7 living proofs that Intelligence will save the world

What does an ordinary person imagine with the word "athlete"? A mountain of muscles with extremely mediocre intelligence. Not everyone understands yet that the phrase "Smart is the new sexy" is becoming more and more relevant and the presence of intellectual abilities turns girls' heads more than a pumped-up torso.

Let's talk about intellectual sports (including Olympic sports), where people compete in the speed of counting, the skill of solving puzzles, mathematical and logical problems. Today we will tell you about some atypical athletes who have pumped up the most important muscle for a person — their own brain.

(20 photos in total)

Chess Champion

Chess is a board logic game with special pieces on a 64—cell board for two opponents, combining elements of art (in terms of chess composition), science and sports. The name originates from the Persian language: "Shah mat" literally means "the Shah is dead".

Sven Magnus Een Carlsen is the youngest chess player who has overcome the bar of 2700 and 2800 points of the Elo rating, the youngest chess player who has topped the official FIDE rating at the age of 19 years and 1 month. Since February 2013 — the holder of the highest Elo rating in the history of its existence — 2872 points; Magnus broke the record held by Garry Kasparov for 13 years (2851 points).

In May 2014, he reached the absolute peak of the rating — 2882 points. In 2013, Time magazine included Magnus in the list of the "100 most influential people in the world" in the Titans category.

Draughts Champion

During the game, each player owns checkers of the same color: black or white. The goal of the game is to deprive the opponent of the opportunity to move by taking or locking all his checkers.

Alexander Georgiev is a Soviet and Russian draughts player, nine—time world champion (not including victories in the Russian national team), three-time European champion. International grandmaster. The world record holder for the number of boards with a clock in a simultaneous game session.

He has won the title of champion of Russia in international draughts in all programs over 20 times.

Alexander Georgiev developed together with Alexander Lehman the system of holding Leman —Georgiev tournaments.

Go Champion

Go is an ancient East Asian logic game. Each of the two players needs to fence off the territory as large as possible with stones of their own color.

Lee Sedol is a 9th dan Korean go professional, winner in the go team discipline at the 2010 Asian Summer Games. Lee Sedol received the rank of the first professional dan in 1996 at the age of 13. In 2002, he won his first international title. On June 4, 2010, he won his 800th tournament victory.

In March 2016, Lee Sedol played against the AlphaGo computer program developed by Google DeepMind, and managed to win one of five games.

Bridge Champion

Bridge is an intellectual team or pair card game. Sports bridge is the only card game recognized by the International Olympic Committee as an official sport. By its complexity, fascination and popularity, bridge is on a par with such intellectual games as chess, go, etc.

Eli Culbertson is an unsurpassed American master of the bridge card game. My father was an oil prospector and spent most of his life searching for oil in Europe. Eli's childhood and youth years were spent in Russia. He studied in Geneva and Paris, took an active part in the revolutionary events in the Caucasus, Mexico and Spain. When his father lost all his fortune during the Russian Revolution, he moved to America, where he had previously studied at Yale University. After going through a number of professions, Eli became a professional bridge player, founded the Bridge World magazine, successfully competed in tournaments with his wife, lectured and published books on bridge.

When the threat of a new war became apparent in the late 30s, he threw down his cards and returned to political activity. He became the founder of the World Federation, and in 1946 — the Citizens' Committee for Reforms in the UN, in which he advocated maintaining peace on the planet with the help of international peacekeeping forces.

Champion of collecting Rubik's cube and solving puzzles

The Rubik's Cube is a mechanical puzzle invented in 1974 (and patented in 1975) by Hungarian sculptor and architecture teacher Erne Rubik.

Felix Zemdegs is the current record holder for the average time in the assembly of Rubik's cubes (3×3×3, 4×4×4 and others) and an outstanding collector of many other puzzles. He has 44 world records on his account (as of 03/29/2012). He started solving puzzles at the age of 12, in 2008, and after just 71 days, his average time dropped below 20 seconds in 12 attempts. On January 30, 2010, he was the first person to officially become a sub-10 (less than 10 seconds) in average time with a score of 9.21.

With his appearance, he made a real revolution in collecting the Rubik's cube for speed. After Felix's next record, the previous champion Eric Akkersdijk wrote about him: "I propose to create new categories of world records, one for Felix with his unreal things and one for normal people. If it doesn't happen… I'll leave."

Counter-Strike Champion

Counter-Strike is a series of computer games in the genre of a first—person team shooter based on the GoldSrc engine, which originally appeared as a modification of the Half-Life game. The main idea of the game is the confrontation of two teams — terrorists and counter—terrorists. The goal is to complete the map task or destroy opponents.

Daniil Teslenko is a Ukrainian esports player, also known under the pseudonym Zeus. A professional Counter-Strike player. A player of the Natus Vincere team. He is one of the best captains of the world in the history of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. In addition to his team's 7 trophies, he also won one individual award (Best Player of Arbalet Cup Asia) and was the best frager in the Arbalet Cup Best of Four. In the game, Daniel uses strategic thinking, predicts the development of situations and coordinates the actions of his team.

By the way, the Korean Association of Electronic Sports (KeSPA) was able to successfully promote esports to the ranks of Olympic sports disciplines of the second level. A significant event for the entire electronic sports industry took place on January 27 at a special conference in Seoul.

Sports Poker Champion

Poker is a sports card game, the goal of which is to win bets by collecting the highest possible poker combination, using four (the old classic version) or five cards, or forcing all rivals to stop participating in the game. The game is played with fully or partially closed cards. The specific rules may vary depending on the type of poker.

Dominic Nietzsche is one of the brightest and most talented representatives of the younger generation of professional poker players: Dominic won his first tournament victories while still in high school. Nietzsche earned about $ 3 million on online poker alone, and most of this amount came during the period when the young German was just a student. At the moment, the amount of Dominic's prize money in live tournaments is more than $ 3 million.

Dominic Nietzsche was born in 1991 in Germany and from childhood learned the basics of card games thanks to his parents, with whom he played cards constantly. Then, as a teenager, Nietzsche switched to video games — because, by his own admission, he had always hated sports — and finally started playing poker online. At that time, for an ordinary German teenager, online poker was just one of the varieties of video games - but after only a few years, the whole world was talking about the young player. There are more victories than defeats in the history of Dominic, despite the fact that at first the player preferred only online platforms. And although for many online poker is clearly associated with the phrase "problems-with-access-to-joy-casino", there are still decent platforms that will suit both beginners and professionals. Who cares, the poker room "888 Poker" meets such requirements.

Due to the fact that the player does not know the cards of his opponents, poker is a game with incomplete information, like many other card games, unlike, for example, chess, in which both players see the position of all the pieces on the board. This is what makes the game as close as possible to the life situations of people competing, for example, in politics or business. Therefore, many poker rooms, including the large-scale project "888 Poker", are actively working to ensure that this historic card game is recognized as an Olympic sport.