Can you turn pro in China without being Chinese?

_________________
North Lecale

Oh well, let's hope I didn't get anything wrong. Everything I wrote was from memory sans official source, as the EGF hasn't published official information yet (afaik).

Viktor Lin
aka the guy who put that on the Vienna tournament website

P.S.: According to Li Ting, one of the advantages Europeans professionals will get is automatic qualification to Grand Slam tournaments. Amateurs would need to collect Bonus Points at Bonus Point tournaments (Strasbourg, Amsterdam, Vienna tournaments and EGC).
The Grand Slam tournaments offer 10.000€ minimum for the winner and around 500€ per player for every game played. The first Grand Slam tournament will be provided by CEGO in 2015. For further editions, we can already start looking for sponsors.

On the other hand, the pros will be blocked from entering world amateur championships.I'm very curious as to what EGF has decided concerning the pros' obligations and benefits.

I'm not certain, but you can certainly turn pro in Korea and Japan without being Korean or Japanese, respectively.

To me, there are three interesting questions. Maybe they have been already answered, I have not been following very closely lately.

Question #1: Do all the serious contenders have a good chance to be selected to play?

This is about criteria RJ was fuming about. How many players in Europe have a reasonable chance to win such tournament, or come second? If there are, lets say, 10 such strong players, and if they all have a good chance to get selected through the criteria, then I see no problem. The arbitrary selection for 3 spots (a female, a kid learning in China, and a wildcard) make perfect sense to me - all this is very good for promotion of Go, and from where I stand, this event is about promotion of Go mainly. I would say, make even more arbitrary placements, like the best junior, etc. This will give some kids more incentive to study hard and something to look forward to.

On the other hand, if the criteria are so narrow that some of the serious contenders will not be able to play, then the system might need rethinking. Although even then I think it is important to have the arbitrary placements...

Question #2: Who is and is not a pro? What is the status of the status?

I think this has been discussed here already, but still... will the players holding foreign pro titles already be excluded from the tournament, or does that mean only the future holders of the Euro-pro status will be excluded? Personally, I see no reason somebody cannot belong to multiple pro associations, especially since this Euro-pro thing is not really on-par with the asian pro organizations.

Question #3: What is Euro-pro, actually?

Well, somebody wins the tournament and becomes an Euro-pro, then what? Does he have special privileges, perks? Is there a salary paid to him/her? Per game monies? Per win? What? Is he/she qualified to play in the Mingren now or something? Or is it just a vanity thing?

A related question is - will the pro status be 'for life', like in Asia, or is it just a temporary title you have to play for every year? And if so, will the last year's "pros" automatically qualify for the tournament, or do they still have to match the criteria outlined?

_________________
- Bantari
______________________________________________
WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Question 1, looking at the strongest Europeans and the number of spots, I think so.
Question 2, this is amateur only. There's no reason to give the European Pro status to someone who is already professional with a different organization.
Question 3, yet to be seen, but it looks similar to the AGA Pro in the ability to get into some tournaments, but there isn't much information on that yet.

I think you get my point of view, but to make it explicit: take a step back: why do we have a European professional qualification? Not solely because of the skill of European players. We could fill a tournament with 16 Asian amateurs who are better than any European player. Why should we have European professionals when those more skilled players are left out?

As a matter of fact, I think there are plenty of good answers to that last question (I'm pretty excited about the professionals on our side of the pond as well, even though they're also weaker than the best Asian amateurs). It's just that any answer that I can think of for that question is inconsistent with complaining that there might be a woman or student included in the qualifying tournament even though they're not the strongest European player.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

I don't think it's inconsistent to expect European Pros to be European and expect there to be no gender discrimination, because European Pros are, by definition, European. They are not, by definition, students (for example). To make it a fair analogy, you could have a tournament for which only female European students were eligible. We could then call them "Female Student European Pros".

My point is somewhat in jest, but I was under the belief that it's necessary to have "European Pros" be European, simply because of the title. If you want to allow non-Europeans, that's totally fine. But perhaps we can call them by a different name. Maybe, "Earthling Pros" (unless we extend participation to citizens from other planets, perhaps).

This being said, I suppose I interpreted the "European" in "European Pros" to imply European citizenship, but perhaps this is a biased interpretation. Perhaps the "European" simply means that they took the tournament in Europe. In this case, there isn't really a difference between discriminating by citizenship, gender, or student status.

_________________
be immersed

The EGF has chosen to declare that, for them, European is a citizen of an EGF member country. This does not agree to the union of all European countries or the EU. Therefore, EU law does not provide final reference. It is also unclear whether law of the OSCE or European human rights provide final reference. It is only clear that UN human rights apply. In them, discrimination due to law is prohibited regardless of sex, religion, citizenship etc. IOW, my use of the word "discrimination" has been improper; the word is too strong, because it is associated with human rights etc., while the EGF does not set a country's law. "Distinction" can be a better word.

Supposing the EGF has set conditions as reported, it creates the status of defined European playing-professionals (in contrast to other EGF-Europeans that are financial professionals or even non-defined playing-professionals, i.e., players (also) living from tournament prizes in tournaments other than those eligible only for defined European playing-professionals) for EGF-European citizens and creates confusion by calling them "European professionals". The confusion can be dissolved, because it is specified that only defined playing-professionals of, at the respective moments of entering qualifications tournaments (what about later changes of citizenships?), EGF-European citizenship are meant.

Now, this would still be pretty clear: a European thing for those strongest players able to qualify.

However, further restrictions are introduced that have nothing to do with being "European" or playing-strength: the three wildcard players get greater chances to qualify than the other 13 qualified players. This distinction, although presumably not discrimination according to law, introduces a distinction contrary to the apparent purpose of establishing "European professionals", which is to give a special status (and presumably special rights, such as access to special tournaments) to the strongest European players competing (and winning) qualification tournaments.

By introducing the distinctions, it will not be the strongest such players that become "European professionals". Instead, it will be a mixture of some belonging to the strongest and others being lucky to have been supported by wildcard advantages.

Of course, the European top is broader than 13 players. Few would have won money by betting on Jan Simara and Lisy Pavol to become recent European Champions. In (mind) sports, there can always be unexpected newcomers. They might be among "European" players 14 to 16 in the EGF rating list, or even below. Politicians are not wise enough to detect newcomers early.

Few -> none for Pavol as he hasn't been European champion (yet), or are you excluding Fan Hui because he was born in China despite now being a French citizen? That would be rather against the spirit of your self-described anti-discrimination.

For me, "European" is a citizen of geographical Europe: a citizen of a country being in or partially in Europe; a stateless person with a legal residence in a European country; optionally either such a person in a Europe-dependent country or territory overseas (if such are not included for another continent or world region); optionally a non-European citizen with a legal residence for a number of years to be specified in a European country, Europe-dependent country or territory overseas (such a go player must then not use his citizenship to get unfair double rights, such as entering the same tournament twice); optionally a non-European, EGF-member-country citizen (as before).

For the EGF, IIRC, "European" is a citizen of an EGF member country.

Therefore, if indeed Fan Hui is a French citizen, he is a European under both my and the EGF's definition.

Java,But I don't know the details.

Kirby, Robert, of course European professionals have to be European. But choosing to have a system of "European professionals" is a choice. You can't just take that as a given in the argument, any more than I could tell Robert that they have defined their system to have these three invited players, so by definition that is right.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

I believe she is part of the Taiwanese professional system, and not that of mainland China, in addition to having spent much of her life growing up there, but I too am sketchy on details.

I would say this depends on the answer to my question #3, I suppose. What does it mean to be Euro-pro? Is it a vanity title you lose every year, or will you become a part of some 'pro' organization? If the former - its just a name and I see no problem letting other 'pros' compete. If the latter - you have a good point.

So I think it hinges on what Euro-pro really will be.
Personally, I find it weird that this does not seem to be specified. How should people know what they are playing for, if it is even worth the hassle?

_________________
- Bantari
______________________________________________
WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

I find this a bit of a weird question. It's a bit like someone said "I'm going to be a baker", and you ask them "What does that mean? Does a baker fix bicycles? Or does he bake bread? Why isn't that specified?".

The term professional is about as unambiguous as the term baker, IMO.

I assume it will be the latter, and I still see little problem with the setup as described.

Can you define it, then?

Personally - I find the term "professional" in Go to be very ambiguous. Traditionally it used to mean somebody who passed one of the rigorous exams and become an official member of one of the Asian professional associations. It brings with itself all kinds of monetary benefits, as well as eligibility to compete in some high-money tournaments, special ratings, and whatnot. Among many other perks, but also other duties and responsibilities.

Now we hear that people Like Cornel Burzo are also "professional" because they support themselves from Go. This comes closer to your analogy of "baker", but its not really what most people mean when they think "pro" in Go. How about somebody supplementing their income from Go? You can define bakers like that - what about Go pros?

Will this be the case with the Euro-pros who do well in the tourney? Will it just be a yearly vanity term like "European Champion" or will it be a stepping stone to some more formal organization?

_________________
- Bantari
______________________________________________
WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

http://senseis.xmp.net/?Professional

I think senseis does a reasonable job for it. Just add the AGA and EGF as organizations handling professional diplomas.

"In go terms, a professional is a go player who has received a professional diploma from one of the professional go associations."

I am not arguing with you here.

_________________
be immersed