WMC No. 3! I’m home after three long weeks—a Florida wedding followed by the 2017 IAM World Memory Championship in Jakarta, Indonesia. I can’t resist giving a shoutout to my friends Saumya and Khush for an awesome wedding week. Those guys know how to throw a party! After five days in Palm Beach, Cathy and I hopped back in a plane trying not to think about how we’d be spending the next 50+ hours traveling. Fort Lauderdale to Memphis, to our hometown of Oxford for a night, back to Memphis, to Atlanta, to Tokyo, to Jakarta. A slew of Silicon Valley, Modern Family, and Last Week Tonight episodes later, we were riding through the hot Indonesian night with fellow American competitor John Graham, Mongolian competitor Yanjaa Wintersoul, and WMC organizers Yudi and Bey. After two days of milling around the city—seeing the National Monument and an Indonesian puppet show, among other things—I found myself face-to-face with another WMC. Things were destined to be different...
Read moreFlash Profile with Chinese Memory Athlete Su Zehe
Chinese memory athlete Su Zehe just won the 2017 Philippine Open and broke the world record in the IAM's new 5 minute images event. I had the fortune of meeting him at the 2016 World Memory Championship in Singapore and again in Nanjing for the The Brain TV show. I had a chance to do a short interview (more of a flash profile) with him in Nanjing. Hope you enjoy!
At the 2016 World Memory Championship in Singapore. Left to right: me, Huang Shenghua, and Su Zehe.
Name: 苏泽河, Su Zehe (Su1 Ze2He2)
Recent competition results: 2017 Philippine Open – 1st place (full results here), 2016 World Memory Championship – 3rd place (full results here).
Rank: world #9, national (China) #1
You can read Su Zehe’s full IAM profile here.
From: a Southeast province of China, close to Taiwan
Intro to memory sports: came across a book about memory techniques in high school; interest was again piqued by watching memory athletes on the Chinese TV show 最强大脑 (“The Brain”).
Su Zehe was himself a contestant on the show this season. You can watch his challenge here. You can find his Weibo page here (although you will need a Weibo account to view).
Career interests/hobbies: interested in working for a memory company; likes practicing magic.
Training tools/history: practices mostly on paper; will occasionally use the Chinese Extreme Memory website (which had an online competition this past year), although not very often; trained alongside Zheng Aiqiang (world #17); will often communicate with other Chinese memory athletes via WeChat groups.
Systems: 2-digit/1-card, 2 images/locus, similar to the majority of Chinese competitors.
Hours Cards Timelapse: Training for the 2015 WMC
I stumbled across this old timelapse of hour cards practice I did leading up to the 2015 WMC. Thought some of you guys might get a kick out of it. Time really flies when you're hunched over your dinner table memorizing cards for an hour. Memorization + recall in under 30 seconds.
2016 World Memory Championship Recap
It’s that time of year again. Two weeks ago, Cathy and I stuffed our bags and hopped in an airplane for 25+ hours for the annual World Memory Championship. After last year’s event in Chengdu, China, the organizers bumped the venue to Singapore, which I found to be a truly awesome place. Buildings of all colors and architectural styles, greenery everywhere, clean streets, and crazy vistas around every corner. We had a blast just walking around. The one downside: the unrelenting 80o humidity. As usual, we arrived a few days early to acclimate...
Read more2016 European Open Recap
This past weekend I had the opportunity to go to London for the IAM’s first European Open Memory Championship. A lot of firsts for me on this trip: first time I’d been to England, first time I’d competed at a memory event not in the US or China. Originally I’d had a conflict, but things shifted at the last minute, so the preceding weekend Cathy and I found ourselves huddled around the kitchen table booking airline tickets. The event—like the recent UK Memory League Championship—was held at the London headquarters of Peak, a brain-training app which also sponsored the event...
Read more2016 Memoriad (World Mental Olympics) Recap
Two weeks ago, I was lucky enough to spend a week in Las Vegas for the 2016 Zappos Memoriad, billed as a “World Mental Olympics” that happens every four years. Knowing the Memoriad was this year was one of the things that convinced me to take a gap year from medical school. And since my wife and I are spending a few months with my parents-in-law in California, it was only a 5-hour drive away! My parents and brother even uprooted from New York to be with us the following weekend. It all added up to a bunch of fun, although after a vacation in Norway and now this, I must admit I’m getting a bit travel-weary. I’m hopeless at maintaining my usual working routine while traveling...
Read more2016 Extreme Memory Tournament & US Open Recap
Another great XMT-US Open trip in the books. All in all, I spent a week and a half in California, taking in the sun, hanging out with my mother- and father-in-law in between events, and enjoying some friendly competition.
Like last year, I flew in the morning before the first day, just in time for orientation. Everything about this year’s Extreme Memory Tournament mimicked last year’s, with one notable exception. Nelson and the organizers stretched the event to 3 days instead of 2. A big improvement, in my opinion. Last year, as thrilled as I was to make it to the semis, I was mentally and physically exhausted by the time I got there. It really does take a toll on you. You boot up another 50 words for the umpteenth time that day and things mush together...
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