Wow this thread was a long read, thanks to Hsiang for sharing the info about the games!




There are six teams so this needs slight modification. You have CJKT, an open tournament among the other countries to determine the spots for the 5th team, and clearly as we have learned, the only acceptable possibility for the sixth team is go-playing racoons (=

Keep in mind that this is the first one. If this one is a success (however that may be measured), then perhaps we can better advocate for changes for the next one(s). Otherwise, all this discussion is merely moot.

Remember, the first World Amateur Go Championship only had 15 players -- I'd bet that one or more countries was inadvertently left out of that event too.

This claim can be construed in various ways, but it's always worth remembering that some American states have been in nearly-continuous operation for 400 years, whereas many European nations were 19th-century innovations.





I understand the impulse here, but I think it would be sad to admit that, out of all the games in the world, Go is the one game that doesn't attract enough interest to merit national teams. Far better to have six national teams and work towards more in the future than to embrace continental teams or world teams as a matter of course.

(I'll add that I don't really understand why they want teams for Go, rather than individual representatives. Are chess, checkers and xiangqi also going to be team competitions?)

The current solution is not as open and fair as possible but politics replaces open and fair qualification. Politics presumes assumptions about relative strengths of different countries. Selection of countries by means of politics is the opposite of competition to see which countries (or regions or continents) can qualify.

The real solution is to let ALL countries / regions / continents qualify. If it were not the first edition of the event, then the top placed countries could be seeded automatically. (Have you even noticed that North Korea is missing in your CJKT list, too?)

Indeed. Go is first of all an individual sport. The percentage of team and pair tournaments in world level tournaments is too high.

Teams give a better idea of the relative skill levels of countries, since one person's brilliance isn't enough to carry.

An individual player can be dismissed as a fluke, losing 3+ in games between the top 5 is harder to discount.

Also, the varying "depth" of teams can make the competition more exciting. When we played against the Czechs, their top 2 boards were absurdly strong, but we were able to pull off 3 wins on the bottom end.

Upsets happen in individual games, but they're pretty rare. The team format spices the competition up a bit.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

That makes good sense, I guess. Now that I think about it, there's probably more variance in board games than in many athletic competitions.

Well, it's difficult to find information, the Sport Accord website has absolutely nothing. For chess, the best I could find is this announcement:

http://previews.chessdom.com/2011/1st-s ... mind-games

It just says "Players who wish to register for the event, and currently qualify through rating [2700+], or may qualify in July 2011, should send an email to office@fide.com expressing their interest in participating." This makes it sound like there won't even be a qualifier, maybe they will just pick the highest rated players who express interest in attending...

For bridge, I found this:

http://www.bridgewinners.com/index.php/ ... mind-games

"The Open Field will consist of China, Italy, Norway, and USA

The Women's Field will be China, England, France, and USA"

I can't tell how they chose these countries to be the teams for bridge. Maybe there was some knockout tournament among the countries? It's notable that Open and Men's have different countries competing. Also notable: Italy, Norway, France & England, not "European Union".

If we consider the SportAccord Mind Games as a kind of reduced successor of the 1st WMSG then the selection of teams looks quite reasonable. The results of mens teams are here: http://kamyszyn.go.art.pl/wmsg2008/teamsmen. Korea, China and Japan took the first three places. USA and Canada did well in the qualification. Euro sent 22 of the 39 teams playing in the tournament.

As a thought experiment for it being an assumed qualifer?



Womens teams also needs to be considered because the SportsAccord event has mixed teams. Additionally there is the question with which fractions to mix genders.

More or less. It is usual that the first instance of an event leaves scope for improvement. To do a proper qualification the thing should be announced abbout two years prior the event. Then the continental organisations lke EGF, AGF, FIG, etc. would have time to set up a continental event and inform in the for their members who in turn might need to oerganise national qualifications.

Womens teams give a similar result. A team should have at least one male and one female player. Within that constraint the sending organisation may decide.

Where does that leave continents / oceans without continental federations yet? E.g., what about Africa or New Zealand?

Just posted some impressions about European preliminary:
http://eurogotv.com/index.php?menu=News

I have nothing against Vanessa, representing Europe (same case with US team), but I feel that organizers made a big mistake by deciding European female representative with only 2 girls attending the preliminary.
I tried to force Jana to change her decision and invite Natalya Kovaleva (she has even bigger rating, comparing to Vanessa), but she was not accepted, because 3 Russians already registered (and they announced the limit: max 3 players per country)

If you don't know the real strength of Natalya, here is the table of the recent tournament she played:
http://www.europeangodatabase.eu/EGD/To ... n=10537087
During the last WMSG she also beat Japanese Female Kisei titleholder

And here is the final decision and explanation of Jana (by email):
We considered your suggestion and the decision is, that we will not allow four players from Russia in the tournament in any case. The reason is simple. We made a decision to allow three players per country as a maximum to build the team as international as possible. Well, it is true, that a vacant place will be filled with a local player, so Czechia will have four places at the end, but that can hardly have an influence on how many country will qualify at the end. The reserve players hardly can qualify as he is at the bottom of the rating list, while Natalia would have an influence on a women's qualification a lot and, as a result, on a number of places for Russia as well. That will be very unfair to the others.

Nothing secret here, so I think it's ok to post it and discuss the problem (but anyway it's too late to change anything)

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Go lessons: http://breakfast.go4go.net/
Russian Go news: https://vk.com/go_secrets/

Was there an explicit rule to limit the number of females in the preliminaries to 2?



A rule that has nothing to do with playing strength. Very bad!



A team should be as strong as possible! (If it was really meant to be as international as possible, then 1 is the proper maximum of players per country... This is so obvious that the excuse has to be called weak. Also a European (with the extended EGF member country meaning) in the team title would be more fitting for "as international as possible" than EU in the title.)

They invited Guo Juan and Diana (also Zhao Pei?), but both refused. After some male players refused to take part in the preliminary (for example Mero Csaba, Debarre, FJ) EGF replaced them to Vanessa and Rita Pochai. Rita was not able to take part ( she was ill), so only 2 girls played: Svetlana and Vanessa.

The only good decision was to force them to meet each other in round 6. Both had 2 from 5. Much better than to decide the female representative by Sos/Sodos.

Anyway, I feel, it was better to have separated female preliminary with top 4-8 European girls attending it (incl. Kovaleva, Burdakova, and others)

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Go lessons: http://breakfast.go4go.net/
Russian Go news: https://vk.com/go_secrets/

official qualification page

no, the criterion were as follows (in decreasing priority):
1. max. 3 players per country
2. at least three females invited
3. highest achieved GoR in interval July 2010 - June 2011
in case an invited player declined the invitation, another one was invited according to the criterion, to keep overall number of participants at 24

Diana Koszegi 1p declined, Rita Pocsai 4d should have participated instead but didn't arrive, so the number of females was only 2 in the end (my unofficial informations)

i agree that a separate female qualification could choose the female player better but on the other hand the used system allowed for more than one female to qualify (in theory at least)

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Spilling gasoline feels good.

I might be wrong, but probably not.

With separate qualifications for male / female, it is much harder to determine how many players of either gender should qualify. Therefore a common qualifications tournament is better. When players of the same gender compete for mutual exclusion during the last rounds, then using forced pairing is indeed much more meaningful than SOS & Co.

The rule of 3 players per country is a good idea in my opinion. Otherwise, it's very easy just to drop a game by accident so that your teammate qualifies. If allegations of something like this appear, it's just too poisonous for the team.

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North Lecale

well, in the last round when Cristian Pop defeated Catalin Taranu, Catalin didn't fight very hard (and the game was over in about half the time compared to other decisive games). but it is hard to blame him, as he was already qualified, so naturally lacked motivation even if he didn't intend to help Cristian

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Spilling gasoline feels good.

I might be wrong, but probably not.