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The 1st world mind sports games wmsg
The World Mind Sports Games (WMSG) is a quadrennial multi-sport event created by the International Mind Sports Association (IMSA) as a "stepping stone on the path of introducing a third kind of Olympic Games (after the Summer and the Winter Olympics)".
Contents
- The 1st world mind sports games wmsg
- Related events
- Sports
- Continuing competitions
- Host cities
- References
The inaugural 2008 World Mind Sports Games were held in Beijing from October 3 to 18, about two months after the Summer Olympics and one month after the Paralympics. Five mind sports participated in the first Games: bridge, chess, draughts (checkers), go (weiqi), and xiangqi (Chinese chess). Thirty-five gold medals were contested by 2,763 competitors from 143 countries.
The second WMSG were held in Lille, France from August 9 to 23, 2012, starting during the 2012 Summer Olympics and ending shortly before the 2012 Summer Paralympics.
In September 2016, the relevant bridge events were run as the World Bridge Games in Wrocław, Poland.
The 1st world mind sports games wmsg
Related events
In addition to the quadrennial WMSG, the International Mind Sports Association also organises the SportAccord World Mind Games, whose "first annual" edition was held in Beijing, December 2011. The SportAccord Games have fewer and smaller events with cash prizes.
Sports
At the first two WMSG events, medals were contested in five different mind sports: bridge, chess, draughts (checkers), go (weiqi), and xiangqi (Chinese chess).
The International Federation of Poker (IFP) is an observer member of IMSA, so poker has been mentioned as a possible future sport at the WMSG.
Mathematical games are also planned to be present at 2012 WMSG, in the form of a contest between national teams.
Continuing competitions
More than half of the 2008 participants were bridge players, partly because the World Bridge Federation transferred some important quadrennial competitions to the WMSG, especially the Open and Women flights of its World Team Olympiad.
In 2004 there had been in the main continuing events 72 Open and 43 Women "Olympiad" entries (national teams-of-four with six players on most squads). Under the Minds Sports rubric in Beijing there were 71 and 54 entries, about 700 players. The one-time, similar tournament with a 28 years age limit attracted another 400 players.
Host cities
The Games were originally intended to convene sometime after the Summer Olympics (and Paralympics) in the same city or at least the same country, using some of the same facilities. The inaugural Games did use the Olympic Village in Beijing about two months after the Olympics and one month after the Paralympics. However, this intention was not carried out in 2012, as Lille was chosen as host of the WMSG for the year that the Summer Olympics were held in London, Great Britain.
For 2016, the Olympic host Brazil early on expressed an interest in hosting the third WMSG. At the closing ceremony of the 2012 games, Rio de Janeiro was indeed announced as hosts for the 2016 event, but as of May 2016 postponement until 2017 looks likely.