World Board Game Champion Crowned

Credit: Mind Sports Olympiad

A Polish man has dominated the competition to become the world’s greatest board game player. Maciej Brzeski prevailed in a multi-event contest covering both traditional and modern board games.

The Mind Sports Olympiad included contests with more than 80 different board games, from Go to Settlers of Catan. This year’s tournament was played online rather and featured a change of format. Normally the top prize in the in-person event is the Pentamind, which has a complex scoring formula that only lets players score in five different games and takes account of the luck involved in a game.

This year’s overall prize, the MSO Grand Prix, let players rack up points from as many different games as they liked, ranging from 40 points for first place to 2 points for finishing in the top half of the field. (Only their best performance in any particular game was counted.) The idea was to reward both a more diverse range of skills and the mental and physical stamina to play multiple events.

Brzeski wound up scoring in 32 different games (and failed to score in three more), with his best results coming in abstract game Tumbleweed, Chess, Azul and 7 Wonders. As well as his overall title, he also won the individual tournaments in eight different games.

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