National Mathematical Olympiad

This weekend I just got back from the Mexican Mathematical Olympiad held at San Carlos, Sonora. I was there as the leader of the State of Chihuahua team and we had a terrific showing. Our best participation in more than a decade. That had been one of my goals this year and I think I succeeded, for now I'll just write about some of our most important results:

- All our students got medal, 3 gold, 2 silver and 1 bronze

Guillermo López Buenfil ORO
Manuel Dosal Bustillos ORO
Josue Isai Vazquez Garcia ORO
Karina Patricia De la Torre Saenz PLATA
Diego German Orozco Garcia PLATA
Alberto Astiazaran Tobin BRONCE

So, Guillermo ("Memo"), Manuel and Isai are preselected as part of the National team to participate in the 2009 International Math olympiad (IMO) to be held in Germany next July.

- Two of them got selected for the Centroamerican Mathematical Olympiad to be held at Republica Dominicana next June 2009; Manuel and Karina

- Out of 32 states, we got 2nd place !!!

1- MORELOS 147
2- CHIHUAHUA 145 (Arrgghhh! just 2 marks)
3- YUCATAN 115
4- NUEVO LEON 112
5- SONORA 106

- The best student in the country is from our team

Memo got the highest score of all the 200 contestants with 40 marks (out of 42), it was an incredible performance since the 2nd highest got 34

- We won the "Copa Superacion"

1- CHIHUAHUA 46.70
2- BAJA CALIFORNIA SUR 25.05 pts
3- CAMPECHE 23.65 pts

I am pretty happy with the results, the co-leaders of our team were my friends Enrique Treviño and Hector Garcia, who did a wonderful job and we just make a great team.

For sure the Olympiad took a lot of my poker playing time this year, I spent way many hours in the Olympiad rather than playing poker, and that alone cost me a lot of money, but even when there's no money to be won in the Olympiad, it's something I'm very proud of.

Society is weird, I play poker and win money doing something with almost no meaningful contribution to society, while doing the Olympiad I contribute to society and get no money, I guess it balances out.