Check this out:
http://v.pptv.com/show/7ssnpQ1z4yGEAmo.html
There’s a related video following the first one.
(Edit: the videos may have been removed from the linked site.)
It is great to see Rüdiger Gamms performance.
Yes, I am completely amazed.
I think the event happened today. It looks like Wang Feng is making an appearance to compete with Boris Konrad.
There are some other clips of previous shows here with some other mnemonists:
http://zt.pptv.com/show/2014zt/zw/
(Google Translate works for the website.)
Great link, thanks! Anyone can give some informations about the young competitor against Rüdiger?
I don’t know, but I’ll try to find out.
I haven’t watched it yet, but here is the video:
http://youtu.be/U7ntE_I8hRg [Edit: the video was removed from YouTube]
Rudiger starts around the 35th minute. Until 1:10:00.
I don’t understand the rules, but they seem somewhat unfair.
At some point Rudiger needs to find the answer to 93^17 and his opponent 7^13.
The first is way more difficult compared to the second. Not just a little bit more difficult.
But then in the next round Zhou Wei gets a more difficult root, so I suppose they take into account the strengths of the players. Btw, Rudiger gets a 4th root and answers with 10 significant digits. This is also very impressive.
Later he does a sinus with 9 digits precision. Also very impressive.
I won’t tell you who won. You have to look yourself.
Impossible to believe the last competition.
Spoilers…
Well, I watched the show. It was fantastic but there are a few comments I will make for the benefit of those who watched it and did not understand fully. The Chinese team put in a fantastic showing but take note that the Chinese are especially nationalistic and the national mentality thrives on beating other nations in competitive events such as sports or memory competition etc. Still, I won’t take anything away from the Chinese team who did exceptionally well but I hope to provide some insight as an overseas Chinese.
The first one is straightforward. Wang Feng plays Boris Konrad. I’ve noticed how the Chinese have designed the games and set their players very strategically for their players to perform to their strengths. Memorising 100 combinations of 4 digits is no small feat but it plays to Wang Feng’s strength, whose primary system consists of having an image for anything from 1 - 99 and having a walkthrough location based mnemonic system that goes up to 100. So for any set, he would remember as seeing two images at one location. Boris put on a good fight, what with the away ground pressure and having to translate to English for the answers. The ‘juries’ commented on Wang Feng’s confidence and speed in the first round without realising that he was speaking in mandarin and had home ground advantage. During the second round, everyone expected Wang Feng to be faster but Boris turned out to be 5 sec faster and I think he was unlucky to have gotten one digit wrong. Still, I won’t take away anything from Wang Feng’s solid performance but I still think he was a bit lucky.
The second round pits two calculation masters together. The Chinese representative has a mental handicap and he has never been properly educated before but he could calculate astonishing large numbers. Based on my assessment, the chinese representative is obviously below the level of the German motormouth but to keep the competition balanced, they devised the rules such that each competitor would name the kind of challenge they wanted. However, this is a no contest and the German motormouth walks away as the rightful winner.
The third one is self-explanatory. Going by the rules of the game, the blind Chinese girl beats the blind German boy but if we think about it, we know that the German boy is more talented. I mean his clicks travel further than the girl’s breaths and in put in practical use, he can use his clicks to navigate himself as opposed to the girl who cannot really be blowing her way through life, pardon the pun.
The fourth round is unbelievable - both contestants took 2 hours to memorise a 3D rendition of a painting and they had to pinpoint the location of any detail they see on the screen. 1 point for getting it right, and -1 for getting it wrong.
The Chinese rep is amazing and I love that guy for his cool confidence but again it’s a case of China playing to its strength and having a slight advantage. Number 1 - the Chinese rep is the world champ at some stage for memorising faces and names or something like that but ranked over 100 for other categories. Ok, nothing wrong with playing to your strength, but the painting is a very famous Chinese painting, a painting that I’m sure the Chinese rep must have seen several times in his life. Also, it’s a matter of memorising Chinese faces and I think there is a little cultural specific advantage here.
Overall, I really applaud the german team, who displayed amazing sportsmanship despite everything. I’m Chinese, and of course I was rooting for the Chinese but the Germans came across as especially sporting competitors and they put in a very strong showing.
That’s all I have for now. I’ll answer any questions if you guys have any.
Hi,
it has been an amazing trip for me. It was not my first time on Chinese TV (have been there 2005,2006 and 2012) but this was by far the most well organized and well done program.
I think all of the tasks look amazing and I felt treated really well. It was fair also, since if I did not miss a single digit, I would have won. I was astonished by my own speed myself to be honest - I knew how fast Wang is and just went all in - risking a mistake and that then happened. But it look good anyhow, so no regret at all.
On German I had three dices under each column which fits my 3-digit Ben system a little better, but I could also use my 2-digit PO for that task. I am very satisfied I had nearly all of them correct since memorizing 400 digits at a speed of 4 digits / 5 seconds single sighting in my opinion is a really difficult task.
One word on the last program: I think that is the only one where the program was a little dishonest in claiming the participants had seen the image only for two hours. That is not correct. The contestants had the image and zoom-up images of a few hundred details/figures that could be asked a few days before the program.
Nevertheless it is still an impressive task and both of them did it really well!
All the best,
Boris
Hi Boris,
It’s so amazing to see you responding here.
Thank you and all your teammates for the wonderful show. I particularly like you and, I forgot his name, the bloke who memorised the 3D rendition of the famous Chinese painting. Both of you displayed astonishing ability and, most importantly, character and sportsmanship. I’ve never known any Germans personally but after the show, I do have a great perception of Germans.
You are right, memorising the numbers in that time was amazingly difficult and it was probably one of my favourite tasks, along with the rubrix’s cube one, the painting task, and the bar code one. How did they even memorise bar codes?
You did say the setup was pretty fair - I’m not sure if you watched the Spanish team’s performance. The first task was to memorise the clothes, shoes, accessories of twenty models. I thought the Spanish competitor’s forte was memorising numbers, like you, but why did he end up in that challenge? Also, I understand that he developed his ability to memorise numbers after he suffered an illness. Does that make him an acquired savant? Would love to hear your insight on this.
Finally, I think it is a bit disappointing to hear that the competitors memorised the painting for days rather than over two hours. It was a great performance but it really didn’t seem that ‘superhuman’ anymore and I think that still makes your task even more impressive.
Thanks for taking the time to write in the forum.