First of all, a very Happy New Year to all memory athletes, organisers, arbiters and friends of the sport of memory!

As of January 1, we have two changes to the standards (as announced previously, these are now updated monthly). The 30-minute Binary standard is now 6171 and the new Hour Cards standard is 1852 cards (35.6 decks), now that three athletes have passed the previous standards. Check out the statistics site to see how this has affected the rankings!

On that note, you will probably by now have seen the new Active World Ranking list at http://iam-stats.com/rankings.php – based on feedback from many people in the memory sports community. If you are still eager to view the “all-time best” rankings, this list is available from the Rankings page by clicking “Traditional Ranking” – or by going directly to http://iam-stats.com/rankings_old.php

Here’s a quick reminder of how the new active rankings work:

  • Your score is the average of your 3 best results in the last 3 rolling years. (If you have only 2 results, the average of those is taken, and if you have just one result, that will be your score.) Competitors without any results in the last 3 years will not appear in this ranking list, as they are no longer considered “active”. An incentive to come along and compete!
  • If a competitor is inactive for more than 2 rolling years, their score will be reduced by 10%.
  • Digital results are considered equal to paper results.

Many thanks to Andy Fong for creating the website functionality for this ranking list!

Finally, if you’d like to be part of the discussion group regarding the upcoming IAM Board elections, please let us know by the end of today!