The "APQF Championship" will be a single elimination tournament.

Amazing how few close games there has been in the first four rounds. Only one game fewer than 10 pts. I am thinking that this shows the big difference between the top four and bottom four players. Maybe there will be more close game in the last two round when they start playing more games within those two groups. Or does it just show that this group of potential professionals are fighters with less emphasis on positional judgment?

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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).

and a best of three (but counting previous encounters from the RRP), so even less likely for an unexpected upset

Round five results
http://www.usgo.org/aga-professional-results-2014

Ben defeated Daniel
Eric defeated Yuan
Jeremy defeated Matthew
Ryan defeated Ricky

Ryan is currently a student at UofT. He tried and got very close to becoming a pro in China before moving to Canada.

Ricky is a junior(math major) at Princeton. kgs id: rzhao

Aha, this is how they are making sure all RR games are important. Pretty cool I like it.

Round six results
http://www.usgo.org/aga-professional-results-2014

Eric defeated Ricky
Daniel defeated Jeremy
Ryan defeated Ben
Yuan defeated Matthew

Ryan Li and Eric Lui are undefeated in the round robin phase, and will play each other next. This could effectively be the first game of the finals!

Indeed. Both look to be favorites to make the final, and they have been looking in great form this week.

Looking at the field, some of the other games look important for seeding purposes. Assuming that my calculator is working and that ties are first broken by SDOS (then what?)

• If Jeremy Chiu beats Ben Lockhart he should capture the third seed on tiebreaks
• Daniel Gourdeau and Yuan Zhou are currently tied, so the winner will move to a higher seed. If Daniel wins and Jeremy loses his game then I think Daniel gets the fourth seed.
• I don't think the Ricky/Matthew game matters for Ricky. Even if he wins he looks assured of the eighth seed. If Matthew wins then he moves into a tie for 6th/7th seed but I think that tie requires applying the second-tier tiebreak.

Of course all bets are all if ties are broken by head-to-head results. Should be exciting regardless.

Round seven results (round robin complete)
http://www.usgo.org/aga-professional-results-2014

Ryan defeated Eric
Ben defeated Jeremy
Yuan defeated Daniel
Ricky defeated Matthew

Championship elimination begins tonight.
pairings posted (link above)

Huge upset tonight in the first round of the Championship elimination... #1 seeded Ryan Li fell to #8 seeded Matthew Burrall. That makes them 1-1, and the best of three playoff in the first round will be tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Jeremy, Ben and Eric bested their opponents with 2-0 and advance to round two.

Only three games tomorrow morning, as both Jeremy and Yuan will have to wait to see who their next opponent will be between Ryan and Matthew.


and a rousing discussion after the game about AGA scoring.

Does that mean there was a disput?

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Occupy Babel!

no. only in the online kibitz.

I see Ryan Li is through.

The finals are listed as best-of-3 or best-of-5. I understand the results of the round-robin are brought forward, but how would a best-of-5 arise?

Depends on how many time slots are available. If there are four slots then a best of 5 is played, one game being carried over from the round robin. If the knockout takes to many rounds to complete and there not time enough for four more games then a best of three is played.

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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).

Well, Ryan Li just won through to the finals. I am not sure that was the best result for him. Now he has to play a best of 5 with one game up. Had he lost and won the third game when it would have been a best of 3 and one game up.

While he was not guaranteed to win a third game in this semifinal, and so had to play to win, he has actually made it harder for himself to win the final, even though he is probably considered to be the favorite as he is already one up.

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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).

How will the lower places de decided?

Look at the results grid: http://www.usgo.org/aga-professional-results-2014

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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 was wondering the same thing this morning as I got dressed and I sat down to do the math when I had tea. I had thought that the best-of-five must automatically be better for Ryan, thinking that the probability the better player is more likely to win a best-of-n series as n increases and figuring that winning the first game of any series must be good.

As it turns out, it's not the case for realistic situations. If the probability of Ryan beating Eric in an individual game is less than 65% then he is better off with the best-of-three option. There is a crossover where the best-of-five is better: if Ryan's probability of winning a single game is greater than 65% then he's better with the longer series. Of course in that scenario he wins the series more than 90% of the time, so it's not really relevant.

This isn't to say that Ryan isn't the favourite. He looks to have something like a 60-80% chance of winning a best-of-five assuming he's at least as strong as Eric. With the best-of-three, though, he started at 75% and went up from there. Based on ratings it looks like Ryan has about a 70% chance of winning.

Ryan Li 1p