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EGC 2011 question
http://www.lifein19x19.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=4464		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  entropi [ Mon Aug 15, 2011 1:49 am ]
Post subject:  EGC 2011 question
This year's main tournament system puzzled me a bit. As far as I understood, the knock-out tours (last 3 rounds) for 8 best European players was for determining the best European player.

But was such a "knock-out" separation from the main tournament really necessary for that purpose?

Why not defining two winners (or titles) as "Open" and "European" and making a normal McMahon tournament? The real best player (Kim Youngsam) wins the "Open" title and the best European player (maybe the second or third or fourth or whatever player in the McMahon result list) wins the "European" title.

I am not saying "it should be like that", I am just asking why this (probably simplest) solution to determine the best European was not good enough.
Author:  HermanHiddema [ Mon Aug 15, 2011 2:23 am ]
Post subject:  Re: EGC 2011 question
The system as you propose it is exactly the system as it has been used up until 2010, and the reason for the new system was because that system wasn't working.

With the participation of a significant number of strong Korean ex-insei, the situation had become one where several European players would score the same number of points, usually 7 wins and 3 losses, and then the European Champion was decided by SOS. That meant that the European Champion was that player who was lucky that his early round 4 dan or 5 dan opponents were having a good tournament. The player's own performance had become almost irrelevant. If you did well, you invariably would run into more strong Koreans.

So to win, it had become more important to have lucky pairings than to be the strongest player. That was widely considered to be bad, especially by the strong European players themselves.

In response, many strong players wanted to have a system where strong Asian players would not be allowed to participate, or where the top 16-32 Europeans played in a separate tournament without any strong Asian players.

Such a system was widely considered bad, because it would strongly advertise to the Asian players that they are not really welcome at the EGC, while in fact most players are really happy to see such strong players at the EGC.

The current system (as of 2011) is therefore a compromise. The strong players still play in the main tournament, and meet the strong Asian players, but instead of a SOS lottery after round 10, they enter a KO after round 7. That guarantees that there will be a single winner, and that that winner is not too strongly influenced by the games with the strong Asian players, while still making the Asian players feel welcome and having them compete with the best players that Europe can field.
Author:  RobertJasiek [ Mon Aug 15, 2011 2:24 am ]
Post subject:  Re: EGC 2011 question
What you, entropi, describe was the previous system. It has been abandoned for mainly these reasons:

- There shall be more top European - top European games so that they get a more reasonable number of such games in the scarce top European tournaments, the European Champion is decided by a greater fraction of such games, a great number of top non-Europeans cannot make the mutual top European competition too sparse or too unpredictable.
- The European Championship could depend on final placement tiebreakers and that even too heavily. 1 SOS point difference is by far not as satisfactory as 1 win more.
- Some have a preference for what they call better PR if the winner is decided by KO.
Author:  entropi [ Mon Aug 15, 2011 4:38 am ]
Post subject:  Re: EGC 2011 question
Makes sense!

But, on the other hand, you can never get rid of some kind of lottery in a tournament.

If I am not mistaken there were at least two European players in KO who did not play Kim (Thomas Debarre and Cornel Burzo). Probably if they had been matched with Kim in the first rounds, they would lose and maybe somebody else would make it to the KO, and maybe even defeat Ilya.

I mean, this time it is not SOS lottery but matching lottery... What if Thomas had won the KO, for example? Luckily Ilya had played Kim (even though he lost, at least his participation in KO is not questionable).

Well, anyway, this minor critic aside, I still agree that it is a good compromise.

But it should have been better advertised. The first impression for those who are not really familiar with this background is something like "non-europeans are allowed to participate in the tournament but not allowed to win". It is a matter of PR.
Author:  HermanHiddema [ Mon Aug 15, 2011 5:05 am ]
Post subject:  Re: EGC 2011 question
entropi wrote:
Makes sense!

But, on the other hand, you can never get rid of some kind of lottery in a tournament.

If I am not mistaken there were at least two European players in KO who did not play Kim (Thomas Debarre and Cornel Burzo). Probably if they had been matched with Kim in the first rounds, they would lose and maybe somebody else would make it to the KO, and maybe even defeat Ilya.


Yes, that is why the system is not completely without interference. Burzo, BTW, did already play Jeon, and had to play a relegation game on Wednesday to get into the KO.

Quote:
I mean, this time it is not SOS lottery but matching lottery... What if Thomas had won the KO, for example? Luckily Ilya had played Kim (even though he lost, at least his participation in KO is not questionable).

Well, anyway, this minor critic aside, I still agree that it is a good compromise.


It could happen, yes, that a player avoids the Korean players through a bit of pairing luck, then just makes it into the KO, then wins. I do not think it is very likely, but it can happen, sure.

Still, I agree that this system is a good compromise. No system is perfect. :)

Quote:
But it should have been better advertised. The first impression for those who are not really familiar with this background is something like "non-europeans are allowed to participate in the tournament but not allowed to win". It is a matter of PR.


Good PR is very important. It should be made clear that non-Europeans are allowed to win the European Open event, but cannot be "European Champion". That was also the case under the old system, by the way.

In my opinion, a major benefit of the new system is that it allows for better PR. If a newspaper or TV journalist asks about it, it is very easy now to point at a single match, the final of the KO, as the one that will decide the European Championship. Under the old system, you might have to explain that all of the European players at boards 2, 4, 5, 6 and 8 could still be Champion if they win, but that it depends mostly on the results of boards 12, 15, 17, 18, 26, 35 and 44 which one of them gets it :)
Author:  p2501 [ Mon Aug 15, 2011 5:09 am ]
Post subject:  Re: EGC 2011 question
Is there any particular reason to why the KO-System is best-of-one rather than best of three other than the limited time frame?
Author:  HermanHiddema [ Mon Aug 15, 2011 5:23 am ]
Post subject:  Re: EGC 2011 question
p2501 wrote:
Is there any particular reason to why the KO-System is best-of-one rather than best of three other than the limited time frame?


Nope, limited time-frame it is. At 2h30m + 1m byoyomi, games can last over 6 hours.
Author:  p2501 [ Mon Aug 15, 2011 5:38 am ]
Post subject:  Re: EGC 2011 question
Also I'd imagine it is very already exhausting for the players as it is.
Author:  RobertJasiek [ Mon Aug 15, 2011 6:16 am ]
Post subject:  Re: EGC 2011 question
entropi wrote:
this time it is not SOS lottery but matching lottery...


Not just this time but it was also before. This time, however, the relegation and KO pairings are not lottery but 1. avoid repeated pairs, 2. use or else approach fold pairing.

Quote:
it should have been better advertised.


I tried very hard to convince the organizers to announce it very early and clearly but they started to make related announcements only ca. 2 days before the relegation.
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