Any result on Antti vs Pavol?

Round 6 results are up.

Fan keeps winning (beat Pavol Lisy), but next round he plays Shikshin...

Debarre keeps up strong performance by beating Dinerchtein

After round 7, there will be a top 8 KO for the title, so the next round is very important. All the players from places 5-16 need to win this round to keep a chance for the title. Numbers 1-4 are already certain to reach the play-offs.

KO = knockout tournament? Does that mean that if you're in the top 8 and lose on round 8, you can't become the champion? Or will they keep their MMS from previous rounds and continue as normal, just within their "mini-tournament"?

Yes, knock-out.

After round 7, there is a play-off first to determine the top 8, which goes like this:

Take the best 16 Europeans (MMS + SOS)

Pair 1 with 16, 2 with 15, 3 with 14, etc.

If one of the players in the pair has more MMS (after round 7), they qualify for the KO without playing.

If the players have the same MMS, they play a game on Wednesday. The winner qualifies for the KO.

Now we have exactly 8 players, who play direct knock-out in the last three rounds (Thu, Fri, Sat). So if you lose any of those three games, you are not European Champion, even if you had better MMS at the start of the KO.

That seems very unfair. The winner should be the one with the best performance over the entire tournament.

I wholeheartedly agree, though I think a fair fairer thing would be a 3-4 game league with the best 4 or best 8. Too long to work, but it would make it clearer for who is "the best."

The KO league method is used in many sports, though (the first example for me would be the Spanish first division basketball championship.)

Which is an excellent reason NOT to use it for go, or any other mental pursuit.

That seems very unfair. The winner should be the one with the best performance over the entire tournament.

Now we have exactly 8 players, who play direct knock-out in the last three rounds (Thu, Fri, Sat). So if you lose any of those three games, you are not European Champion, even if you had better MMS at the start of the KO.

I think this sounds quite exciting, and although I understand what's unfair about the possibility that the most consistent player might not end up becoming the European Champion, the winner will have nonetheless been the only player with no losses in the KO round. All three games and especially the final, will be played against the top players in what is surely the atmosphere of a pressure cooker. The winner certainly deserves the title.

Well, you can probably find a score of older threads about it, but here's a quick summary:

This system was introduced because in many recent years the EC was decided on SOS or even SODOS. And the reason for that was that many strong Asian players (especially Korean 7d amateurs) participated and took all the top places in the McMahon. So the EC was mostly decided by: which round did you get paired against the Koreans? (early round? bad for SOS, no EC for you).

So then there was talk of: Maybe we should only pair the European top players against each other. Never pair Asian players against the top 16/24/32 European. That is what they did in Hamburg in 88, and as a result all the strong Japanese visitors spent two weeks playing other Japanese. Not much fun, not very welcoming of us, people felt.

So this system is a sort of compromise. You have to do good enough in the first 7 rounds to make the cut, and after that it is just Europeans amongst themselves.

Is it perfect? No, but a lot of systems are not. It is good enough.