Since the release of Windows 3.1 in 1992, minesweeper games have been 30 years old, and almost everyone will be busy playing a few after opening the computer. Nowadays, the variety of beautifully crafted games is dizzying, and not many people play this little game anymore. But this does not prevent Minesweeper from having such a loyal group of fans, and even special competitions.
In the April 18 Minesweeper World Leaderboard, 59 of the top 100 players are from China, and the first person in the ranking is Ju Zeen, who is only 14 years old this year. The outstanding performance of Chinese players in the mine-sweeping game is related to the fact that the "mine-sweeping network" has gathered a group of game masters, and it is Zhang Arsenic who founded this website.
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The "genius teenager" played became the first in China
Zhang Arsenic, who has a talent for mathematics since childhood.
Zhang Arsenic was born in 1986 to the son of a senior engineer at the Shaanxi Meteorological Bureau and a mother to a primary school teacher. At the age of 2, Zhang Arsenic began to learn to recognize words, and at the age of 6, he followed his father to learn computers. At that time, personal computers were far from widespread.
When registering for the first grade of primary school, the teacher found that Zhang Arsenic had finished learning the contents of the primary school, so he directly arranged for the graduation class. This "genius teenager" graduated from college at the age of 15 and later worked in IT.
Around 2003, Zhang Arsenic officially began to play the game of minesweeping, and soon broke through 60 seconds in the advanced mode of minesweeping, ranking among the first-class players, and soon broke through the 50-second and 40-second barriers.
When he found that he could no longer find an opponent around him, Zhang Arsenic looked for more powerful players on the Internet. "I searched on the Internet and found a website called 'Shenzhou Mine Clearance Network', which was the only one in China to do minesweeper games at that time, and I saw that there were so many masters in China, so I continued to have fun."
In 2008, Zhang Arsenic's performance exceeded the 40-second mark, ranking second in the world and first in China. But he couldn't get any better results since then, feeling a little discouraged and basically quit the minesweeping world – his record remained there for 6 years until 2014.
In 2006, Zhang Arsenic created and maintained the "Mine Clearance Network", and now most of the work is guo Jinyang is responsible. Guo Jinyang began playing minesweeper games in 1994, when he was only 7 years old, and his enthusiasm for this game has not subsided until now, creating a personal best last year and currently ranking 11th in the "Divine Realm".
JuZeen is ranked no. 1 in the world.
"Thunder Emperor" Ju Zeen won the first place in China in July 2020, and just two months later, he broke the record of 31.13 seconds held by Polish player Kamil Mulanski for 10 years, becoming the world number one, and entering within 30 seconds.
Since then, Ju Zeen has maintained the status of world number one, and in the recently concluded "Golden Sheep Cup Minesweeper Open", he won the championship with a time of 28.33 seconds, and surpassed the second place Guo Weijia by more than 9 seconds.
The "Golden Sheep Cup" competition is mainly organized by Guo Jinyang and is held twice a year. The recently held 10th "Golden Sheep Cup" featured 77 masters, including several foreigners.
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It's a lone thinker's game
On April 6, 1992, minesweepers, solitaire, and other mini-games such as Solitaire and Solitaire were installed in the Windows 3.1 system to meet with users, the main purpose of which was to let users train to use the mouse. The gameplay of this game is very simple, there are beginner, intermediate, advanced and custom modes, a certain number of mines are randomly arranged in the minefield, and the player needs to find out all the blocks that are not mines as soon as possible, but they are not allowed to step on the mines.
From a programming point of view, minesweeper is not complicated, in fact many programming teachers will choose it as a tutorial for students to design such a game. Although this game is simple, it uses the knowledge of logic, operations research, probability and statistics, algorithm theory, etc.
Zhang Arsenic told Purple Cow News that the minesweeper game is very philosophical and has a certain connection with people's real lives. In real life, people are ignorant at first, they have to explore step by step, and in the process of exploration, they will slowly learn the truth about the world. Playing the mine clearance game is also a random exploration, in the process may get some information, in order to calculate what is thunder and what is not thunder through logical judgment. "But in most cases, you can't infer that you need to guess, when to guess, when to take risks, it's a matter of style, different people will have different choices."
Zhang Arsenic said that in order to play a good mine clearance game, first of all, there must be strength, and secondly, there must be luck, but behind the luck is a lot of attempts. "Behind a player breaking a record is actually playing thousands of games, perhaps 80% of which are thunderous deaths."
Minesweeper Game is a game for lone thinkers. Nowadays, popular computer games are becoming more and more social in nature. There are no opponents in the process of minesweeping, and although there are now some matches, they are only games organized by the players themselves, not in real time.
In Zhang Arsenic's view, a simple mine-sweeping game can also make people enter a state of self-forgetfulness. "Playing to a certain extent, it is completely conditioned, too late to think, the brain is blank, in fact, there is a bit like a meditative state, which I call dynamic meditation." If you have work pressure and study pressure, then when you enter this state, it is actually a kind of enjoyment. ”
Minesweeper net >>
Create this site to show off your achievements
With the development of computers, the Internet and other technologies, there are more and more competitors in minesweeper games, and many players are gradually attracted to new games.
In addition, the mine clearance game has been unexpectedly criticized by anti-mine organizations. In 2001, italy's International Campaign to Ban Mines expressed strong interest in the game, believing that it "offended mine victims". Under pressure from anti-mine organizations, both Microsoft's Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating systems replaced mines in minesweeper games with flowers.
The new system after Windows 8 doesn't even bundle minesweeper games anymore.
In 2006, the only official organization of the mineweeper game, the International Mine Clearance Association, was dissolved. Prior to this, China's "Shenzhou Mine Clearance Network" had been shut down.
At that time, the fans of the minesweeper game had a network group, everyone asked in the group what to do if the website was not there, Zhang Arsenic would do the website, so he referred to the international mine clearance network, made a website, has been running until now, is the mine clearance network. Zhang Arsenic is very frank: "I am not shy about saying that my original intention in establishing the 'Mine Clearance Network' was to show off my achievements. As for providing a communication platform for the majority of Lei friends and building a community, those are all ideas that came up later. ”
In order to enhance the interactivity, Zhang Arsenic also made the website a player community.
The ranking system of the "Minesweeper Network" is divided into two categories: the Divine Realm and the Human Realm, bounded by 60 seconds. The first ranked one is known as the Thunder Emperor, and the rest of the masters are called Thunder Saint, Thunder God, and Thunder Immortal. The human world borrows the rank of the ancient imperial examination, from tongsheng all the way to the yuan.
Zhang Arsenic said that the purpose of setting up the title is to make the master appear more honorable, so as to stimulate everyone to improve their performance.
At present, there are 25,000 registered users of "Minesweeper Network", and among the users with achievement rankings, there are 376 "Divine Realm" masters and more than 5,300 "Human World" masters.
Why are Chinese players ranked high in the world
In the rankings, Chinese players ranked first in the results.
Chinese players stand out on the Minesweeper World Leaderboard, with 59 of the top 100 players from China.
The number of Chinese players is not very large compared to other countries. Minesweeper World is the world's largest minesweeper game website, with a total of about 5 million registered players, of which about 26,000 are from Chinese mainland, but The achievements of Chinese players far exceed those of other countries.
Some people abroad even wrote a number of papers to study why they were crushed by Chinese in the world of minesweeping, and after Ju Zeen occupied the world's first place, they also created a new term "The JZE Thing" to describe the achievements of Shi Tiantian, JZE is the English abbreviation of Ju Zeen. Research came and went, but they still didn't figure it out, and finally classified everything as Chinese mathematical talent.
And Guo Jinyang thinks it is not so mysterious. The main reason may be that the focus of playing this game is different, "Minesweeper Network" gathers a large number of Chinese players, and the site is biased towards racing. Foreign players are centered on "Minesweeper World", and this site is biased towards strategy and efficiency.
Zhang Arsenic also believes that Chinese players rank high among global players, which has a certain relationship with the "minesweeper network" that has gathered a group of high-level enthusiasts. He also felt that this was related to China's large population base, "Any project that competes in personal ability, China is not weak." (Reporter Song Shifeng)
(Source: Yangtze Evening News/Purple Cow News China News Network)
【Editor: Fu Ying】
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