The 2018 Mind Sports was held at JW3 in North London. This was the fifth year in a row it has been held in what now looks like its permanent home. New games are a regular feature of MSO, but this year there was a new feature: livestreaming on YouTube, the video hub of the world.
When I arrived on the Tuesday, in the morning, the livestream was just being set up. Paco Garcia de la Banda was present; the 2010 Pentamind champion and a regular gamester, he told me to my surprise he was not playing but was commentating.
The office has been run by chess organiser Tony Corfe since the inception of MSO in 1997; he looked in this year, but the admin work was carried out by Ben Ross and Carmel Black. Also lending a hand were Etan Ilfeld (the inventor of diving chess), Josef Kollar, and others.
Five livestreams were uploaded by MSO, the first on August 19. The award ceremony was uploaded as a regular video two days after the event had closed. Livestreams were also uploaded by the event sponsor, Bondora. Another sponsor was five times Pentamind winner Demis Hassabis.
The Pentamind is of course the big meta-event, and was won this year by Ankush Khandelwal who turned up on crutches and obviously in pain after an horrific accident on the football field. Runner up was Andres Kuusk. The two men were actually joint winners in 2013, with Andres winning outright in 2011, 2014 and 2016. Ankush is a veteran who has been playing MSO since he was a schoolboy; Andres is a relative newcomer, but like Paco he has not simply been playing games, he has been training the next generation.
Turnout was up this year, including many young players, and now with the added publicity of the YouTube livestream plus sound sponsorship, the future of MSO seems secure.
You can also find MSO on its dedicated website msoworld.com; the results website boardability.com (a couple of years behind); and on Facebook.
[The above article was first published on Medium, October 26, 2018].
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