Season 1 of the GMCA’s Mental Calculation League (official website) has concluded, after 25 qualification sessions involving 60 candidates, and 98 total matches held over several months. This was an online event open to all ages, allowing participation worldwide.
Qualified contestants competed against each other in head-to-head matches. The top 10 competed in a double-elimination bracket to determine the winner. The competition used a wide variety of calculation formats of varying complexity—mostly based on formats in existing international competitions. These were selected randomly by GMCA’s two-player competition app and single-player league simulator. All matches and sessions were supervised by Samuel Engel, who also developed the competition alongside Wenzel Grüß and other contributors.
[Note: this competition concluded on June 22 while I was busy over the Summer—apologies for the delay in sharing these results with you!]
Results
🥇 Wenzel Grüß 🇩🇪 is the overall winner with the fastest calculation speed on this variety of tasks—congratulations! His final match to confirm his position was a victory 108–78 against Aaryan Shukla in the final match. He scored an impressive 480 points overall. He adds to his medals won over the last decade at the JMCWC and MSO (London).
🥈 Aaryan Shukla 🇮🇳 came 2nd, after some comprehensive victories against other top competitors, and also scoring 480 points. This comes after winning the MCWC in 2022 at age 12, and winning one gold and two silver medals at the MSO (online) since 2021.
🥉 Kaloyan Geshev 🇧🇬 takes 3rd place with 407 overall points, and adds to his recent gold medals at the JMCWC and the MSO (online).
Rahul Robin 🇮🇳 had his first international competition experience in this league, progressing rapidly to finish in a high position! This included a marathon 162–156 victory against Abhilakshya—the defending champion at the JMCWC.
Abhilakshya Arora 🇮🇳 had the third-highest overall score (451 points) and comes 5th after the playoffs. He is another regular medal-winner at the JMCWC and the MSO (online).
Swanand Bhore 🇮🇳 wins a well-fought 6th place.
Samuel Engel 🇺🇸 achieved the 5th-highest overall score (345 points) and 7th place after the playoffs.
Domenico Mancuso 🇮🇹 takes 8th place
Jure Colak 🇧🇦 takes 9th place
Mishti Shah 🇮🇳 came 10th
These 10 contestants reached the final. Another 50 other mental calculators entered the competition. You can also view the double-elimination bracket for the competition as well as the league standings for the top 20 contestants (both on the official GMCA website).
Several of the matches also have videos (with commentary!) so you can follow the matches in real-time. These are on the GMCA YouTube channel.
Registration for Season 2
Interested in taking part? The second season is planned to start in October, and you can already sign up here. The format will be similar to Season 1, with similar categories of calculation task.
[Note: any questions about the competition and registration should be directed to Samuel Engel—the organizer]
Updated Competition Simulator
There is now an updated simulator for it, allowing more customization than the previous one. This can be useful to get a better idea of what calculation types to expect in the GMCA, and to help practise them. This now includes allows you to practise other types of calculation such as exponents and even solving systems of equations!