of appliances for the forced stay of the inmates. This would provide excellent anti-evasion measures, while at the same time, ensure that these people receive a fair and humane treatment.
Another domain that under-utilized vehicles might help with, in a lockdown, entices the improvement of an overlooked aspect that had a profound psychological impact on the populations: the impossibility to have access, in a safe way, to services that are responsible for the improvement of our mood. This could be solved by allowing cars, that would require being equipped with highly recognizable elements, to help law enforcement ensure compliance with social distancing norms, to drive to large open spaces where people could attend to concerts, movies and spectacles, while being in a safe environment. Furthermore, large supermarkets could start employing drive through services (like Mc Donald’s ones) where goods can be sold without having any contacts with a potentially hazardous environment. This would have a positive effect on an otherwise crippled economy and people could go out of their homes safely. Last but not least, this kind of regulation would allow us to maintain soothing practices such as admiring dawn or sunset, and so on.
Naturally, in case of necessity, cars and especially campers could be employed as a temporary shelter for homeless people.
These are small and not so small measures that would positively influence the well being of an evolved, civil and supportive community, in a dire moment of global threat

2)It was horrible, I swear, I wouldn’t wish an ending like that to anyone. It’s not fair! They were so happy, it looked nothing existed beyond them, and then everything ended in such a baffling way, I just can not accept it. I met the two years ago, here in Linosa a remote island in the Mediterranean, in the one hotel we have here. I have always lived here, they came here for the first time during their holiday, then they kept coming. They loved it here, this remote and sparsely populated island, perfect for their adulterous love. Leo, short for Lion in Italian, was a tall man with moustaches. He was not beautiful but his tan, his athletic body and his Latin charm made him a handsome man. Giovanna, on the other hand, she was gorgeous. She had long black hair curled up on her shoulders, green, deep, captivating eyes and a breathtaking body, not too tall, not too short. Above everything else though, she was a witch. A witch I say. Not like the old ones used to tell about, with the broom and the concoctions, of course, but Leo was completely bewitched by her. You might be inclined to dismiss this to just how attractive she was, but you would be mistaken. What mesmerized Leo was Giovanna’s mind, her voice, her intuitions, her effortless grace and her determination. She was an exceptional woman, and I was captivated by her myself, having heard her talk many times. They loved each other passionately, and I casually saw them, from a slight opening, in that magical ritual of love a couple of times. In a small hotel like this one, you can hear a lot of things andI catched glimpses of information here and there: he was an engineer from Lampedusa, married with two kids. He would often take a boat to come here in Linosa to meet his forbidden love. Giovanna was instead a painter and this island was her very muse that inspired her for her paintings. To be fair, some of them were pretty good. That was a hot night in the middle of august. Of course, Linosa is normally very windy, but that night it felt like it didn’t even exist. They came back from the beach, like they used to, tired but happy. They made love and, that night as well, I heard everything. Then suddenly, the reception called them, I heard a noise and some stifled screams. His wife was coming upstairs with a copy of the keys of their room. They panicked, and without really knowing what they were doing they came to me for refuge. I loved them and I was hoping for a miracle. The wife’s screams, especially when she understood that they were with me, covered the sound of running water. Then the smell made everything clear: it was oil. In a single moment, everything was ablaze. There was no hope for us. Especially for me, that had nothing to do with it. I was a simple wooden wardrobe.

3) The next lockdown will be a large social game, a sort of global video-games where everybody will be a participant. It will be useful to keep everybody compliant with social rules and it will also be very competitive and rewarding: winners will have health and freedom at the same time. Rules will be posted on an online app that everybody will download on their phones. The patented app will monitor everybody’s movement via GPS and everybody’s habits by checking purchases and web searches. The playfields will be cities (winners from each city will then face each other in the grand final match among different states) and everybody will be playing: senior citizens, women, children (above 12 years old). Everybody will have a unique identifier through their Avatar on the app. The main goal of the game is to find winning strategies to make life during the lockdown as efficient and remunerative as possible: some good examples might be to elaborate a grocery list able to satisfy a balanced diet for the largest possible number of days, identify possible solutions to quickly sanitize spaces and people in an efficient way, elaborate recreational activities also that lead to cultural or economical growth. A point system will be in place, and particularly creative or virtuous behaviors will be rewarded with extra points. The reaching of points thresholds is rewarded by obtaining days of freedom to spend by yourself or with others (depending on how many points you make). As the game progresses, new restrictions will be held in place (e.g., no sport, no movies, etc,) which will make the game harder and more challenging but that, in turn, will motivate each player to give their best to beat the other participants, to obtain their beloved “freedom-quota”. Moreover, each new challenge will be made more interesting by introducing intriguing prizes (e.g., a dinner at a one-star Michelin restaurant, a week-end in another city… everything for free of course) or even material supplies for the future (e.g., a delivery test, a ventilator or even a spot in intensive care, depending on the performance). We expect high levels of competitiveness and to spice it up a notch, we are going to introduce beside “Freedom-Quotas”, also penalties for despicable behavior (e.g., going out without permission, buying non-essential goods, engaging in non-elevating activities such as napping, etc.) called “Stay-More-At-Home-Quotas” and involve extending the lockdown period as a punishment and not for health related reasons. Some particularly harsh “Stay-More-At-Home-Quotas” will be given during bank holidays, birthdays and weekends, to act as a deterrent for those that are not taking the game seriously enough. The score of each player will be democratically determined by a “like-dislike” mechanism with other participants of the game, therefore making everybody a ruthless player, an impartial judge and a relentless watcher with themselves and with each other’s behavior.

4) When the maker made everything, while meticulous and with great planning, he didn’t give much attention to some of the aspects that concerned its most beloved creatures: the man and the woman. Of course, the toy worked and it amused it greatly, but the fights and humanity’s most harmful behaviors was a source of constant irritation. At some point it even thought of tossing everything away. Then it calmed down and realized that some light modifications might have proved enough. To make things more interesting, he made a public call, involving mankind itself in the process of proposing the modifications.
Here are my suggestions, critical and above everything, with a low budget approach.
The main drive is the improvement of the human being. The aim is a community based on equality, deprived of those ageless critical points that hindered the process of obtaining of correct point of view on the essence of life, that created and still create sterile discussion and petty discriminations. Therefore, we will equip men and women with a brand new genetic and biological array. Therefore still maintaining some differences, men and women will have the  same physical strength and both will be able to be pregnant. Procreation won’t be an exclusive male-female interaction the spectrum of possibilities will be broadened (female / female, male/male), depending on personal preferences, one own’s character and temporal contingencies (such as work). Within the couple it will be possible to choose who will have the honor/burden to carry the pregnancy, depending on the personal and economical preferences of the family. Ideas like gender equality, motherhood, fatherhood, will be a vestige of the past and we will adopt the more generic notion of parenthood (so progressive!). Moreover, children will be born with developed cognitive abilities and a vast and complete array of notions and deep truths that will be forgotten gradually during the growth to adulthood. Children will, therefore have, since their literal birth day, the task to lead their parents towards a broader self-awareness, helping them to develop their physical and inner potential until they manage to reach a deeper understanding of the material and spiritual world around them. The educational bond between children and parents will be the cornerstone for the building of a society able to know and structure itself in such a way to reach basic concepts like sincerity and equality (again, incredibly progressive ideas here), finally banishing corruption, betrayals and bullying, behaviors that are a direct consequence of a juvenile society that forgets and constantly requires remembering and guidance. The child/teacher growing will start forgetting its abilities as a mentor until, at a certain point, it will need to have children in order to remember the truths of the world, thus creating a rebirth cycle to maintain the essential knowledge of the world.

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Answers by Dario De Toffoli:

1) WORDWIDE PAINTING CONTEST
Everyone is invited to imaginatively paint his or her car and/or write peaceful messages on the roof. The owners of the cars would have the choice whether to use paint that is permanent, or whether to use watercolor that will wash away over time. Photographers and videographers would then take helicopter tours of the world, documenting this mass gesture on behalf of beauty, peace, and unity — even in the midst of untold suffering and disease. The world becomes a little more colorful, and the most creative painted cars are awarded prizes and featured online. The planes are also painted but by 20,000 professional and amateur artists selected in a worldwide competition. On both the cars and the planes, no commercial or promotional messages are allowed.

PLANES ON THE PLAIN
Park all the airplanes together in some gigantic plain in e.g. Mongolia but near a freshwater source. Then choose the 20,000 most “valuable” families or teams on earth (judged along various dimensions for diversity etc.) and allow them to live in the planes. Park millions cars around the plain to act as a barrier against the outside world. Have a limited number of virus-free “drivers” within the plain who bring water and food to the planes. If the virus gets really bad, at least we have these 20,000 “pods” (plus the drivers) who will survive.

2) SHORTER SABBATH
The sabbath lasted less than thought, cause must of the witches wanted to go home to watch the last episode of their preferite soap opera. So Sukie, our witch, went home earlier. In the meantime Daryl, his spouse, was having fun – indeed, much much fun – with Jane, another witch who was supposed to be Sukie best friend. When Daryl heard Sukie arriving home, he hided Jane in the wardrobe., but Sukie immediately realized that something was wrong (she’s a very experienced witch).
Sukie was very angry and lost her mind, so she transformed Daryl into a ferocious Lion and blocked the door.
What will happen next? Jane will come out of the guardroom and deal with the Lion? Or will she stay inside till the end of the time?
You to decise, the final is open.

3) AIR-CUSHIONING
This device is a new kind of pump that can be connected to already-existing air-conditioning devices. You close all the doors and windows of a room, and then turn on both the air-conditioning part and the air-cushioning part of the device. Slowly there is a decrease in gravity and new possibilities for movement and even slight levitation. The more powerful the air-cushioning, the bigger the decrease in gravity. This device was initially developed in special research laboratories at NASA, but then private industry ran with the concept and made it popular and affordable. The cost is now not much more than conventional air-conditioning.

TOUCH GLOVE
Everybody is now connected through the internet (well, not precisely everybody, but most). This new electro-sensitive glove adds “touch” to the experience. Two people are involved, each wearing the special gloves which are then connected via an electronic platform (linkable from most of the existing e-learning platforms). They are then not only able to chat and see video of one another, but also to feel the sensation of touching — to give a “real-virtual” hug to each other (and not just hugs ?). At the moment the gloves can only be used by 2 people, but soon it will be possible to have groups of 3 or more. They will also be used to play board games: to move a piece you no longer click to it, but virtually take it with your glove and move it. (Studies suggest that we play games very differently (and often better) when moving pieces with our hands – and it would be interesting to study whether this is true with the Touch Glove as well, since that is a sort of intermediary between fully physical and fully virtual gaming).

4) THE BIG LEAP
I suggest that the Creator move the position of the human larynx and pharynx, to keep them as they were some 50.000 years ago (and as the pharynx actually still is in very little children). It was this repositioning that allowed Homo Sapiens to undergo the “Big Cognitive Leap” – basically because they become able to articulate far more varied sounds. If the larynx and pharynx were kept as they were, the Leap would not have happened, and Sapiens would not have become the only dominant species. As a result, the world would have stayed much more balanced.

SLOW DOWN
The Creator could make TIME flow a little bit slower (or at least our perception of time, which may just be the same thing), so we all can be a little less in a hurry.

BONOBO SOCIETY
The Creator could prevent the development of the genes that control jealousy and the urge to monogamy. This way everybody is more sexually free, and women can do what they like with no harassment or fear. Everyone becomes more satisfied and less inclined towards violence and fighting. In other words, make human society more like bonobo society (and less like chimpanzee society). In the Bonobo society, humans live happily with very little violence and use sex to help resolve almost any problem.

MULTIPLYING WITH NO CORPSES
The Creator could make advanced biological life more like it was a few billion years ago, where we did not die from “natural causes.” Instead of pairing and then giving birth to a distinct individual, and leaving behind two corpses a few decades later, each of us would just naturally split into two, and leave behind no corpse at all. Sex would still exist and be fun, but it would not be essential. Thus many of the problems/wars/resentments caused by the procreative sexual urge (see: Helen of Troy) would never arise.

There were 5.884 partecipants taking part into the online edition of the Mind Sports Olympiad 2020 with 10.000 subscriptions overall.
Many partecipated to one tournament only, but 228 people actually played 5 or more and 102 10 or more. 130 players entered the Pentamind ranking, the competition that actually represent the spirit of this unique event the most, an event I cannot miss for sure.
These the numbers, that came with a great improvement for the MSO, considering also that more than 100 nations partecipated.

So, from conditio sine qua non, the online things transformed into a great opportunity. And that should be taken into account for the future.

Italian partecipation also stepped up, mainly thanks to the tireless work by Leonardo Caviola, he did a great job! Thank you Leonardo. And I liked his statistics a lot (I love statistics!), I paste some of them here with his permission.
The italian loot has been quiet good, 5 golds, 8 silvers and 9 bronzes and clicking on the voice “Italian medals” higher on the list there are the winners (adding also those by Maurizio De Leo, who played for Singapore, but promised that next year he will be 100% italian!).

Here they are.
They are 95 our players. Many only one or two tournaments but 11 players played in 10/+ tournaments. The highest on the list a fearless Riccardo Gueci, who started slowly, but with nobody stepping on his way afterward: 33 partecipations put the distance from anybody else (I did 25 tournaments in 11 different disciplines), but he is still far from the 45 partecipations in 22 different disciplines by Ankush Khandelwal, protagonist of this edition and winner of the Pentamind. Here’s the chart.

Another chart by Caviola shows the ranking of the single games as if only Italians would partecipate: a funny idea to give the team idea.

Other two charts show what games the italians prefer and on top we find Can’t Stop, a gem by Sid Sackson, with 18 players out of 256 in total.
ok, that’s it… but Caviola did way more, that you can easily find through his pages.

And the next year? We will do even better, no doubt!