UPDATE:Date has changed from 16th to 23rd!

Minesweeper World Championship 2012 - Announcement

"EWQMinesweeper", 2012-03-27

Hello my dear friends and fellow sweepers,

After a lot of organisation, discussions, chatting and messaging sweepers I am now ready to announce that the 2012 Minesweeper World Championship will take place in Munich, Germany on June 23. It will take place in a computer lab at my old high school, from which i graduated in 2010. The address is Sadelerstrasse 10 and is a 10 minute walk away from the next subway stations. The big advantage of us being able to use the computer lab is that we won't have to rush and can have the room for as long as we need. I'd like to sincerely invite all of you to come to Munich and take part. If you should happen to not be able to make it, there will also be a chance to take part online. However, online-only participants are only eligible for the title 'Online World Champion' and there will be an extra meatspace ranking for in-place participants.

If you want to come to Munich and participate, please let me know. Either by posting in this thread on the minesweeper forum, via IRC-chat, via the guestbook (frowned upon), via Youtube, via email (minesweepergroup [-AT_] gmail dot com), via pm in the minesweeper forum.

Happy sweeping,
"EWQMinesweeper"

OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

Date 23-06-2012 (dd-mm-yyyy)
Time 14:00 - 17:00 CEST (aka scoreganizer time)
Location Nymphenburger Schulen - Sadelerstrasse 10, Munich, Germany
Tournament Details

Participants

World Rank Name Country Highscores
1 Kamil Muranski Poland 1+8+32
3 "EWQMinesweeper" Germany 1+10+37
4 Manuel Heider Germany 1+10+37
6 Thomas Kolar Austria 1+10+38
8 Damien Moore Canada 1+11+39
10 Pavel Mishin Russia 1+10+41
16 Robert Royals England 1+9+43
27 Arsen Balishyan Russia 1+12+44
28 Aristeidis Kokkidis Greece 1+13+42
30 Konstantin Forofontov Russia 1+12+43
32 Michael Gottlieb USA 1+11+45
33 Bertie Seyffert South Africa 1+13+44
38 Lukasz Malinowski Poland 1+13+44
45 David Greer England 1+12+46
53 Yuuki Nakagiri Japan 1+13+46
104 Eduard Cros Spain 2+14+50
130 Roland Seibt Germany 1+13+54
143 Jonian Grazhdani Albania 2+13+55
340 Daniel Hagenmeier Germany 2+17+60
505 Steven Marlow England 2+15+68
655 Sebastian Schmitt Germany 2+19+69
unranked Moritz Karl Germany 2+19+84
Legend:
Players coming to Munich
Participation Unconfirmed/Online

Getting to Munich

By plane

A lot of airways cover Munich's airport. The earlier you book, the cheaper tickets will be. The airport is located >20km north of the city and the fastest way to get to the city centre is using one of the suburban trains. Both lines take about the same time. Make sure you buy a ticket for Munich's public transportation network, as the fine when getting caught without having a valid ticket is 40€. Money you probably can spend better.

By train

Central Station is pretty much central. From there you can easily reach any destination in the city area by using public transportation within 20 minutes. Make sure you have a valid ticket for that with you.

Getting to the venue

Take Underground line U1 to Westfriedhof, then either take bus lines 164, 165 or 151 to Sadelerstrasse (You could walk these 500m as well). Then turn left and walk down Sadelerstrasse. You should be able to see the building already from the bus stop.

Accomodation

Like in 2010 I recommend participants to stay at Meininger Youth Hostel. The hostel is 10min away from the city centre and 15min from the venue.

http://www.meininger-hotels.com

Rules

To ensure flawless organisation players are asked to be on-site at 13:00, players arriving after 13:30 have no guarantee to be able to participate.
Players will be ranked on the sum of their best 5 Intermediate and 5 Expert games. Each unfinished game will be given a penalty of 999 seconds.
The software used at the competition is Scoreganizer and Viennasweeper, which has already proven to work well at several events. It has also already been successfully tested at the venue. In order to be able to use Scoreganizer, participants will need to have an account for it. Sweepers who do not already have such an account and do not already have experience with Scoreganizer can find all needed information here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuvGuvMj4gI

It is also highly recommended to have taken part in at least 1 Scoreganizer tournament before the World Championship. Detailed infomation about Scoreganizer can be found here:

Installation Instructions

Apart from the tournament mode, the following rules apply:

  • Attempts to cheat will lead to disqualification. Cheating is defined as normally in the minesweeper community, with the following addition:
    It is considered cheating if a player tries to submit a game that was not played during the alotted time.
Additionally, the following applies for players participating on-site:
  • Players should not be disruptive. Announcing successful solves or lost games is allowed, celebrating records or very good games is very welcome. Participants may leave their seats to take a break as they wish at any point in time. Talking to other sweepers during the competition is no problem, as long as it is ensured that they aren't interrupted during a game.

The on-site participant that has the lowest score at the end of the world championship may claim the title "Minesweeper World Champion 2012". The participant (on-site or online) that has the lowest tournament score at the end of the world championship may claim the title "Online Minesweeper World Champion 2012". It is possible for one player to claim more than one title. The second participant of each of the respective rankings may claim the title "[Online] Minesweeper World Championship 2012 Runner-Up".

Tournament Mode

The tournament format will be the standard format used by most world championships until now, using realtime and thousandths.

That is, every player has three hours to complete intermediate and expert games. The sum of the realtime scores of the fastest (least time) five intermediate games and the realtime scores of the fastest (least time) five expert games of a given player is that player's tournament score. Game and tournament scores are measured in thousandths. Should a player not manage to complete a sufficient number of games for any level, a 999.999 second penalty will be added in place of the unfinished game.

Example

Tim the Enchanter takes part and completes the following games:

On Intermediate

  • 18.234
  • 19.123
  • 22.432
  • 21.543
  • 17.717
  • 20.404
  • 42.420

On Expert

  • 65.432
  • 54.321
  • 58.085

Only the best five intermediate games are taken into account

18.234
+19.123
+21.543
+17.717
+20.404
=97.021

As only three expert games were completed, two penalties of 999.999 seconds are given

65.432
+54.321
+58.085
+999.999
+999.999
=2177.836

The total tournament score of Tim the Enchanter is therefore

97.021
+2177.836
=2274.857

Note

The comparatively bad intermediate game doesn't affect the ranking at all, but had Tim had two games less, it would still have been much better than the 999.999 penalty.

Also note

The tournament takes three hours; this is a Long Time. A fairly consistent player capable of getting scores that are as good as Tim's would likely have no problems finishing many more expert games in that time, so the example is slightly contrived in that respect. Playing at least one three hour session in private to get a feel for one's consistency capabilities is considered a very good idea. As a rule of thumb, if you are a beginner or very inconsistent (as some non-flagging professional players are), it is advised to play for completion, otherwise, trading consistency for speed is probably a very good idea.