Day 1 of the UK Memory Championships. How did I do? Eh....not so great, but I guess not that bad either. I know I can do a lot better, that's for sure. But that's why I'm in these competitions I guess, to figure out what needs the most work.
Names & Faces - 15 min.. This was the first time anyone had tried the "new" international Names & Faces (basically a harder version of what it used to be), so whoever scored the highest was owner of an instant world record. Schwing! I came in second with 113 correct names. Not bad for a first go at these incredibly fictional names (Princess Aliyev, Goda Dubois, Amirmohammed Shah, Zsofia Zuh....seriously?).
Binary Digits - 30 min.. So I had never tried this event in practice. I had only tried 5 minute and 1 minute sessions. I had a strategy but I tried using my 3 digit system which I think ended up slowing me down in the end. Also on paper it's easy to lose your place in the sea of 1s and 0s, which is what happened to me numerous times. I'm used to doing it on computer where the digits you are currently on stay highlighted. Needless to say, I sucked. I was envisioning in my head, getting over 3000 digits (which I'm capable of, I just need to train), but ended up only getting to about 1200 digits, and got a fuck load wrong and scored only 700. Bah. More work to be done here...
Abstract Images - 15 min. I had practiced this one quite a bit. Not really great at it yet though. Another area to work on... I know there is a clever system for it out there, I just have to figure it out. I have a couple of interesting ideas so we'll see. Anyways, I went for 200 images....made a bundle of errors and ended up with 158, I believe. Not bad....Better than my last score of 105. Gotta get it near or over 300 for the competition in Dec.
Speed Numbers - 5 min. This is arguably my best discipline, but for some reason I always eff it up in international competitions. I tried for 280 digits but was weirdly slow and only got to 250 with a few mistakes to give me a score of 171. I felt better the second time around and thought for sure I had it (at least over 200) but spent the majority of recall shifting digits over...it messed me up and I ended up with 71, whaaaaa?
Marathon Numbers - 30 min. So I practiced this the other day and did really well, scoring 800 or so digits. So my goal was to hit 800 on the nose. I did it pretty comfortably (although I was actually a tad slow...probably because I had already memorized thousands of digits already and my mind had turned to mushy peas) and recall felt great. I actually went for 870....a few rows had me troubled here and there but I made guesses that felt good. I'm pretty sure I AT LEAST got 600 digits. But let's be optimistic and say I got between 750-870. We'll find out the results tomorrow.
So tomorrow are all my favorite events: words (love it), historic dates (love it), spoken numbers (love it because I get to travel back to Mt. Everest for that one :) ), and carddddds (freaking love it). Can't imagine me failing at any of those. Anyways....hopefully I can break into the 4000s for a score that might put me in the top 30ish. SWEET.