This is the cheating accusation that I have been forwarded by one of the team captains earlier this year:



The author was anonymous and signed the message only as "Seville, Spain".

With the text I got forwarded also the accuser's email and, after obtaining permission to contact them directly, I asked for more data (among which, the KGS usernames of the players involved). I still think the anonymous could reveal their identity, at least to the EGF officials, in order to make the accusations more credible.


Since in another thread I promised that I would have published more detailed information if I couldn't make progress with my investigation and since the Spanish motion about letting only EGF members (national associations) publish tournament results on EGD passed, I'm making this public.

As far as I know, most Spanish clubs have written to the EGF explaining the problems they have with AEGO. I have a copy of the email, but I don't think I can share it, so someone involved will have to publish it.


By the way, I'm not the League Manager anymore, I resigned due to not having time to take care of my role as well as I'd like to. As you can see by the fact that the investigation hasn't been completed yet.

Link to the dropbox folder with some of the data I gathered: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cx5z6qqw9u4q387/AABty0pHwYfvXgtxtGRrEdtma?dl=0
Contents:
- 19x19 KGS games played by Jose Manuel Vega, which I planned to use to establish his style and compare with the games questioned by the cheating accusation
- Sabina Rodriguez' tournament results; PGETC vs face to face tournaments
- The list of games questioned by the cheating accusation, plus some more information (KGS usernames, opponents' declared rank, etc.)

Pandanet never answered my emails asking about which data the server collects (I was hoping for IPs, though they wouldn't have been a proof).

If anyone is interested in pursuing this, feel free to use all the data.

I remember one match were a team, perhaps it was Ireland, were playing against Spain. All the Spanish players were disconnected at the same time.
So I find this unproven allegation interesting.

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North Lecale

Global village ==> global gossip.

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The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

The situation is rather complicated in Spain at the moment.

There have been for a few years now accusations of the AEGO (spanish federation) haven been taken over by fake members.

Here's what i've understood the problem to be, but i can't vouch 100% for its accuracy and there's a chance i've misunderstood some things:

If i've understood correctly the spanish Go clubs get votes in Spanish federation according to how many members they have.
What happened one year is that a certain club in spain suddenly had a huge influx of members and basicaly took control of the AEGO.

The weird thing is, from what i've heard, no one has seen any of these new players. They exist on paper, but that's all that can be said.
Tournaments organised by this club have seen very few players, while the official count of players that they have has sometimes been 20-25x higher (at least on some european go statistics websites).

At the same time some of the largest clubs in Spain have quit the AEGO since negotations regarding representation of the country at events and other things have apperantly become impossible.

Now AEGO also petitioned the EuroGoFed AGM to only allow EGD submissions by people officially sanctioned by the national federation.
They probobly did this to prevent people from leaving the AEGO. So now there's basicly a situation where the largest tournaments in Spain can't submit their results.
To make matters worse, Spain has traditionally used the EGD rankings as the countries official ranking system. Even at low kyu levels.
So if the most popular tournaments now can't submit results, it basicly means that the whole rating system in Spain will collapse.

Now all of this i've just written is hearsay, and please take it with a grain of salt and use your own judgement. But together with allegations of cheating and so on, i think the EGF should at least prepare for the possibility of there soon being two official federations in Spain. One with a lot of members actively playing tournaments, showing up at clubs etc, and one which might or might not be able to do the same.

If that's true, then that is now the third country in Europe in which this has happened.


My opinion on this motion just got worse.

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North Lecale

Sad to hear this Moreso that it's alleged many people knew of the cheating and allowed it. Is being boss of a go association really such a thrill it's worth all these shenanigans? "Sad little king of a sad little hill". Maybe these countries have government money for official sports clubs? The husband and wife relationship does make these frequent 2-person tournaments make more sense, can't let others submit results and dilute these quality data:

2017-05-30 San Fernando`s Day
2017-07-02 La Carboneria
2017-07-04 La Carboneria
2017-07-16 Summer Time
2017-08-09 Summer Time

Looks like I missed the secret to reaching 2400 rating, submitting all the games where I beat my wife at home to EGD!

Share Javaness's view of the ratings motion, did people not consider what were the motives of the proposer and ask for examples of bad behaviour the motion was designed to prevent (and get the side of the story from said parties too)?

Glossary:
AEGO = Asociacion espanola de Go (Spanish Go Association)
AGOA = Asociacion de Go de Andalucia (Andalucia Go Association, Seville being in the Andalucia region)

P.S. Also sad to hear Fede is resigning, a hardworking servant of European go in my experience, will be hard to replace.

Guilty as charged! I'm about to play one in my house soon, and also did 2 years ago.

La Carboneria is a popular go venue, I assumed these were some kind of weekly rating tournament. Shrug

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North Lecale