French amateur 6 dan player, who was French Champion in 1993, 1998 and 2002. Trained as insei in Japan in 1990-1991. Winner of the 1998 Obayashi Cup. Technically he is also a professional player, having obtained a 1 shidoin certificate from the Nihon Kiin.

Apparently an upset.
It really should be a round robin for such an important tournament.

Yes, the contrast with the British championship format is quite stark. The first stage is the Candidates tournament, which this year only had 15 players around 1d average and only 1 3d+ (former 4d): http://britgo.org/results/2019/cand. The next stage is the Challenger's league, an 8 player round robin event over 4 days with last year's champion and (since this year) runner up (me) plus top 6 from the Candidates. But a bunch of those top 6 declined their places so the Challengers will dip into the 1d/1k players. And then the top 2 of that play a best-of 3-or-5 title match. That's likely to be between myself and Andrew Kay, two 4 dans. Yet the EGF pro qualifier is a battle of 6 and 7 dans and comes down to single-elimination (after first 2 rounds).

Technically he is also a professional player, having obtained a 1 shidoin certificate from the Nihon Kiin.

Apparently an upset.

It really should be a round robin for such an important tournament.

Very technically. A shidoin diploma denotes a chief instructor in a dojo, so if he makes some money from teaching he can claim to be a pro. That's not what most go people count as a kishi or proper pro, and Farid has never been listed as such as far as I can see. Even Japanese players who properly make the cut but who then can't make it in the tournament world tend to be downgraded to "lesson pro" rather than kishi.

But shidoin is still a worthy achievement, and Farid is one of the nicest top amateurs I've met.

Yes, the contrast with the British championship format is quite stark. The first stage is the Candidates tournament, which this year only had 15 players around 1d average and only 1 3d+ (former 4d): http://britgo.org/results/2019/cand. The next stage is the Challenger's league, an 8 player round robin event over 4 days with last year's champion and (since this year) runner up (me) plus top 6 from the Candidates. But a bunch of those top 6 declined their places so the Challengers will dip into the 1d/1k players. And then the top 2 of that play a best-of 3-or-5 title match. That's likely to be between myself and Andrew Kay, two 4 dans. Yet the EGF pro qualifier is a battle of 6 and 7 dans for a pro title and comes down to single-elimination (after first 2 rounds).

[Edit but too slow for Java] Having double elimination down to 8 players and then a round robin league would take rather a lot of games/time though, so I'm not sure that's viable. You could use more selection down to just the 8 players from grand prix points and other events throughout the year. But in the end although Stanislaw and Lukan were the favourites and highest rated, they aren't so far ahead of the others that it feels like an injustice that Tanguy won. If Ilya had entered I'm pretty sure he would have won. Any format will come down to a bit of a lottery of who played well on the day vs not, rather than who has had the best performance over the last year. So well done to Tanguy.

Possible competition format respecting the condition that "no one is eliminated after a single loss". Select 8 players P1,..., P8.

1st round: P1 against P5, P2 against P6, etc.

2nd round: winners of round 1 play together, losers of round 1 play together. The two players with 2 wins (call them Q1 and Q2) are selected for round 4.

3rd round: the 4 players with 1 win and 1 loss play together to determine 2 additional players Q3 and Q4.

Rounds 4,5,6: apply the same procedure to Q1,...,Q4 in order to select 2 finalists.

Rounds 7,8,9: final, best-of-three.

But 7 players can tie after the round-robin, see my previous post viewtopic.php?p=244962#p244962