E-sports meets Excel: The world championships of the table program are an endearing nerd festival
Microsoft Excel is an excellent program for doing tax things, tormenting office workers or for archiving important data in an orderly manner. However, the best of the best in the table program can do much more with it and compete in a world championship. We will show you how this works on MeinMMO.
Microsoft Excel probably drives millions of people crazy every day. If you didn’t always have a certain fondness for mathematical subjects at school, you will rarely warm up to the table program later on.
However, Excel-friendly users know what fantastic things can be done with this program. A programmable calculator with over 17 billion cells that can even be illustrated and equipped with graphics. The slide rule of the 21st century.
The annual world championship, which has been held since 2020, also shows how many possibilities Excel offers. 8 contestants battled it out for victory in 2022, most clocking in at over 10,000 hours of play…er, hours of work on the program.
MeinMMO took a look and explained how e-sports work in tabular form.
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=IF(Excel-Championships=eSports;”cool stuff”)
How does an Excel World Cup work? The competition runs over three rounds, each lasting 30 minutes. Half of the participants are always eliminated, so after a round there are 4 players left and in the final the best 2 compete against each other.
In the three rounds, mathematical puzzles have to be solved that are actually reminiscent of gaming:
- Round 1 – Slot Machine
- In 5 levels, the participants have to calculate the points they have reached on a slot machine
- Round 2 – Yacht Regatta.
- Six simulated yachts with different characteristics drive through a parkour. The wind plays an important role.
- Round 3 – Platformers
- In the final, the participants have to calculate how many points simulated players can achieve in an Excel platformer. The character “Modelario” plays the leading role.
The whole thing was accompanied by two commentators, lasted less than two and a half hours and even ran on US television on the ESPN 2 pay-TV channel.
We embed the English YouTube video with the World Championships for you, below which we briefly explain the individual rounds in more detail:
Round 1: Participants must add up the points achieved by players on a slot machine. The slot machine has 5 columns, each with 19 rows and 8 different symbols, each symbol having its own point value.
If a symbol appears more often after a spin, there are extra points.
Participants know from each column how the symbols are arranged in the 19 rows. It also knows how many symbols are skipped on each spin per column.
In a first step, the correct symbols must be selected for each spin in order to then be able to calculate the points.
The four winners of the first round mastered all 5 levels and were able to solve the complete series of tasks.
Round 2: The participants get a pre-designed course with different wind conditions after each movement of one of the six yachts.
All yachts have different characteristics and react differently to wind directions. In addition, certain areas of the course change the score. At the end of the task, the points must be calculated for all six yachts when they reach the goal.
In round 2, the two best participants were able to solve the game completely and meet in the final.
Round 3: In the last competition, the participants were shown how to set up six levels that were a bit reminiscent of a Nintendo platformer. For this purpose, the inputs of simulated players were given.
There are enemies that provide extra points, the character “Modelario” can attack, jump, run and even has life energy.
The participants have to calculate how many points the simulated players were able to bag with their run at the end. There were many runs to simulate per level.
This complex task could not be completely solved by both finalists. However, the winner Andrew Ngai managed three of the six levels and his final competitor only two.
The World Excel Championship is a lovable nerd fest where the world’s greatest Excel lovers show off their skills and talent. If the buzzer formula is already annoying you, take a look and let yourself be surprised how powerful the table tool can really be.
Leave us a comment on the topic, or check out an article about another wacky World Cup: “Oh my god, the floor is lava!” – 622,000 viewers are watching World Balloon Championships on Twitch
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