Later next week, the Go (Weiqi) part of the Asian Games will start. You can follow the progress and results at:
http://www.gz2010.cn/en/

Also, it was announced three days ago that an agreement has been signed to hold a new world-wide mind sport event in Beijing, September 2011. Duplicate Poker will be a new entry. See:
http://www.sportaccord.com/en/

They should introduce a triathlon: Bridge, Go & Duplicate Poker. I'd be interested in participating

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The sportaccord webpage writes: "The first SportAccord World Mind Games will be hosted in Beijing, China, in September 2011. [...] The event will be composed of the six mind sports Bridge, Chess, Go, Draughts, Xiang Qi and Duplicate Poker [...]".

It is certainly great to see more big international mind sports events!

Some questions arise though:

1) How do the new (?) SportAccord World Mind Games relate to the World Mind Sports Games of 2008 in Beijing and 2012 in Manchester? Are these different or the same series of events? The citation "The first" suggests it will be something different while the event title is so similar to the previously known event title that it might be the same. Is one event held by IMSA while the other event is held by Sportaccord?

2) Is there any effect on Manchester 2012 being held?

3) Previously IMSA defined valid games to be something like mental games, world-wide games, GAISF member. I do not know Duplicate Poker. Is this a purely mental game or does it contain elements of luck (of drawing better cards)?

4) Meanwhile IMSA has recognized Poker as mind sport. Or only the special poker form Duplicate Poker?
http://www.pokerfirma.de/news/imsa-aner ... port/48228

5) Is Poker Sportaccord member? Is Xianqi IMSA member now?

6) Will Poker be played in Manchester, too?

7) Do other mind sports like Shogi or Awale have realistic chances to join such events in the near future or do they lack well established world-wide organization?

Poker obviously involves elements of luck, but that doesn't stop it being a game of skill. The same as in bridge, really. (Even duplicate bridge contains quite a fair amount of luck, in that the theoretically better of two actions can work out worse if the cards lie a certain way.)

I'd never heard of duplicate poker, but having looked it up on wikipedia, it sounds interesting - although I'm not sure what's wrong with the usual poker tournament format. (By the way, I don't really play poker myself except socially every so often, and I'm certainly a very poor poker player, but I know a fair number of at least semi-serious poker players and I feel I know a fair amount about how it works.)

Certainly, I'd want to see such events including as many "mind sports" as possible - certainly shogi should be there, and draughts, probably backgammon (again, a game of skill despite it containing elements of luck) and some other card games (skat, canasta, cribbage - probably lots of others too, but these are a start).

I hope that sponsorship does not buy definitions, but that is another topic.

Games can be classified in various ways and, depending on the kind of classification and definition, a game might or might not be in a certain class. In a simple classification, we would wish to exist a clear separation between games of physical effort, games of luck and games of mental thinking skill. In reality, there is no hard separation between such classes: Some games of luck like texas holdem poker or like backgammon are also games of skill, at least on average over many games. I hope that Duplicate Poker emphases the mental part. Otherwise, if more and more hybrid games might be included by IMSA, we might suddenly find ourselves seen amidst games of luck.

For pretty much the same reason, it is an advantage for both sides if the IOC winter and summer olympics remain events of physical sports while the mind sports events remain (basically) events of mind sports. (As we could see for doping, IOC norms do not make sense if copied 1:1 to mind sports.) Of course, the mind sports don't get the same immediate public broadcasting attention as IOC olympics but the world of mind sports should establish greater presence in public awareness by its own effort. Thereby such an awareness can be more profound and long-lasting.

So, IMO, not just quantity of more and more events counts but also quality. This includes organization quality as much as quality of identity: mind sports is first of all mind sports and not some exotic thing possibly buried amidst other things like a predomination of games of (pure) luck.

OAT, game families like mancala have their good, old tradition as mental exercise games themselves. They have a more complicated situation than the chess games family, it seems: many different games in the family. As much as I would love to see such African- (maybe also Indian-) rooted games in mind sports events, it is not obvious which of them should qualify, given some international organization for each such game.

Duplicate poker is designed to reduce the elements of luck in much the same way that duplicate bridge does. Because of the rules of poker, and the strategy, it seems awkward, but I have never played it, so I cant say for sure.

It does seem that it's as much a mind game as regular poker, with a bit less luck.

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