The 2012 World Mind Sports Games were held in Lille, France, from 9 to 23 August 2012. The meeting 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, which was inaugurated in 2008 in Beijing. The mind sport games had about 2000 players from 95 nations—down from 2,763 competitors and 143 countries at the 1st Games. More than half of the gold medals 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.
Events
There were 29 set of medals: Bridge (3) Draughts (16) Chess (0) Go (5) Xiangqi (5)
Bridge
There were only three WMSG medal events at contract bridge in the 2012 Games, down from nine for 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, under-26 teams, and under-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.
Only 60 and 43 nations entered the open and women flights, down from 71 and 54 at the 2008 Games. The seniors field, now a WMSG medal event as well as WBF world championship, increased from 32 to 34 entries.
The six gold and bronze medalists all won their concluding matches comfortably, in the end (scores no closer than 170–118 in 80 deals, the Women bronze medal match).
The European Bridge League, with about half of all entries, placed 7 teams in both the Open and Women quarterfinals, all 4 teams in those medal rounds; 6 quarterfinalists and 3 semifinalists in the Seniors flight. The other quarterfinalists were USA in the Open and Seniors, Indonesia in the Women and Seniors.
Participation
65 bridge nations were represented by at least one Open, Women, or Seniors team; 30 entered all three flights. The Open field of 60 included 30 from the European Bridge League . There were 43 in the women field including four that did not enter the Open: Lebanon, Palestine, Indonesia (a championship contender), and the Philippines. There were 34 in the seniors including one that did not enter either of the other flights: Hungary, which won the seniors championship.
Chess
There were no WMSG medal events in chess at the 2nd Games.
One website devoted to chess treated the inaugural SportAccord World Mind Games, December 2011 in Beijing, as the second rendition of the World Mind Sports Games, inaugurated October 2008 in Beijing. "The World Mind Sports Games were first held in 2008 in Beijing. After a long pause the tournament returns in the chess calendar stronger than ever. This year the World Mind Games has moved to a new level. Now they are being organized and held by a famous and respectable organization called SportAccord, the umbrella organization for both Olympic and non-Olympic sports as well as a major organizers of conferences and sporting events."
There were "Rapid" tournaments, 25-minute or 5-minute, on the first Saturday, second Friday, and second Sunday at least.