I see that the EGF is planning to admit at least 1 more player to its professional ranks in 2025. How many can it cope with?
They have 8 professionals active today, and 1 who effectively seems to be banned because they come from Russia. This would mean they expand up to 10 players.
It already has two players in what we might call negative equity, a lower rating than when they qualified and had their rank reset. Does that already suggest that the candidate pool is thinning?
Can the budget really take more players.
Does have more and more pros effectively create a buffer to progress if the pros take the best spots in the top tourneys.

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North Lecale

There is much to unpack here. I have wondered the same thing about the North American and the larger go world--how many pros can we support and do we have enough talent to fill those spots?

Michael Chen won the last North American pro qualifier. It was well deserved and nobody disputes his strength. At the time I thought the organizers were playing with fire since it would have taken only a single positive covid result to put an end to his tournament run and they would have had to crown another--much, much weaker--player instead. It feels like the available talent pool has thinned out significantly and may be too small to support more credible pro titles for a while.

The question of how many pros we can support is one I've wondered about for years. With tournament prizes being fairly modest, a pro's income will be largely based on lessons and miscellaneous funds like streaming revenue. In this they are competing with online amateurs giving lessons, particularly the technically savvy ones. Unfortunately having a pro diploma does not grant a monopoly. The market for go lessons is big; online go and Zoom let European pros teach anyone in the world, but they must compete against the rest of the world as well, including strong amateurs who are slightly more tech savvy.

I don't see your point about whether having too many pros creates problems for amateur advancement. It seems like the only way it could be troublesome is if there were a cohort of amateurs who are significantly stronger than the weakest pros *and* there are top tournaments who are inviting weaker pros instead of the stronger amateurs. If we suddenly gave diplomas to the top 50 European amateurs, would it change the nature of top tournaments in a way that would be detrimental to the next tier of players? In North America almost all tournaments are open events, but perhaps that's not the case in Europe.

Well, if you consider section 7 of their constitution their rights entail preferences for qualification to certain big events. Ratings, which are reset, may also give them preferences to certain events. With their current number, this is unlikely to be particularly powerful as influences go, but say they arrived at 16 players wouldn't it then be evident.

The dream of a big EU sponsor is still unfulfilled.

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North Lecale

Arguably their right to precedence as commentators matters too.