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The 2004 'World Memory Champion' was narrowly defeated in last year's final and will be vying to win back the title at the 17th World Memory Championship, to be held in Bahrain for the second consecutive year.
The current reigning champion, Dr Gunther Karsten, from Germany, is also expected to defend his current title which he won last year in Bahrain, narrowly edging out the World Number One ranked memoriser to claim the crown.
Over 3 days of competition competitors from the around the world will face gruelling mental challenges, from memorising a sequence of random words in fifteen minutes, where Boris Konrad holds the World Record of 227 words, to remembering the sequence of playing cards in as many decks as possible in one hour.
In this discipline Ben Pridmore holds the World Record of 27 packs. A prize fund of $30,000 is on offer to competitors with a top prize for the World Memory Champion of $10,000.
Mr. Fuad Mubarak, Deputy CEO of Intelnacom, welcomed challengers saying:
"If you think you have a good memory, you might be tempted to challenge for the title, but be warned, it is a mind sport that takes months of training and when most of us, on average, can recall only between five and nine numbers in a row, Dominic O'Brien a former competitor and Eight Times World Memory Champion can recall 54 decks of shuffled playing cards after a single-sighting only of each card."
He added, "That is not to say that anyone could not do this, as according to scientists, the competitors' skill has not come from any in-built ability; it is simply the result applying techniques and plenty of practice."
The art of developing the mind has early origins, in fact in 477 BC the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos devised a memory technique called 'the method of loci', the method entails memorising items along an imagined journey and then mentally retracing one's steps to recall each article. More than 2,000 years later, the same mnemonic system is being by competitors of the World Memory Championship.
Ben Pridmore, the current UK Champion, is very much in form and is tipped to take the world crown in Bahrain. In a recent Television documentary he was filmed breaking his own world record for memorising a deck of shuffled playing cards in a blistering time of 24.68 seconds.
In a recent interview, he said, "I don't have a naturally brilliant memory, it's about learning techniques. It's a combination of number-crunching that I do anyway in my job - with added colour."
Pridmore uses a system where he assigns different mental pictures to each combination of two cards. For instance, the ace of diamonds followed by the eight of diamonds is represented by Daffy Duck (Pridmore uses cartoon characters from Looney Tunes cartoons and the Simpsons, as well as random objects) whereas the ace of diamonds followed by the King of Hearts is represented by a ladder. There are 2,704 possible combinations. These characters and objects then rapidly interact with each other as they embark on a journey. To recall the information, Pridmore reruns the story; as each character appears, he retrieves the two-card sequences.
So, while most of us grapple with the best ways to recall simple information, these champions have perfected a technique which simply makes the process much more efficient.
Apparently, any of us could do the same. Tony Buzan, the mind guru and inventor of mind mapping is also founder and organizer of the World Memory Championship. He teaches a technique of using vivid stories to remember lists of objects. To memorise the order of the planets, for example, he pictures a thermometer next to the Sun; the Sun gets so hot that the thermometer bursts, leaking 'Mercury'; a beautiful goddess comes to see what has happened (Venus); she picks up a globule of the mercury and hurls it into the ground (Earth), and so on.
Mr Buzan will be in Bahrain in October to oversee the 17th World Memory Championship, an event which he founded in London with Ray Keene OBE.
The World Memory Championships will take place during the 2008 Festival of the Mind. Bahrain's 2008 International Festival of the Mind presents an exciting 4 days of mind games, inspiring feats and amazing workshops that will draw some of the most talented masterminds to the Kingdom of Bahrain. Acclaimed worldwide as an excellent edutainment event, the Festival received an extraordinary response in Bahrain last year from visitors of all ages, performing participants, reputed speakers, sponsors as well as the global media. The doors of imagination and inspiration will once again be opened through this year's edition of the event.
Posted by Siba Sami Ammari
