Post: #1

This is actually one I will never forget for quite a number of reasons.

1 The participants

Some of the worlds best chess, draughts/checkers, bridge and other mind sports players were there. Six times world champion in draughts Harm Wiersma was there as a reporter for a Dutch newspaper.


2 The sponsorship
It was the first Mind Sports Olympiad. The prize pool for the whole event was 100,000 GBP, an huge amount of money at that time. Part of this went to the various Stratego tournaments.

3 The location

"The first Mind Sports Olympiad was held in London's Royal Festival Hall in 1997. It brought together an unprecedented number of strategy games and events. William Hartston in The Independent said, "The biggest gamesfest ever to hit these (or perhaps any other) shores.

Stratego is not like other mind sports in some ways. Talking to the opponent is allowed and is part of the live game. Because Stratego had a very large group of junior players attending they put the Stratego event on the balcony. You could see the Houses of Parliament (Big Ben) from the the balcony which made it a fantastic land mark location.

I have a picture somewhere of a game being played on this balcony, if I can find it I will post it.

4 The bus trip
The Dutch players were all going with 1 group trip in the Eurolines bus to London. The Dutch Jeugdjournaal (youth news) did a report on the players preparing for the tournament and was filming the bus when we went onto our way to London.

Post: #2

That sure sounds like a big money event. Was it ever repeated?

Post: #3

(02-14-2021 11:32 AM)GaryLShelton Wrote:  That sure sounds like a big money event. Was it ever repeated?

They tried again the next year, but they did not have the massive sponsor then, so it was a lot less. However MSO as an event still exists today.


There were some world championships with big prizes though:

WC1: 1000 GBP cash for the winner
WC2: A ticket around the world by airplane (sponsored by British Airways I think). The world champion used this to go from The Netherlands to the Caribbean.