During the Mind Sport Olympiad 2019, the Twixt World Championship was played last Thursday. It must be underlined that this tournament was one of the few that was live on Facebook, and this could be a new attention for our game. The participants were two “veterans”, myself and Bharat Thakrar, because other players had switched to other games, or could not come to London. The newcomers were two young players from Estonia, at their first experience with Twixt, but formidable players in other disciplines (please, take in mind them for the next years); the Italian Chess Master Riccardo Gueci; the Othello Champion Marc Tastet, that returned to Twixt after almost two decades; Natasha Regan, an experienced player of Chess, Go and other games.

The main difficulty was that each of us had only 20 minutes thinking for the whole game, and only some minutes to recover between one game and the following one. In these conditions, it was impossible to see deep and strategic games, and the errors were common. Gradually, I got tired, and thus I made a small mistake with Marc, but I recovered; a big mistake with Bharat, but I recovered; a very big mistake with Natasha, but I recovered. 5/5 for me and consequently Gold Medal. 4/5 for Bharat and Silver medal for him; Marc and Natasha won the Bronze medals, since the tie break rule was not able to extricate the situation.

Compliments to my opponents and a particular praise for Natasha, because I believe that she is the first woman who won a medal in Twixt.

Thanks for sharing the news! Congrats to everyone, especially CosimoC who won all 5 games!

Congratulations CosimoC and good to see you there. I've never played the world championship as it tends to clash with other events (plus I'm pretty weak at it), but I hope to take you on at some point!

Congratulations CosimoC and well played throughout the tournament! I really enjoyed our game (I'm Natasha). The live stream for the event with commentary is here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P7oul4KhaG0