The MSO's Roving reporter
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Paul Smith is 37 years old and lives in Milton, near Cambridge. He works
as a civil servant in the NHS Executive.
Paul first became interested in board games when he was 9 years old and
found a copy of a book called "Discovering Old Board Games" in a bookshop
in Tynemouth. He tried out playing most of the games with a friend, and
has been looking for more traditional board games to try ever since.
Paul claims to have played at least once all the games featured in the
first three MSOs, but he says "don't test me on the rules of Skat!". He is
2-dan at Go and played in the UK Go Team at the European championships in
Slovakia in 1996. He has also played chess at county level, and used to be
one of the country's top Othello players - twice finishing fourth in the
national finals. He has also played Shogi, Oware, Chinese Chess and
various other games in tournaments, with varying success!
In the first 3 MSOs Paul won a total of ten medals, including Golds in the
1998 and 1999 Decamentathlon. He is rather baffled by his success in the
event, and says "I could hardly be any worse at bridge, and trying to
remember sequences of numbers or cards brings me out in a cold sweat."
Paul is also interested in mathematical puzzles and when at school
represented the UK in the 1981 International Mathematical Olympiad. At the
second MSO in 1998 he won Gold in the puzzle-solving competition.
Paul's favourite mind sports are board games "with a long and interesting
history", and his ambition is to track down all the traditional board
games which are played at tournament level somewhere in the world - and
try them all!
