2012 World Mind Sports Games

The 2012 World Mind Sports Games were held in Lille, France, from 9 to 23 August 2012. The meet started during the 2012 Summer Olympics and ending shortly before the 2012 Summer Paralympics, both in London. This was the second rendition of the World Mind Sports Games, inaugurated 2008 in Beijing.

More than half of the gold medals at the 2nd Games were contested at draughts and Russia, with the strongest draughts squad, won the most gold and most overall medals. China won five gold medals—all five events contested at xiangqi. Chinese Taipei won four gold medals—four of the five events contested at go.

There were about 2000 players from 95 nations—down from 2,763 competitors and 143 countries at the 1st Games.

There were only three WMSG medal events at contract bridge in the 2nd Games, down from nine for bridge at the 2008 World Mind Sports Games. One other World Bridge Federation (WBF) event with world championship status was contested on site, the World Mixed Teams Championship—for transnational mixed teams, which field male–female pairs only. The main events were parallel tournaments for Open, Women, and Seniors national teams—4 to 6 players, some with a non-playing captain and/or a coach (that is, the events of the quadrennial World Team Olympiad, 1960 to 2004, retrospectively termed the 1st to 12th World Bridge Games). They were conducted over the full 14 days of competition; the Mixed Teams over the latter 7 days, alongside the quarterfinal, semifinal, and final matches of the main events.

Seven WMSG medal events from 2008 were not repeated as part of the "2nd World Mind Games, 14th World Bridge Games" (as WBF called the meet). Open, Women, and Youth Individual events and under-28 Teams were not repeated anywhere. Youth Pairs, u-26 Teams, and u-21 Teams were contested at separate all-Youth meets—along with u-26 Girls Teams, which was not part of the 1st Games.

The world championship for national Seniors Teams (World Team Olympiad#Senior International Cup), which had been a WMSG non-medal event alongside the Open and Women flights in 2008, was now a WMSG medal event. Beside the Mixed Teams world championship, there were lesser side events.

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