Since the European Championship will start soon, I thought I would create this poll
I can only add 15 options for the poll choices. If you think somebody else will win, you can say so.
https://www.eurogofed.org/egc/2018.html

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North Lecale

I think Ilya's still got to be the favourite, he won last 2 years (before that was Fan Hui's three, before those Simara's upset win vs Ilya, then 2 more Ilya). Artem, Pavol and Mateusz are all pretty close (records for Ilya this year so far are 2-2, 3-2, 2-2 respectively) and some of the others can beat him on a good day, but in terms of winning the big games I still bet on Ilya. His determination and ability to win even from losing positions is so strong, plus he did well in the Chinese C league recently so should be on good form. I will cheer for Stanislaw though . Also nice to see Lucas Neirynck made it into the draw, though I am a bit puzzled how as I can see higher rated Europeans in the EGC entry list not in the European Championship (e.g. Lukas Kraemer).

Wishing luck to Lukas, voted for Mateusz.

I would like to see an amateur winning the championship, but I don't see Ilya losing.

But frankly, I consider this secondary to the Open event. Last year, the top participant in the Open was much stronger than anybody in this tournament. So, if it was up to me, I would eliminate this and consider the 2-week open tournament as "the european championship".

Who do you think should be allowed to participate? If it is anybody, then sure there are stronger players than those with (what the EGC considers to be) a European passport, but what significance would that have? When I hear the words "European Champion," then I expect to hear about the strongest European, not about the strongest person who happened to show up.

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Patience, grasshopper.

It's hardly surprising that a visiting active Chinese pro smashes the Europeans (Zhang Tao actually beat Ke Jie shortly afterwards, though Ke did help with one of his worst ever blunders), so I don't find that as interesting in terms of tournament results (the games themselves are still plenty interesting and it's nice to see top Europeans playing top 100 pros). So I like the separate European championship for Europeans. I am a bit disappointed that some of the top Europeans don't participate in the open in the 2nd week, but that's their choice and it is a lot of time commitment.

I would still choose an European to be "European Champion". I would just make it that the player with the highest final position in the Open be considered the European Champion. So the European Champion might be the player in 3rd place.

In tournaments like the Open, the third or fourth place is often determined by SOS, or even SOSOS/SODOS. Conversely, in the European Championship the winner is clear.

That's how it used to happen. As jlt points out that results in tiebreaks like SOS deciding the champion, or at least quite a few of the top 10 places, which many (including myself and I believe many of the top Europeans themselves) found unsatisfactory. I like that there is a clear quarter/semi-final and final for the European championship, it adds drama and a focal point. Better than Pavol beating Ilya because Pavol by the luck of the draw faced a stronger 6d in round 1 who ended up with lots of wins than Ilya so has more SOS, and the key deciding game being on board 12 in round 7. A criticism of the current system is that the top Europeans have fewer chances to play the super-strong visiting Asians (do they want to, do tournament organiser want them to, do observers want them to?), but recently that is allayed somewhat by the Euro pros playing in the Chinese C league.

I just read that the time limits for the European Championship are now Fischer with 90 minutes main and 45 second increment, rather than the main EGC 2.5 hours and 3 times 1 minute byo yomi. I don't have much familiarity with Fischer so don't know how that compares (but in a 300 move game the total time per player would be 90 + 150*0.75 ~= 3h20m). I suppose the advantage is you don't need to spend 59 seconds to answer an atari in byo-yomi to use the time available to think about other things, and can just let it accumulate.

Ilya, Pavol, Artem, and Mateusz have justified their p status amongst the Europeans by winning their first 3 games to go straight to the quarter finals, whilst the those with only 1 loss have 1 (Ali, Stansilaw, Thomas, Dusan) or 2 more rounds in the repechage.
https://www.eurogofed.org/egc/2018.html

Pavol Lisy won, beating Ilya by 2.5 in the final.

I was very surprised to see that. I was sure Ilya will win and become 3p. It is odd that Ilya reached the final and obtained only 1LDP, while Ali Jabarin ended on 3rd place and collected 3LDPs. I updated my unofficial list at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18cQPKamnkSUBgLQoc1ATLov-YxDT99z-YThP_6iXifA/edit#gid=1010890750

Does this mean the European Congress no longer uses Ing rules?

Indeed, it's Japanese with 6.5 komi. They didn't use Ing rules when I went in 2010, 2011, 2013, though we did use Ing clocks and maybe stones at some, I can't remember. At least the top boards this year were using DGT not Ing clocks, and the European Championship was using Fischer time (main tournament was still normal byo yomi).

I remember EGC 2010 in Tampere when we were finally allowed to use Japanese rules in the main tournament. Or, as they say, "Territory Scoring Verbal European-Japanese Rules with 6.5 komi for even games and Japanese fill-in counting."

8 years ago, John.

Cheers,
Vesa

Is game record of final game available?

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be immersed

Yes. This page has several game records from the European Championship: https://www.eurogofed.org/newick/file.php?id=1633.