The tournament for the next european pro spot just started. information and draw:

http://www.eurogofed.org/proqualificati ... _2017.html

Seems realy open this year. I would put Kravets, Pop and Podpera as favorites, but there are a lot of players who have a chance to made it. Any bet ?

I've dropped in on the matches yesterday for a while. Good lineup and it's going to be interesting to see who makes it this year.

Rob van Zeijst participates? He has good chances.

It seems you're right, he's 2-0 so far.

One player of note is Oscar Vazquez, a 13-year old 4d from Spain who I first heard of via wolfking from Mateusz Surma as a hot young prospect of European Go: forum/viewtopic.php?p=220508#p220508. His rating is only 2379 (mine is 2384) but I presume his rating is lagging his strength increase and he got a wildcard entry. Apparently he spent 6 months CEGO training in Asia, but improved since then too. He came 4th recently in the Amsterdam tournament beating a good selection of 5ds but losing to 2 6ds including tournament winner Tanguy le Calve (who surprisingly beat Korean 7d Oh Chi Min). In this pro-qualification (which is sort of double-elimination split and fold) he lost in the 1st round to the highest rated player Andrii Kravets 6d (2677) of Ukraine, but then fought back with wins against German champion Lukas Krämer 6d and winning his rematch against Tanguy. When the tournament continues next month he players veteran Dutch 7d Rob van Zeijst (who lived in Japan for many years and author of various Go books).


His win vs Tanguy (who lost by half to Lukas Podpera):

Are they using wooden chess clocks? (I see a lot in the photos, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are used for the pro qualifier tournament.)

Article on completion of first stage: http://eurogofed.org/index.html?id=133.


Above article shows plastic electronic clocks.

Can anyone ID those clocks?

The clocks might be Korean. If so, they are terrible; very hard to press. You have to press very deeply and VERY firmly, and probably thrice to be sure that you do have pressed the button. Pressing it takes 3 seconds or so, if you succeed for the first time. They drove me crazy at KPMC. Note the dent in the middle of each button; designed to make it extra hard to press the clock. Or rather: designed without any thinking and feedback from experienced lighting players, it seems. Ing clocks are bad, but these clocks are much worse. The model of how NOT to design game clocks. Please, let our pros have reasonable clocks!

If anyone is interested in win probablilities for the players I have calculated it for the first round. Using the GoR before the rounds. I will update the players' GoR right before the next round and post the new probablilities.

I organized the 2015 qualification. The clocks are standard from South Korea. There is no name on it.

You can read more here (in Korean: http://www.6brothers.com/product/detail ... uct_no=945

We have some off them, but they are not good for Canadian byoyomi or Fischer timing, the traditional time settings in Germany. They use standard (=japanese) byoyomi

Yours,

Wilhelm

Updated pairing with winning probabilities according to GoR.

Quickly viewed, the previous percents (the games leading to this round) give 50-50 results. Tossing a coin would give the same results.

Cheers,
Vesa

Probably true for the games as well. Isn't there always a 50-50 chance between equally ranked players? Maybe we should just skip the games and instead and flip a coin to decide who becomes the next pro...

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Patience, grasshopper.

The stronger player won 12 out of 20 games, so not quite. Also, I feel Oscar Vasquez is probably very underrated, given his age and recent training in China. He is responsible for the two biggest upsets in the tournament so far.

Quarter final results:
Jonas beat Lukas (surprise in both result and that Jonas didn't do his normal crazy style)
Andrii beat Cornel
Rob beat Oscar
Viktor beat Csaba

Thanks, Uberdude.

A few SGF files are available at http://www.eurogofed.org/proqualificati ... _2017.html (I load them in KOCMOHABT’s Web Go Board Chrome/Firefox plugin, very nice )

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

Near the end of the Rob-Oscar game, the scribe went back and forth the tree a lot and added a few variants so it is unclear which is the final position, in which White resigned. Is it the position with the seki, after all two-sided dame were filled?

Andrii beat Viktor in the final by resignation so becomes the 6th EGF pro and the 2nd from Ukraine.