Antti won by 2.5 points. Very interesting game

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Antti won by 2.5 point.

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Antti won by 2,5 points.
edit: way too slow

Ask once - get multiple answers . L19 !

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Round 4 results are in (they took their time today): http://egc2013.go.art.pl/EGC2013_main.html

Poll, in order of tournament ranking:

1. Fan Hui ================== Won | 4W/0L
1. Antti Tormanen =========== Won | 4W/0L
3. Pavol Lisy ================ Lost | 3W/1L
3. Mateusz Surma ============ Lost | 3W/1L
8. Thomas Debarre =========== Won | 3W/1L
8. Breakfast ================= Won | 3W/1L
8. Ilya Shikshin ============== Won | 3W/1L
13. Ondrej Silt =============== Won | 4W/0L (-1 point, see above)
16. Csaba Mero ============== Won | 2W/2L
29. Ali Jabarin =============== Lost | 2W/2L
35. Cornel Burzo ============= Won | 2W/2L

As we already know, Antti and Fan Hui continue on as the only undefeated players in the top group with MMS of 38. I can't wait for tomorrow's match between them - will Antti be able to put up a fight against Fan? Also a nice touch for Europeans is that Thomas Debarre beat Kim Won-Tae, a 7-dan Korean.

Altogether at the "second" spot at MMS of 37 there are currently 11 people, including Juri Kuronen as the second Finn =)

Antti lost to Fan. It couldn't be less surprising after round 5:

Fan is at 5 wins.
Antti Tormanen, Pavol Lisy, Mateusz Surma, Thomas Debarre, Alexandr Dinerstein, Ilja Shikshin and Ondrej Silt have 4 wins*.

I believe that if you took the top rated competitors, dropped Artem and Csaba Mero, then added Mateusz, you'd have this list.

*(Ondrej has 5 wins, but started in a non-supergroup bracket).

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Occupy Babel!

Ilja Shikshin won the weekend tournament with a perfect 5/5 score.
Fan Hui came second with 4/5, losing to Shikshin in round 4.
Ali Jabarin came third, also with 4/5, losing to Fan in round 3.

Round 5 results: http://egc2013.go.art.pl/EGC2013_main.html

Poll, in order of tournament ranking:

1. Fan Hui ================== Won | 5W/0L
2. Antti Tormanen =========== Lost | 4W/1L
3. Pavol Lisy ================ Won | 4W/1L
3. Mateusz Surma ============ Won | 4W/1L
5. Thomas Debarre =========== Won | 4W/1L
6. Ilya Shikshin ============== Won | 4W/1L
7. Breakfast ================= Won | 4W/1L
8. Ondrej Silt ================ Won | 5W/0L (-1 point, see above)
19. Ali Jabarin =============== Won | 3W/2L
26. Cornel Burzo ============= Won | 3W/2L
27. Csaba Mero ============== Lost | 2W/3L

The weekend tournament round 4 game between Ilya and Fan marked Fan's first loss during the EGC. I'm hoping someone can repeat the feat in the main tournament to keep the chamionship open for as long as possible. Anyway, the game was quite typical of Ilya: full of fighting, ending with Ilya killing a big dragon. Worth having a look.

Antti is also covering his games (up to round 3 so far) on his blog: http://gooften.net/
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Ilya Shikshin vs. Fan Hui - Weekend Tournament Round 4

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.

A-ha, I see. Thanks for the information.

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

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

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.)

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

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

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

I don't think that the fact that it is used in many sports makes it unreasonable for go. There are of course arguments for and against, but this fact alone should not be one of them.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

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.

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.

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Patience, grasshopper.

One of the advantages of the system is that it is much easier to explain at the end.

Under the old system, you could have a last round situation like: These 7 players can still win the EC, provided they win this round, but who wins then also depends on the results of 30 other players, some of whom may be playing on board 50 or so.

Try telling that to a passing journalist

Well, it still seems unfair to me. Why not take those 8 players and following the KO process but maintain the MMS, SOS and SODOS scores already earned?

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).