Promoting Go in the UK and beyond
1st World Mind Sports Games
WMSG News Page WMSG Gallery
Visit our WMSG News Page for links to results pages and the IGF’s WMSG blog, and our WMSG Gallery for pictures of the BGA team.
About the WMSG
The 1st World Mind Sports Games was held in Beijing, China from 3rd to 18th October 2008. The event was instigated by the International Mind Sports Association (IMSA) and was organised by the Board and Card Games Administrative Center of the General Administration of Sport of China and the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Sport.
It was expected that more than 2500 players from 150 countries and regions would participate in the games as well as more than 600 staff members (officials, coaches and referees). Five sports were involved - Go, Bridge, Chess, Chinese Chess and Draughts. There were 6 gold medals for Go: Mens and Womens Individual, Open Individual (no professionals allowed), Mens and Womens Teams and Pair Go.
The British Go Association sent as strong a team as possible to the event with 11 men and 7 women taking part, in addition to 3 team officials. The BGA Council appointed a Committee of Toby Manning (chair) and Jon Diamond to be responsible for the organisation of the BGA’s participation in this important event. Toby was also the Team Captain.
The Chinese hosts provided accommodation and food in China free of charge to all participants. They, thanks to Air China, also supplyed a small number of airline tickets free of charge. Thus there was significant travel, uniform and other costs which the BGA could not fund and would therefore fall on the players. However, in order to ensure the best players are available and cover a lot of these costs, we are pleased that Winton Capital Management supported the team.
The Official Logo and Slogan of the 1st Mind Sports Games was released in April.
More detail on the background to this event is available in the list of documents below.
WMSG news BGA WMSG team BGA WMSG team photos BGA WMSG team biogs