Sponsored by the Beijing Zong Yi Yuan Cheng Culture Communication Co. Ltd.

"Starting in 2014 the EGF will certify up to two players per year as "European Professionals". Only players holding a passport of an EGF member-country for at least 10 years are eligible for a certification"

Full document at http://www.britgo.org/files/China.pdf.

I wonder who haewgs is, and how they knew that this file was there.

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North Lecale

First the AGA and now the EGF as well...

Good things are happening in the wide-wide world of go.

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"You have to walk before you can run. Black 1 was a walking move.
I blushed inwardly to recall the ignorant thoughts that had gone through
my mind before, when I had not realized the true worth of Black 1."
-Kageyama Toshiro on proper moves

Quite interesting.

Is there some significance to passport instead of citizenship?

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Occupy Babel!

Probably to avoid very strong Asian inseis from migrating to Europe and becoming go pros in a short period of time

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http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

I meant "passport holders for 10 years" as opposed to "citizens for 10 years".

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Occupy Babel!

It's interesting since some countries like Ireland used not issue passports to anyone under 16 (you were added to your parent's passport instead), so theoretically an Irish 17 year old not would be ineligible if they strictly applied the rule (admittedly in a nonsensical way which would be against the spirit of the rule).

I think Belgium is the quickest place to get citizenship, 3 years versus 5-9 years in most other European countries and usually you can't claim until you're 18, so you're looking at a minimum age of 28 for becoming a European Pro as a non-national to begin with if your parents moved countries as you're not going to get allowed to stay in most European countries permanently when you're under 18 and not an EU citizen.

The best of this is Chinese Rules, although we will have fun of declaring how to interpret the ko rules.

The EGF shall become commercially aware? For a start, it does not even need sponsor money. The EGF could simply start distributing and announcing available playing teachers, children / school teachers, books, other media etc. At the moment, the EGF artificially creates two classes (IIRC, players with / without rating of at least 2550) and cares for highly rated players at best for the sake of EGC lectures, while ignoring the EXISTING lower rated professionals (such as book authors or school teachers) and the non-EGC activities of the higher rated professionals.

The worst of all is the guild-like system of limiting access to sponsor money by setting requirements (and even wild cards, which rely on political selections of players) of who may participate in certain events. This creates a bottle neck like in East Asian professional selection systems and discrimination between those lucky to make it versus the unlucky "non-certificate-professional" professionals called "amateurs". Or do I misunderstand the intended system and it is about as open as the current EGC?

This is very exciting.

I am interested by Javaness' comment as well. Can I assume this is a premature leak then?

Is the US pro system similarly sponsored?

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- Brady
Want to see videos of low-dan mistakes and what to learn from them? Brady's Blunders

Wow, they're putting a lot of money into this from China.

Some questions pop up in my mind:

* What is with European players who already are professionals by the Hankuk Kiwon or Nihon Kiin?

* EGF has no jurisdiction over the vast majority of tournaments: how will they induce tournament organizers to apply for bonus point tournaments?

* What is the new amateur diploma scheme? I expect a lot of resentment when this is supposed to mean we have to pay for ranks and/or EGF is setting the rules for every country.

Actually, this adoption of Chinese rules in certain cases looks like the only downside to me. We don't need yet another rule set. We managed just fine without Ing rules, we would manage just fine without Chinese rules.

This is very interesting news indeed, especially after the (apparently?) failed attempt at professional European league some time ago. Could this be the beginning of closing the gap between east and west now that both US and EU have a pro system...

The earlier attempt was really just some enthusiastic players saying they wanted a pro system. They had no sponsors, and you cannot set up a pro system without money. This proposal has big sponsors (to the tune of $150,000 per year) and has the opportunity to allow talented players to study in China, so it looks a lot more viable. Also, the sponsorship lasts until 2021, so they have quite some time to try to work towards self-sufficiency.

It would have sufficed to use Simplified Ing Rules, as possible according to the EGF General Tournament Rules.

Or just use Japanese rules. No Ing, no Chinese, no FFG, lets just use the rule set that everyone already knows.

The EGF will certify the "European Professionals" same as Hankuk Kiwon or Nihon Kiin do certify their pros. The idea is that they all are on the same level this means that e.g. Catalin can participate in all events where the "new" european pros participate.


The bigger tournaments should apply to hold a bonus tournament. Nobody can be forced to do so i guess.


On this matter nothing is decided yet. I suppose it will be all decided by each country's organization separately. EGF will provide some standards and probably also help with the paperwork (printing of the diplomas).

This is only a EGF / CEGo (Beijing Zong Yi Yuan Cheng Culture Communication Co. Ltd.) cooperation. They sponsor only the EGF.

Looks like an official leak, the document is authentic It's only 1 month until the AGM in Poland, probably not a bad idea to start a public discussion about it.

It seems rather strange that somebody from the BGA chose to leak it here, rather than on a BGA mailing list.

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North Lecale

Will that money suffice?
In the beginning it will probably be enough, but after 5 years you gotta pay a salary for 10 pros, 15000$ of yearly income sounds rather grim to me.


I think it will be really hard to get a self-sustaining pro system going over here in Europe. I'm not sure about how much players/fans we got, but the fact that go is not a viewing sport will probably be the biggest hurdle.