This thread is about the organisation of the European Go Congress.

Background information can be found at http://www.gohub.eu/forums/1/topics/2

In short the problem is what to do at the European Go congress with the topgroup and how to find the best European go player. while the topgroup exsist of European and non-European players. (and those non-europeans are so terribly strong)

At the moment the ideas are to create a completely seperate tournament (seperate but at the same time and place as the European Go congress) of only european topplayers who fight it out)

The problem is that this results in not many European top players for the main tournament.
Making the european top tournament small will lead that only a few players have a chance to become the european topplayer

Thinking this over I came with another suggestion:

The tournament is long enough (10 rounds) to create a topgroup (above the McMahon bar)of the top european players and the top non-europeans.
In this tournament plan 7 or 8 europeans rounds where the european topplayers play eachother to decide the european winner. the games not in this europeans tournament (Which should be announced properly, maybe the easiest way is to not pair any topeuropean against another topeuropean)) don't count for the european winner but do count for the overal tournament result.
Also players under the McMahon bar (but a high score) can play against the topplayers in the non european rounds. (giving them an interesting game as well)

I guess this will put some stress on the pairing program, but having the players play all rounds (byes are not allowed in the topgroup) and the high number of rounds I guess it must be possible.

In pratice the europeans tournament can be a organised as a kind of six round double Knock out tournament followed by a 7th round for deciding the 2nd and 3rd place. followed by an optional 8th round if nescesary and that all ''hidden'' within the overal general tournament.

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Promotor and Librarian of Sensei's Library

If this is going to be discussed anyway, I might as well post a link to my recently designed system for this:

http://senseis.xmp.net/?HermanHiddema%2 ... lusMcMahon

This kind of scheme has been discussed over and over again... The disadvantage of the kind of system you propose, is that it leads to all strong Asian participants playing a series of handicap games and games against each other for the biggest part of the tournament (OK, maybe with the exception of the last 2-3 rounds). The old system was like that, until it was decided to include also the Asian participants. Herman's system is interesting, though I believe it has similar flaws, as the strongest Europeans only play in 1-3 rounds of the Open - and those games don't even really "count" for them!

I'm still in favour of keeping the system as it is now, I'd hate discouraging Asian guests from coming. If you really want an unambiguous winner, then have the top four Europeans after round 8 play a knockout final in rounds 9 and 10. But then again, it's not up to the likes of us to decide, and doesn't really affect us either, does it?

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My name is Gijs, from Utrecht, NL.

When in doubt, play the most aggressive move

Those games do count for them, toward winning the European Open, or finishing high in it (which would be worth prize money). The strongest players (those in the winners bracket) also play in the Open in rounds 3, 5 and 7, as well as round 10 and (with ~50% chance) round 9. It is very unlikely for any player to play less than three rounds in the Open and in total, the top 16 players in this scheme play about 100 games in the open, an average of 6 per player. The top Asian and sub-top European players will meet in rounds 1 and 2, after that there will be at least 8 players from the top 16 European playing in the Open per round.



I think it is up to us to decide, and does affect us. It is a decision of the EGF, which represents the interests of all European players, not just the top players. And the presence of strong Asian players is of immediate concern to many weaker players as well.

I thought i replied but my reply seems to have disapearred (on the infinite internet)


I like Hermans idea but i would make some (I hope agreeable) changes to it.

The number of european top players doesn't need to be as limited as sugested.
The play between the last two european players without losses is to early I would like that decisive game round 10. (to keep the final game in the final round) (and also the game between the top 2 non european players)

In round 6 both unbeaten europeans could play against other europeas players with one loss against whom they haven't played yet. (and the same for round 7)

In Hermans idea is allready build in the idea that not some rounds are designated as european rounds but a more unclear system.
In my system all games involving top europeans in round 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 or so would be part of the european only tournament)

By not having such a clear system players will wonder: "am i now playing for the european tournament or not?" and maybe that is nescesary, but is is also nescesary that the games for the european tournament can easely be distinguished from the other games. (maybe give all topplayers their national flag and a flaglist of european countries )
It is even possible I guess that the asian playess will play an european top player in every round.

But off course it is also an interesting option for strong American player to play against a strong asian player. (or playing an Korean come to Europe )

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Promotor and Librarian of Sensei's Library

OK Herman, I should have read your proposal a bit more thoroughly before posting. It does indeed look quite interesting, definitely an improvement over the current system.

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My name is Gijs, from Utrecht, NL.

When in doubt, play the most aggressive move

Proposals submitted to the AGM will be

http://ktt.hjelt.helsinki.fi/msiivola/g ... osals.html

Some of them are quite good. I dislike Proposal 5 because of the suggested and even harsh decrement of thinking times in the EOC main tournament.

Jana Hricova's proposals in

http://www.gohub.eu/system/attachments/ ... ground.pdf
http://www.gohub.eu/system/attachments/ ... System.pdf

are also interesting with these exceptions: Wildcards are very bad because they replace playing skill by arbitrary politics. When a relatively small number of players enters a separate tournament and seeding depends on ratings, then potential rating cheating becomes a real problem. Although this is not a problem of Jana's proposals themselves, I'd recommend much more exhaustive tournament supervision than today. Isn't the rather isolated players population in Russia a problem?

Think only a double elimination tournament would lead to protests. better to make it a 6 / 7 round swiss.

If it is just a double elimination tournament you can get the unfair situation that an european player winning more games (against europeans) and even have won against the (double eliminatiion winner) is not declared the european top player.
(while he was in the top group and so)

This can happen if he played won against the d-e winner in a game that was not part of the d-e tournament.

In practice it should be tried that all games of european topplayers outside the european tournament are against non- europeans contestants (non europeans or people outside the topgroup)

Also for my information
What are the estimates of the size of the topgroup
and
The number of qualifing europeans in it.

I had a look at the end results of Groningen 2009 and thought that this would mean (bit rounded up numbers)

around 100 players in the topgroup (stronger than 4D)
From this group around 60 players can qualify as european

(never knew that europe extended that far east and south)

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Promotor and Librarian of Sensei's Library

http://www.eurogofed.org/results/congress.htm

In the sixties and seventies between 5 and 12 people would play for the title.
In 1979 a revolution came, 20 people in the top group.
Then by 1984 foreign players were competing alongside Europeans.

In my opinion, these old double round robin, round robin and swiss tournaments of the 60s and 70s where much better at giving a clear champion. Plus, the scoretables are more attractive to look at.

My own ideas
1 - Remove the superbar
2 - Place bar no lower than 5d
3 - Play a normal McMahon tournament to decide European Congress Champion.
4 - Accept that you cannot do the impossible
5 - Put the real European Championship in the EGCC at some other time in the year.
8 players, round robin. 2 games per day. Decide qualifications however you like. Maybe add in some other championships alongside the event (Student / Pair Go). Lets face it, now that Oza and Ing died there is a gap in the Calendar waiting to be filled.

It seems to me that this is the key that always makes this debate fail.

People have contradictory requirements. Some people are always going to be unhappy with the consequent solutions. Then someone has to decide which group of people deserve to be unhappy about it ...

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My European rating.

Of course, you can discuss whichever irrelevant things for as long as you want, but just for the record: The AGM has decided:

- The EC is to be played during the congress.
- The EC should have 10+ rounds. (This makes my 9+ rounds system already somewhat low in rounds, but 6-7 rounds is definitely out of order.)
- The EC games are European-only.

Robert, I know these decisions, but I think that they are problematic: they prescribe conditions to the EC system without any thought as to whether they are implementable. It may very well be that the different conditions are not compatible, which would mean that some would have to be dropped.

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A good system naturally covers all corner cases without further effort.

The AGM should decide differently
You have already 7 proposals trying to do A and B at the same time, it is not possible.

That there are 7+ proposals shows that it is possible. One just has to vote which of them is preferred and then work out its details.

The number of proposals doesn't show anything.
I don't like either Czech proposal, They both create a separate tournament during the European Go Congress. This might annoy CJKT players, but then it might not. Anyway, if they do come they will not have good opponents. Czech proposal will make a good tournament for European Champion, but at the same time it worsens Congress.

Finnish 1: Playing European Championship during Free days and Weekend, Not bad, but ... Top players already stated that they don't want to be tired out playing Congress and Championship at the same time. So I don't think they will accept it.

Finnish 2: basically same as Czech
Finnish 3: Looks odd to me. Needs more explanation before I would make any comments on it
Finnish 4: again like Czech
Finnish 5: again the Top players are being made to play too long and will complain. So same problem as Finnish 1 but worse.

But honestly, I am bored of these discussions. The top players (en masse) should decide what they want to do. The crazy superbar, exacerbated by the crazy 4d bar, doesn't suit anyone, but it remains in place because of disorganisation.

The only argument against moving the championship outside of the two weeks is some false sense of historical integrity. That's my decision and I'm sticking with it.

Your versus, e.g., my opinion on the topic have been stated frequently enough; no need to state mine again:)

I think that Javaness is right in principle. However, since the top players do not want to play an additional tournament, neither during the congress nor at a different time, a combined tournament for both the Open European Champion and the European Champion seems to be the only way to go.

We already have such a combined tournament, in which the European Champion is simply the "best" european player, but due to the fact that in recent years the European Champion is almost always determined by SOS lottery, the current system has caused some dissatisfaction.

One step that could be taken is to let the tournament organizers determine the MacMahon bar, so that they can raise it to 6 dan (or perhaps just 5 dan). This would alleviate some of the SOS pain, since the influence of the 4 dans and 5 dans on the supergroup would be much lower.

Other proposals, of which many have already been discussed, are always in severe danger of having a negative impact on the main tournament. Such negative impact can be, for example, suboptimal pairings or top asian players not getting to play the top european players.

I currently believe that, unless a separate tournament is accepted, the current system (but with a higher MacMahon bar) is the least evil.

One modification might be feasible, but it would also incur some costs: let the best european player not be the European Champion, but the challenger for that title, who will play the then-current European Champion in a best-of-3 series on three additional dates. This would give some value back to that title.

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A good system naturally covers all corner cases without further effort.

That is nearly the only thing the AGM has ever had a consensus on, so you may be correct that this is attempting the impossible. Or then again, you might be being reasonable, which is almost as bad as giving up

http://www.eurogofed.org/egf/agm2009sum.txt says:

15d Proposal to Adopt new European Championship Rules: No discussion, just votes on a few principles:
a. Hold it at EGC: 21-0
b. EC not affected by non-European players 16-0
c. The number of rounds to be played on the EC might be less than 10; 4-7

Not all the proposals are Finnish. I have collected them from the EGF executive discussions.

Goals:

Define unique champion
Define other top place(about until 10th), possibly shared.

Stage 1:

16 round robin groups of four players.
Three rounds: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday
Each group may include one non-European player.
Two best European players qualify for the second stage. Only games between Europeans count. Non-European and unqualified European players return to the main tournament.
Tie breaks: to be defined

Stage 2:
Players will be paired within same number of wins.

Round 1: 32 players
Round 2: 16 players with 1 win; 16 players with 0 wins
Round 3: 8 players with 2 wins, 16 players with 1 win; 8 players will return to main
Round 4: 4 players with 3 wins; 12 players with 2 wins; 8 players will return to main
Round 5: 2 players with 4 wins; 8 players with 3 wins; 6 players with 2 wins

Final rounds:

Round 6: 1 player with 5 wins; 5 players with 4 wins; (more players). The player with 5 wins will be paired with a player with 4 wins even, if it requires a repeated encounter.
Round 7: 1 player with 6 wins; players with 5 wins; (more players): The players with 5 wins play each other even, if it requires a repeated encounter.
or Round 7: no player with 6 wins: 4 players with 5 wins: (more players). The players with 5 wins will be paired with each other even, if it requires a repeated encounter.
Round 8: 1 player with 7 wins; 1 player with 6 wins or 2 players with 6 wins. The top two players play a final for the championship, winner is the champion and loser if the second.

Definitions for places 3-10: to be added.

Pros:

The one game against non European doe not affect the place in the Championship
The number of wins in the second stage and the place are consistent (one cannot get ahead with less number of wins).
Losing one game, one still has a chance to get into the final.
A definite final

Cons:

It takes 11 rounds, one more than currently. However, if we use places 1 and 2 from the fist stage we can start with tow groups of 16 players and save one round.
The player who loses only in the final does not get a second chance (we could give him another chance, but we would need an optional game).

Controversial opinion: Why is it we need a European champion in the first place?

There's no Asian, Chinese, Japanese, or Korean champions ..