This event is a small, invitational, tournament. Go is allowed 30 players total. SportAccord had wanted only NATIONAL teams and we were asked to pick one team from Europe. Your EGF reps argued hard for broader inclusion, which is how an "EU team" came about. I actually thought for a moment that they would be heralded as heroes by a grateful EGF membership. ^^

Well, I withdraw my previous argument, if they don't have the ability to play for the countries that they're pro with, (what does pro mean at that point?) then I see no reason why they shouldn't play,

My argument largely hinged on the idea that they had the ability to play elsewhere and chose not to. If that is not the case, then they're in the same boat as everyone else.

I wonder how much continuity there is, at most of the bigger tournaments I've been to, it feels like there's a group of 8d's, a 7d, and then a group of 6d's... it feels like there's a gap there, though I can't see one in the ratings data

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

I'll give them credit for a good negotiation, but lets face it, it would look pretty nuts if NATO entered a team at the Olympics, so why is there an EU team at this SportAccord event? Besides, Romania should clearly be representing the EGF

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North Lecale

BTW, Hsiang, thank you for making the announcement here and for continuing to inject the forum with facts.

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That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
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My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

Thanks. I was fearing a rather different response. I believe AGA should ask itself some questions if the top 50 are almost exclusively 1st/2nd/3rd generation immigrants from CJK. It is a failure in the internationalisation/popularisation of the game in my opinion, and the resident professionals are not the cause. Mingjiu and the other teachers in the U.S. do teach in English as well, and may teach predominantly in English if I am correct.

I also believe JF is a bit fast with the accusation of "whining", the wish to contest for a berth in an Americas team is not a wish to get a reserved place without competition. And don't forget that South American results in international tournaments are afaik better than North American, even if only due to the famous two wins of F. Aguilar in the 1st Toyota Denso Cup. What about sending a South American team only? It would be just fair, but still I believe AGA players would probably complain about it.

Furthermore, I believe nationalism is introduced by a sponsor insisting on "flag and anthem" national teams. If we don't want it, we need a different kind of tournament. Accept the federation level instead, and you will get an EGF team. But Serbia, Russia, Israel, Ukraine, Turkey are all rather unlikely to be EU members in the near future, but still they are members of the EGF and should be represented (or at least be elegible for representation) as such, not as some bogus "guest EU-members". The "EU team" could as well ended w/ Ilya Shikshin, Alex. Dinershtein, Svetlana Shikshina, Dusan Mitic and Ali Jabarin (if the Romanians had a bad qualifier that is ).

Although I believe EGF representatives did a good job in selling an EGF team as EU team, even if the "European Union"ess of the team could have been entirely fictional. It is something to tell the sponsors next time, that they have to cope with federations not with pseudo-nations. (Take the EGF logo and a nice song, instead of flag and anthem!) And AGA did not do such a good bargaining job as EGF rep's it seems, at least they totally forgot about the bigger part of America.

Best, Tapir.

It is not a matter of popularization.

The playing population in the US is not overwhelmingly Asian. Or perhaps it is--I don't know how many Asian Americans play but never attend a tournament--but the tournament going population is not overwhelmingly Asian. Instead, as you rise in the ranks, the proportion of non-Asian players drops. If you look at the general population, I'd guess that half of players are non-Asian, give or take a dozen or two percent (how do you like that estimate?). That doesn't look like a terrible failure of popularization to me--we have a substantial Asian American population, and it's a fantasy to expect non-Asian Americans to play Go at anything approaching the same rates in this generation or next.

As I said, what's true is that as you go into mid and high-dan ranks, the proportion of non-Asians drops, until you have only two non-Asians (Trevor Morris and Matthew Burall) in the top 50 American players active since 2010. Double or triple that number, and you'd still have very few. Note: in listing the top 50, I excluded people I knew to be visitors from another nation like Jujo Jiang or Hu Zi Zhang, but I must have missed some. Ethnicity was judged by names, and I don't think there were any borderline cases--though some years ago, I did fail to realize that John Lee was Korean.

Recognizing that fact, the question is whether as you go more generations beyond the initial immmigrants, will you still continue to see players of similar strength? (Of course I don't know that we haven't. I know a few player bios, but maybe some of the folks on that top 50 have several generations of ancestors who lived in the US).

The density of players in the EGF nations seems to be higher, but not enough to explain the difference (6000 to roughly 2000 active players, with a somewhat larger population base). Thus, I think the phenomenon is not about the popularity of Go in the US, but something else.

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Occupy Babel!

So the tournament title with "World" in it is very wrong when Europe is invited and "represented" by an EU team but, e.g. Africa is not represented by, say an OAU team (OAU also has sort of flag and anthem) and when countries are put on one level with political organisations. Call the tournament what it is, an invitational meeting, and all is fine!

All this reminds me of the first British mind sports "olympics" with Go handicap tournaments. Also there "meeting" would have been a more fitting title.

At the level of what the event itself could and should have done, while I don't know the details, I was told that funding was a major headache and China acted as a white knight. In such cases, to mix metaphors, the piper gets to pay the tune, so we have to be careful to make our omelette only with the eggs provided.

I, for one, am very grateful to Sport Accord that it is sponsoring such an event, and I think they are doing an invaluable service to mind sports at large in getting recognition on par with other sports. I find it extremely distasteful that many go players can apparently only complain about technicalities and side issues.

I also think the concept of an EU team is a wonderful idea, and I applaud the EGF for actually getting it accepted. The EGF at large can definitely put together a stronger team than any individual member could, and the qualifier gives strong players throughout Europe yet another chance to compete at the highest levels.

Calling an event a World event but not making it world-wide is not a side-issue but a core problem. It is like running Olympics for only the first world countries.



Why an EU team and not an EGF team or a European team? What is so wonderful of the EU in the European world of Go countries? Calling it EGF team or European team would have fit the selection of players and agreed to the political Go power in Europe behind it.

Robert, thank you for the excellent example of the kind of useless whining I was talking about.

I am pretty sure it is among other things the expectation of much more whining by many players that made EGF representatives bargain hard enough to get de facto European representation instead of sending a Russian team (which would have been the most obvious choice as they won the European Team Championship). Kudos to them for that.

But honestly, the logic that players not eligible to compete (South Americans) should behave and be happy with an omelette others are going to eat is pretty much incomprehensible to me. Imagine the EGF sending a strictly EU team according to sponsor wishes, excluding all non-EU EGF members from competition. There would have been and rightly so an outcry amongst non-EU federations and many EU federations as well.

Well, if any sponsor decides to spend money on go, that makes me happy. Even if I, or my country, are not receiving any of that money.

The sponsor decides to spend a lot of money to organize an event. They make certain choices, set some criteria, on how that money will be spent. That is their choice, and their right. It is, after all, their money. What possible justification could any player have to claim to somehow "deserve" some of that money?

Really, IMO, it is a bit like saying: "I am going to spend a million dollars to feed the poor." And then the overwhelming reaction is: "What? Why aren't you spending two million? Why are you not also providing medicine to sick people? Why are some people, who are not quite as poor, excluded? Also, you should say that you are 'feeding the hungry', because there are also poor people that have sufficient food! In conclusion, you are a horrible person, and all the people that are helping to deliver the food are horrible people as well!"

Pointing out big mistakes is useless only if the "money justifies all" camp of John and you succeeds and prevents things from improving and continues to discriminate many countries (from subtle discrimination like Russians having to play under the EU flag to hard discrimination like forgoing entire continents in what is called a world event).

Everything you say above is about right and that sponsors support Go with lots of money is great. It does not imply though that everybody approves the mistakes made in tournament organisation. When a sponsor sells his event as a world event but does not make it a world event, then he has to live with the criticism for doing so.

I am pretty sure there would have been a major outrage in the EGF, and I repeat rightly so, if the EGF had accepted the sponsor criteria of setting up a team of EU members only without somehow turning it into a de facto EGF team.

Nobody complained about the sponsor having choices, setting criteria. But unlike the tendency of L19ers to limit themselves to clapping, the EGF representatives did bargain, did argue and put forward their preferences. If the EGF representatives had done as advised by you or JF, there would have been no European team, right?

The sponsor did not set a criterium of "EU members", they wanted a single country. With a flag and an anthem. They allowed the EGF to use the EU as a body because it has those things. I think that was a wonderful idea by the EGF, and I wonder if this is the first time that an EU team is being fielded in a major international competition.

Anyway, it seems that pretty much any decision the EGF could have made would be met with outrage by someone. After all, in this very thread, Javaness said:

"I find there to be something distasteful about an EU team. This is pretty silly in an international event which is supposed to be between countries. Canadians playing for the USA, what the heck is that?"

Personally, I would also have been fine with a decision to, say, send a Russian team. They won the European Team Championship this year, after all, and they can most certainly field a very strong team.

Similarly, I would have been fine if the EGF had decided to hold a separate country team competition as a qualifier for this event.



I think there is an important difference between respectful negotiations with a sponsor and the kind of vitriol that is being spewed in this thread.

Such negotiations are normal, and expected. The sponsor has certain goals and expectations, and they try to maximize the value they get for their money. Similarly, the IGF and EGF have goals and expectations, and try to maximize the value that the event provides them. You give some, you take some, and you try to keep everybody happy.

My advice to the EGF would most certainly not have been: "Keep your mouth shut and be happy with any money you get". But I would most certainly have advised them to be respectful of the wishes of the sponsor, and to work with the sponsor closely in maximizing value for all parties. And I'm sure that's what they did.

You do realize, I hope, that go is only one of the events being held at this mind games event? There's also Chess, Bridge, Draughts and XiangQi.

The Olympics, to quote an example you used, do not have participants from every country in every discipline either.

The go event alone involves, directly or indirectly, participants from some 40 countries on three continents.

Is this thread really vitriolic? Seems pretty tame...

Anyway, the sponsors have the right to set whatever rules they want, but I think your "money to the poor" analogy is unfortunate if it's accurate. I'd like to think at this point that much of the world is not quite so poor in go anymore, and that we are in a position to negotiate strongly. Apparently that is not the case.

It is unfair that the South Americans do not qualify for any team. The Flag/Anthem justification just doesn't cut it for me, especially as the confederation that is the EU still allows member-states their own flags and anthems.

EDIT: That being said, I remember the 1st WMSG... There were too many players, and they had to draw the line somewhere.

The success/failure of this competition will be in its profitability.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

Well, quite some strong language has been thrown around, and even a relatively mild term like "distasteful" is, IMO, not the kind of language you would want to use towards a sponsor.




I did not really mean to imply that go is "poor", though it can certainly be argued that go is a very minor player compared to other sports when it comes to attracting sponsors. Rather, I do think that there is on display rather a lot of ingratitude for something that is, in my opinion, a wonderful contribution to the spread and international standing of go, and of mind sports in general.



You realize that every US state has its own flag, and that many of them have anthems, or at least the concept of a "state song"?

I think it would have been nice if it had been possible for the Argentinian (or other South American) players to be able to participate. I would have been fine with a US team with a guest player from there. But I do not think that the attitude of "we deserved to play, we have been wronged!" that Conanbatt displays has any justification.