The Pentamind World Championship was one of the Mind Sports Olympiad’s original events. It is a unique meta-event, which celebrates the best all-round games player in the world. Any event at Mind Sports Olympiad can count towards that year’s Pentamind, and the player with the highest Pentamind score (top 5 scores from 5 different disciplines) is crowned the Pentamind World Champion.

After competing for the first time and just missing the podium by finishing 4th in the 2020 Pentamind World Championship, Maciej Brzeski was determined to do better in 2021. After over a 1000 hours of training and dedication during the 12 month hiatus, he started the 2021 Mind Sports Olympiad strongly with a gold medal in 7 Wonders on the very first day. More medals followed and he was able to secure his first Pentamind World Championship this year by using his 5 highest Pentamind Scores, which included 7 Wonders, Poker (Badugi), Chess, Jaipur and Stone Age. Along the way he also won medals in Backgammon, Battle Sheep, Hex, Lines of Action, Quarto, Santorini, and Colour Chess.

In his winner’s interview with the Mind Sports Olympiad CEO Etan Ilfeld, Maciej discusses the challenges he faced in the 2021 Mind Sports Olympiad. From dealing with emotional ups and downs, thinking about games in English (even though his native tongue is Polish), what are his favourite games (spoiler–Santorini is one of them) and how they differ from the games that he’s good at, to how he likes to relax and prepare for stressful situations.