Germany hosts highest ever scoring Memory Championship with eight World Memory Records broken in 10th Anniversary competition.

In what is being seen as the warm up to the World Memory Championships in Bahrain, sixteen elite mental athletes competed in the prestigious Aesculap Memo Masters 2007, German Open Memory Championship, including two past World Champions from the UK. The event took place over two days, 27th and 28th July 2007 at the Aesculap Academy in Tuttlingen, Germany.

Competitors competed in ten different memory disciplines which test different aspects of memory. Points are earned from each discipline which accumulate during the event. The competitor with the largest number of points wins the championships.

Dr Karsten's performance, the best score achieved in any competition since the sport was founded in 1991 by Tony Buzan, broke Ben Pridmore's record by 250 points and took him to number one in the World Rankings. This means that the World Memory Championships in Bahrain, only weeks away, will see a real clash of the titans - Reigning World Champion Clemens Mayer versus UK Champion and Former World Champion Ben Pridmore versus New World Number One and German Champion Gunther Karsten. These scores will also put even greater pressure on the competitors from other countries, in particular from the Far East, who are currently in training for the event.

Whilst there is a common perception that memory deteriorates with age, the reverse has been proved to be the case. Dr Gunther Karsten, who first won the German Open Memory Competition in 1998, with a score of 929 points, has nearly a decade later increased his score to 7623 at age 46. This proves that memory can increase with age, if you are prepared to exercise it in the same way as a muscle.

New World records were achieved in the following disciplines;

30 Minute Number World record was 1040
New World Record by Dr Gunther Karsten of 1160

30 minute Cards - World Record was 11 decks, 574 cards
New World Record Ben Pridmore (UK) 16 decks

30 minute Binary Digits - World Record was 3710
New World Record - Ben Pridmore 3915

Abstract Images - World Record was 228
New World Record Dr Gunther Karsten 244

Speed Number - World Record was 333
New World Record - Andi Bell (UK) 396

Random Words - World Record was 214
New World Record - Boris Konrad 227

In addition to the competition records that were broken there was also an successful attempt by Jan Harris to break the Matrix Pi record, for recalling 10,000 decimal places of Pi. He beat the previous record of 39 minutes held by Grandmaster Kevin Horsley from South Africa and achieved a new record of 20 minutes 30 seconds.

The competition was very professionally organised by Klaus Kolb for the German Memory Sports Council and was sponsored by Aesculap.

Full scores can be found here