Memory sport
The sporting competition in memorizing large amounts of data is called memory sport .
General
The competitive comparison of memory sports strives for the same prerequisites for every participant. It does not matter whether the memory contents are related to everyday life or can be applied in a practical way. The preparation consists of a targeted training of the tournament disciplines and an attempt to refine and expand the techniques for mastering them.
In contrast to memory sports, memory training is the activity with which memory athletes specifically try to improve their memory performance. In addition to preparing for a competition, it can also be used for practical, everyday reasons, such as for school, work or for dementia .
In order to cope with the tasks that are set in the tournament, memory athletes use mnemonics . These are methods designed to make it easier to memorize large amounts of knowledge. Such techniques were already known in ancient Greece and their acquisition does not require any special skills or talents, but regular preparation is necessary for serious participation in competitions. The performance that top athletes achieve at competitive strength enables them to memorize a 1000-digit number in half an hour.
Organizational structures
Germany
The German championship for adults has been organized by the Society for Memory and Creativity Promotion since 1997 and the junior championship since 1998 . V. (GGK).
In Germany there is the MemoryXL association founded in Weimar in 2002. In addition to the championships, MemoryXL also organizes seminars for teachers and students and supports projects related to memory training . Since 2003 a North and South German championship has been held nationally. In the medium term, this is to be extended to North, West, South and East German championships.
MemoryXL also organizes a state championship in North Rhine-Westphalia for children and young people. Such a state championship also took place once in Baden-Württemberg . A similar state championship is planned in Berlin . Such national championships have existed in Austria for a long time. These competitions are designed to attract new students to memory techniques.
International
In 1990 Tony Buzan founded the World Memory Sports Council (WMSC). The WMSC has been organizing the World Memory Championships since 1991 , which until 2002 always took place in London . Due to increasing international participation, these were held in different places in the following years. The 2003 World Cup was in Kuala Lumpur , Manchester in 2004 and Oxford in 2005 . For the 15th anniversary of the championship, she returned to London in August 2006.
In 2006 there were restructuring in memory sports. In order to achieve the goal of official recognition as a sport , e.g. In order to take into account, for example, the IOC and the German Sports Association , the WMSC was reorganized as the world umbrella organization. The individual countries are asked to found national memorial sports associations. The Society for the Promotion of Memory and Creativity is recognized by the WMSC as the official host for the German Memory Championships.
The last World Cup took place in China in December 2018.
distribution
Memory sport still has the character of a fringe sport, so there are only around 100 active people in Germany. In the world rankings with around 4,400 entries, Germany used to be at the top internationally; today it is China and Mongolia. Among the children and young people in Europe, Austria stands out, which can be attributed to the greater dissemination of this sport through extensive groundwork with a specially tailored range of courses and its own tournaments. Over 250 participants from 30 countries from all continents took part in the 2018 World Cup.
Language-free disciplines
Digits and numbers
Memorizing written decimal digits is a classic discipline that no tournament is absent from. The task here is to memorize as many digits as possible in the given time.
- Current world record with five-minute decimal digits: 616 (Wei Qinru, China)
- Current world record with 15 minutes of decimal digits: 1168 (Wei Qinru, China)
- Current world record for one hour of decimal digits: 3260 (Zhang Ying, China)
Another discipline is memorizing spoken digits. These are read out in one-second intervals and have the additional difficulty that the athlete has to keep to the rhythm. In this discipline, the athlete has no way of repeating the digits. Therefore, this discipline is one of the most difficult. Lance Tschirhart holds the world record with 456 digits. - Until the year 2000, the digits were read out every two seconds. After Gunther Karsten set a new world record with 400 digits, the WMSC decided to reduce the time interval to one second.
Analogous to the written decimal digits, there is also a discipline in which written binary digits are memorized. To memorize, the memory athletes only receive a piece of paper with zeros and ones , the order of which they have to memorize. The world record for memorizing binary digits in five minutes is 1251 (Lkhagvadulam Enkhtuya, Mongolia) and 6270 (Munkhshur Narmandakh, Mongolia) in half an hour.
Playing cards
Speed cards is a supreme discipline in memory sports. The point is to memorize the sequence of a shuffled deck of 52 cards over time. Andi Bell held the world record for several years with 31.16 seconds, until it was significantly improved in 2007 by Ben Pridmore to 26.28 seconds. The world record is now even 12.74 seconds, set by Shijir-Erdene Bat-Enkh (Mongolia) in 2018.
Another discipline is memorizing playing cards in a given time. The point is to memorize as many mixed packs of playing cards (52 cards , rummy ) as possible. The reproduction at the championships is made in writing in this discipline. In an empty table with 52 rows you have to enter which card was at this point. The card games are not mixed with each other, but only individually, so that when playing a card game forms a scoring block and contains every possible playing card exactly once. The world record for memorizing as many stacks of cards as possible in one hour is 37 stacks, i.e. 1924 cards. It is currently held by Munkhshur Narmandakh.
Abstract images
In 2006 the discipline of Abstract Images was newly introduced. Five small, black and white graphics are shown in a row. The athletes are presented with a large number of series, of which they have to memorize as many as possible in 15 minutes. After the memorization time, the memory athletes get the same graphics, just in a different order per line. The original order must be indicated by specifying digits. Zhang Xingrong holds the world record with 756 points (roughly the number of correct graphics).
Language-related disciplines
The following disciplines are more or less dependent on the language of the athlete, but they are part of the discipline canon at all major tournaments.
Names and faces
A fixed number of photos with fictitious first and last names are given. The participants should memorize as many names as possible . Afterwards, the participants receive the photos in a different order and have to write down their names. The world record was 201 points in 15 minutes, set by Boris Konrad (rules from 2010). Each correct first or last name counts one point. If a person's first and last name are correct, the person scores two points. If a correct name is noted in the wrong spelling (e.g. Schmitt instead of Schmidt), half a point is awarded.
In order to guarantee a fair competition on an international level, the rules were changed in 2011 so that photos of people of all ethnicities, ages and genders are given equally. Names in different languages are also used, which can be mixed up at will. For example, a person of African origin can be assigned a Chinese first name and a European surname. The world record is 224 points in 15 minutes, set by Katie Kermode .
Words
A list of random words has to be learned by heart and reproduced in the correct order. The world record is currently 318 words memorized in 15 minutes by Katie Kermode . This discipline is usually held in the national language . At the world championships, all participants are given the same words. The words are translated into the language of your choice.
text
A given text must be completely correctly embossed with punctuation marks , line breaks , special spellings, etc. It is important that the associative memory is also very good. The world record is 345 points in 15 minutes , set by Astrid Plessl . One point is awarded for each word and punctuation mark. Since texts can vary in weight, the results fluctuate relatively strongly. In addition, there were always inconsistencies regarding the exact scoring and the translation of texts. That is why this discipline has since been abolished and replaced by abstract images .
Historical data
Here, fictitious dates are given for years between 1000 and 2099 (e.g. "Coronation of Emperor Constantine", "Sinking of Queen Margot off Greenland " etc.). Then the dates are presented in a new order and the years are to be added. The current world record is 139 dates in five minutes, set by Prateek Yadav. Due to the language dependency of this discipline, translations are used at international championships .
Scoring system
In order to be able to compete in memory championships, a rating system is required. The results in the individual disciplines are calculated according to a certain key and added together.
In order to be able to determine how much a memory athlete has memorized, the contents to be memorized are presented in groups in all disciplines. With the decimal digits there are always 40 digits in a row or with the words 20 in a block.
An error in a block results in the score being reduced by half, a second error to zero points. So if a memory athlete wants to remember 120 digits in five minutes, it would be three rows of 40s. If, for example, he has now correctly reproduced the first and third rows and exactly one of the 40 digits in the second block is incorrect, this would be evaluated as a total of 100 correctly memorized numbers. If he has exactly two digits wrong in each block, this no longer gives a point, even though he got 114 digits right.
The only exceptions are spoken numbers and the Speed Cards discipline , where the first mistake is scored. If a memory athlete memorized 100 digits and got the first digit wrong, but otherwise all correct, he gets zero points.
A fair and accurate raw score is guaranteed by the two conditions above. This is then converted into championship points using the Millennium Standard. At the end of a memory championship, the championship points from the individual disciplines are added up and give the final result.
The Millennium Standard is the key by which memory performance is scored at memory championships. It is slightly above the world record in every discipline. It is raised in a discipline if it has been outbid by three people or more. This always happens until the next World Memory Championship . This long period of time ensures a certain degree of security in terms of scoring in a discipline.
Memory championships
The various championships in memory sports differ in terms of the disciplines and the memorization times.
The National Standard is a decathlon that is one day long. The memorization time in the individual disciplines varies from five to 15 minutes. Overall, the memorization time of a championship in National Standard is 75 minutes. The International Standard is very similar to the National Standard. However, there are two 30-minute marathons here. The championship lasts two days. The memory world championship has the so-called World Standard. This means that the championship lasts three days and there are two marathons of 60 minutes each. Reigning memory sports world champion 2010 is Wang Feng from China.
In 2006 a Speed Cards Challenge took place for the first time. This was just a fun tournament. It was also agreed before the championship that a possible outbid of the world record would not count as a new world record, as the participants in this championship had twelve rounds, while there are only two in regular championships. The only discipline on the championship was speed cards . Two memory athletes competed against each other. The goal was to memorize a well-shuffled deck of cards as quickly as possible. The tournament was played according to the Swiss system . A total of three competitions took place between two athletes. The winner of these three rounds won and competed against another winner from the round. The winners of this next round again had three stacks in front of them. There were four such rounds in total. The winner of the tournament was Ben Pridmore with a best time of 31.03 seconds.
The Word Memory Cup should not be confused with the World Memory Championship. Because of the naming, it was also boycotted by numerous memory athletes. The initiator of the championship was the then world champion Andi Bell . The competition consisted only of language-free disciplines. This should serve to compare the pure memory performance. Strangely enough, however, the requirement to participate in the tournament was to memorize 50 digits read out in English every second. The point allocation also differed from the normal championships. The best result in a discipline was rated with 1000 points. A half as good result got 500 points.
Title in memory sport
To honor and motivate, there are also various titles in memory sport that are awarded to successful athletes. Most memory championships have three classes: adults, adolescents, children. In addition to the champion in the respective category, there is always a runner-up.
There are also separate titles for women. This is because the female memory athletes usually perform worse than their male competitors.
The grandmaster title will continue to be awarded to outstanding memory athletes. Over the years, the standard for the term "memory grandmaster" continued to rise. Currently, the following three conditions must be met for the title:
- Memorize more than 1000 digits in one hour
- Memorize more than ten decks of cards in an hour
- Memorize a deck of cards in under two minutes
The other way to get the title is to get more than 6000 points in a tournament. At the moment, however, everyone who achieved such a number of points has by far passed the hurdle from the three disciplines.
Memory Sports Potential
The standard in memory sport has increased steadily over the years since the introduction of the 1991 World Cup . The performance in all disciplines has more than tripled.
Many athletes draw a comparison with chess , which has seen an enormous increase in playing strength since the championship-oriented activity. On the one hand, this was due to the further development of strategies and the fact that with the wider spread, more talented people began to play chess.
Memorization systems
Memory athletes use various memory systems to accomplish memory skills, such as memorizing a 1000-digit number in less than 30 minutes. The respective systems are tailored to their special talents and abilities.
Loci method
The most important memory technique, which is also used by all memory athletes, is the loci method (from the Latin locus for place / place). When trying to memorize a sequence of things in the conventional way, a lot of things in the brain often get mixed up. With the help of Loci technology, the learning content is “encoded” in an orderly manner.
With the Loci technique, a separate place is reserved for each term, so to speak, variables are created that can be assigned different content. These variables are in a superordinate, fixed structure, so that it is possible to keep the exact sequence during playback. The fixed structure mentioned earlier can be a well-known path or just a space. With both variants it is necessary to select very clear places where the things to be remembered can be stored later. Then you can put what you want to remember on the mentally prepared places. This is done through visualization. A pictorial word such as “table” can simply be imagined on the respective route point. In the case of abstract terms, on the other hand, you have to use an image that stands for the respective word, or an image that is associated with the word. For example, for the word "freedom", the Statue of Liberty would be an excellent visualization.
Speakers in ancient times also used this technique to memorize their speeches. Cicero mentally walked around the area around the forum in Rome . He describes the method in his work “De oratore”.
Probable inventor is Simonides von Keos with his memorial palace , which was built around 500 BC. Lived and was a famous poet and orator. In ancient times this method was so widespread that people simply spoke of "the method". According to legend, Simonides came up with the idea for the Loci method when he briefly left the house at a party and during his absence the house collapsed and all occupants were buried under himself. Then, as the only survivor, he had to identify those who had been made illegible by the calamity. He visualized the scene before the collapse in order to see who was standing where, and recognized how perfect the spatial perception of humans is.
The images that have been stored on routes by linking become blurred over time; the associations become weaker until they are completely forgotten at some point. Then the route is free again. The time to forget depends on various factors. Personal disposition, for example, plays a role. Some people are more likely to hold on for short periods of time, others for a long time. Another point that can be controlled is the degree of linkage. The more intensely the loci point and the image are linked, the longer the information remains in the memory. Some memory athletes report that alcohol makes them forget all connections.
Most mnemonic technicians have many different routes so they can switch to another route if they have one. Many only use routes for specific purposes; for example only for words, numbers, cards; or have separated routes that they use for purely sporting purposes from those that they use in everyday life or for the permanent retention of knowledge.
Transformation systems
In order to be able to save abstract data, you first have to assign images to them, which can then be linked. One possible procedure for this assignment is purely arbitrary. In doing so, one thinks up images for the respective abstract information without any system. This has the advantage that the images are then better. The downside is that they are harder to learn. The 2006 world memory champion Clemens Mayer , for example, constructed his system purely arbitrarily.
Most memory athletes, however, use an alphanumeric code with which they assign words to the numbers or cards and thus ultimately their pictures. These transformation systems are all essentially the same. The disadvantage of these systems is that by being bound to the code you also get a lot of less good words.
The most common one is the major system . It is already a few hundred years old and has not changed much since then. Each digit is assigned a sound, but no vowels are distributed so that the consonants can be arranged according to the sequence of numbers and a word can be formed by inserting vowels. For the number 20 (n + s) the possible words would be: Nase, nass, Nassau, nieß, drizzle etc.
Another way of coding is the Dominic system . It was developed by the eight-time world memory champion Dominic O'Brien . A simple letter code is used to create initials for the numbers from 0 to 99, which then result in a person who can be saved using the loci method . The conversion code is as follows: 0 = O; 1 = A; 2 = B; 3 = C; 4 = D; 5 = E; 6 = S; 7 = G; 8 = H; 9 = N
Probably the most complex and advanced memory system is the Ben system, which is named after Ben Pridmore . The decimal numbers have three digits (1000 pictures), the cards have pairs (2704 pictures), and the binary digits ten digits (1024 pictures).
At the moment there doesn't seem to be a memory athlete who constantly uses a four-digit system, i.e. 10,000 images, for his digit coding. The relatively high effort and the requirement to create such a number of distinguishable, unique images are probably the reasons for this.
Route point allocation
Many memory athletes place not just one picture, but several pictures on a route point. They first combine the individual images into a story, which they then visualize on the respective route point. This has the advantage of thrift. You need fewer route points. The most popular is an assignment with three images. With the 2006 world champion, Clemens Mayer , the number of pictures he places on a point varies. Depending on how the pictures fit together, he places 2 to 8 pictures on one point.
Neurological basics
Memory study
In 2002 there was a study at University College London , led by Eleanor Maguire, on the neurological basis of memory sports, which was also published in the journal Nature . In this, memory athletes and people without mnemonic knowledge were given the task of remembering certain shapes, numbers and faces within a short time.
The study showed that the same successes were achieved with some tasks (these were probably those that were not so easily mnemotechnically transformable.), But with others the memory athletes (also a former world champion, names were not mentioned) by up to Performed ten times better.
The tasks investigated what kind of brain activity is present in each case. It was proven that the memory athletes also consciously activated areas of the brain that are responsible for spatial perception. This results from the use of the loci method , which is heavily based on spatial imagination.
The study cites this as the reason for their superiority in some areas and also mentions, in order to determine whether memory athletes have a method-independent higher memory ability, a comparison would have to be carried out in a further study between lay people who were trained in mnemonics for the study and the memory sports group .
speed
The speed of mental linking depends heavily on the memory system. Athletes master the linking of smaller information clusters faster than larger ones. If an athlete wants to learn a system of 2 (0–99), he will have this in his head faster than if he wants to learn a system of 3 (0–999). He uses the individual images more often than with a 3-way system. The recognition time for a number structure is initially increased, but this naturally balances out over time, even with users of a 3-way system.
So there are two important factors:
- The smaller the cluster, the faster and more reliably one has the image in consciousness.
- The larger the cluster, the fewer route points are required and the less total time is consumed in associating images and route points.
The same applies to the routes as to the numerical images: the more often you go through them, the faster and safer you can retrieve them.
Many memory athletes often mentally move along a route in order to become completely familiar with it. This leads to an increased speed when mentally calling up the path and to better anchoring of the images because of a more precise idea of the location itself.
Associating is probably the most important point of remembering. The following factors can be listed here:
- creativity
- Processing channel (visual, auditory, kinesthetic)
- Trust in your own memory
- Repetition
Creativity can be trained relatively well. Everyone who engages in memory sports will have made the experience at the beginning that it is often not enough to place the picture on the route point. Afterwards you only know that there was something on it, but no longer what it was. That's why you quickly come to the conclusion to associate the lasso with the route point in a different, better way. For example, you can wrap it around the route point or let it dance on it.
The processing channel is more difficult to train. At the beginning of the training, the mental images are not real images, just ideas in a black room. Therefore they practice imagining their number pictures and route points in front of their inner eye so that they are even able to visualize the associations. Katharina Bunk once mentioned that she heard her card pictures (or the people she used for the individual pictures) rather than saw them. So she processes the whole thing aurally. However, you have to find this channel for yourself first, because the visual may not be so beneficial for some.
A sensitive point is trust in your own memory. In order to ultimately make the leap to become faster and faster, you have to dare. However, if you want to be faster, you have to force yourself to look at the fresh association a little more briefly at each route point. Many people find it difficult to simply trust that they are one second faster per picture.
Finally, the repetition should also be mentioned, which is very closely linked to the point of trust. Repetition solidifies a memory. However, repetition takes a lot of time.
inspiration
Most of the memory athletes got their hobby through various TV shows ( Wetten, dass ...? , Die Grips-Show , The Guinness-Show , Germany's super brain , etc.). Most of the rest started this sport through memory groups. Such courses are particularly widespread in the field of gifted education and are offered and carried out in many cities by organizations for gifted education. Many adolescent memory athletes offer memory groups in their schools that are supported by the school. Some schools have a wide range of courses in this area, such as the Schloss Torgelow boarding school in the Mecklenburg Lake District.
Pi sport
In order to show what kind of memory performance is possible, a couple of memory artists memorize the number pi to as many decimal places as possible. The Chinese Chao Lu is the official world record holder with a confirmed 67,890 decimal places, which he recited flawlessly on November 20, 2005 in a time of 24 hours and 4 minutes. He is listed as a record holder by both the Guinness Book of Records and the Pi World Ranking List. The unofficial world record for memorizing Pi is now (status: 10/06) at 100,000 digits, set by Akira Haraguchi.
See also
Film and literature
- Ulrich Voigt: Donkey's world. Mnemonics between Simonides and Harry Lorayne . Likanas Verlag, ISBN 3-935498-00-4
- Tony Buzan : Book of Mental World Records (English)., D & B Publishing 2005, ISBN 1-904468-17-9
- The Austrian feature film Unforgettable is about memory sport and recreates a memory world championship.
- Joshua Foer: Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything . Penguin Books, ISBN 978-0143120537
- Boris Nikolai Konrad: Super brain - memory training with a world champion: About the fascinating performance of the human brain . Goldegg Verlag, 978-3902903549
Web links
- MemoryXL e. V. - Association for the Promotion of Memory Sports
- Statistics page with records, world rankings and profiles
- Website of the German championship
- World Cup website (English)
