Visiting World Memory Championship and World Memory Sports Council officials are finalising arrangements for a global contest to be in Bahrain later this year for the second consecutive year.

The World Memory Championship will be held at the Gulf International Convention Centre, Gulf Hotel, from October 23-26.

General secretary Chris Day and chief arbiter Phil Chambers met officials from INTELNACOM, the event’s host, and Bahrain’s event management company MICE Management, who have been appointed to organise the event.

“Competitors are coming from all over the world to take part in this amazing contest and Bahrain offers fantastic facilities and what’s more is centrally positioned to accommodate an expected 100 competitors flying here from different continents,” Day said.

The very first winner was an Englishman, Dominic O’Brien, who went on to become eight-time world champion. In recent years, as the Mind Sport of Memory is being adopted by more and more countries, the competition is intensifying and it is expected that representatives from more than 16 countries will be represented in Bahrain this year.

The disciplines undertaken during the World Memory Championships are not culturally or language specific to ensure a level playing field for international competition.  Subjects include spoken numbers, playing cards, dates, abstract images, binary digits, random words and names and faces.

Overall, the annual championship represents one of the toughest mental tests of all time with competitors being asked to memorise 4,000 digit numbers and recall with accuracy at least 10 packs of cards in one hour.

The ‘Festival of the Mind’ is an interesting concept we are developing to bring to Bahrain a set of edu-entertaining activities and this year will see some new ideas being introduced, INTELNACOM’s deputy chief executive officer and head of the organising committee, Fuad Mubarak pointed out.

“Local participants are welcome to the festival and we are also introducing an inter-schools challenge in a number of mind games such as Sudoku, Dama, chess, Scrabble and IQ-testing,” he added. – Trade Arabia News Service