WEBVTT

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it's fair to say most of us don't like spreadsheets but the people who do like

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them like them a lot and while many of

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us use Microsoft Excel in our day-to-day work and Elite few have adapted the

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world's most popular spreadsheet software into an Esports phenomenon in

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2022 the Excel World Championship debuted as part of ESPN's theoo an

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annual Showcase of lower profile sports like axe throwing Corgi racing and of

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course the the slippery stair climb the vast majority of viewers had never even

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conceived of competitive Exel before because there are some levels of nerdy

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that are simply Beyond mere mortal Ken

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but the sport was popular enough that it was renewed for the 2023 oo and will be

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holding its finale in the Las Vegas hyper X Esports Arena this December with

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a prize pool of $110,000 across the competition but Excel as an esport

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didn't appear out of nowhere fully formed in 2022 it came out of an

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existing culture of financial modeling competitions basically these are

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tournaments where participants must create a financial forecast for a

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fictional company based on a provided data set in what else Excel the

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organizers of the financial modeling World Championship were looking for a

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way to turn these competitions into a spectator sport because apparently the

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cultural mainstream is unenthusiastic about debt service coverage ratios which

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is a real shame they gradually adapted the format to make the contests more

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exciting and accessible and in mid 2021

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they went viral because you know pandemic finally ESPN expressed an

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interest and the fmwc open was streamed

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on ESPN 3 in December 2021 the next year

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Microsoft sponsored the competition lending it their own name and making it

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the Microsoft Excel World Championship

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but what does a round of competitive Excel actually look like and how do you

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Excel enough enough to win we'll tell you right after a message from our

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sponsor enlisted if you're looking for a slightly more traditional type of game

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signing up each round of an Excel tournament has a unique challenge like

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tabulating the results of a series of hypothetical elections or projecting the

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outcome of a game of whack-a-mole participants have to answer a series of

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100 increasingly difficult questions about the puzzle in only 30 minutes

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that's roughly one answer every 18 seconds but that assumes that the

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players are answering them one at a time which they aren't unless time is short

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and they're desperate questions are typically organized into five batches of

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20 questions and the dominant strategy by experienced players is to create a

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single formula that will solve an entire batch this means that a player's score

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can stagnate for long periods then jump rapidly it can even go down which means

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it's time for a quick undo but that might not save novice players who get

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stuck and wind up with a big fat zero out of a thousand the winner is whoever

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answers all the questions correctly first or whoever has the most points

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when the 30 minutes are up the puzzles can vary a lot in terms of difficulty so

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the points players receive are typically adjusted to normalize scores across

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games an Infamous 2021 case based on the game civilization was so difficult that

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the winner managed to get just eight points total narrowly edging out his

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opponent who managed to accumulate a poultry six both of them were guessing

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which can be executed quickly and efficiently using the formula ran

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between to cover large batches of unknown answers familiarity with

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keyboard shortcuts is obviously a necessary skill to the point that player

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BIOS will list their favorite shortcut and there's some hot controversy in The

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Meta over whether competitive players should ever use a mouse to navigate

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Advanced players with a fluency in Visual Basic might even code on the Fly

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unsurprisingly the game tends to be dominated by accountants actuaries

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mathematicians and Engineers you know

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the alpha nerds the format of games can vary as well with tournaments sometimes

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featuring 1 V one elimination matches and other times eight player battle

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Royals it's brutal a panel of commentators narrate the game dissect

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the outcome and introduce and interview the players before and after the fact

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and at in-person events there's often an electric crowd excited to see their

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favorite Excel battler perform the spreadsheet equivalent of a mounted

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elbow drop off the top rope and it's not

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a sport without merch they've got shirts like this invalid formula divide by by

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zero design or this one with all your favorite formulas I'm partial to equal

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count ifs open parin closed parin myself

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the Microsoft Excel World Championship isn't the only Gaming Arena where you'll

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find Excel it's had a long if eccentric history in gaming usually acting as an

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external supplementary tool for complex RPGs that require Advanced data

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management Eve online the game sometimes called spreadsheets in space actually

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got an official Excel plugin earlier this year much to the excitement of its

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player base not to mention that people have been programming games directly

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into Excel for decades like snake mind sweeper and even Battleship if there's

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anything we can learn from a sweaty crowd cheering on their favorite Excel

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Champion as they formulate their way to Victory is that human beings can find

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joy in literally anything and it brings

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me great joy to see you here at the end of the video welcome thanks for watching

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like the video if you like it dislike it if you disliked it check out our other

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videos comment below with video suggestions and don't forget to

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subscribe and follow and plug us into your spreadsheet of choice don't I know

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you have it