The 37th World Amateur Go Championship will be held June 3rd-10th in Wuxi (near Shanghai), China. I will be representing the UK and have just got my visa. I'm looking forward to it and hope to make new friends with Go players from around the world. Are any other forum members going, or know who is playing for their country? I couldn't find any website with a participants list for it yet, I expect something will appear at http://www.ranka.intergofed.org/ later.

Andrew Davies from South Africa

Is it a McMahon tournament again?

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North Lecale

I don't know the tournament format, but the draft schedule shows 8 rounds, 2 a day from the Sunday 5th to Wednesday 8th, with 3 hours allocated per round so presumably 1 hour main time with some reasonable overtime.

Good luck at the WAGC! The list of participants was posted two days ago here: http://www.ranka.intergofed.org/?p=13731

Thanks for the link, I didn't spot it when I checked the Ranka website. If there are no details about the format, then I would assume that it will probably be a McMahon competition again.

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North Lecale

No one from Finland. I wonder why?

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I wondered the same thing. There are quite a few strong Finnish and Italian players on OGS/DGS, but perhaps they don't have the time...

Maybe they didn't get round to organising a representative: the details were announced quite late this year (14th March, register by 3rd May). Also you need to pay for your flights and visa so it's quite expensive: I'm going with my wife and visa was £285 (more if she was British), flights about £1000, hotel/food for her even though sharing a room with me £350... So not easy for students (or others) not awash with money.

Don't worry, Matti will be there

Cheers,
Vesa from Finland

Didn't it used to be that all expenses were paid for the participants? When did that stop?

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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).

My expenses as a participant at the tournament (hotel, food, trips) are paid for (by the Chinese hosts I think, maybe some from IGF?). Japan Airlines used to sponsor the event and pay for flight tickets (I presume only player, not accompanying guests) but that stopped in 2009 as they went through difficult financial times, bankruptcy protection and so on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Air ... tructuring.

One participant I noticed was Dai Junfu for France (I suppose he's got citizenship recently). He's very strong and could give the Korean/Chinese players a run for their money (Japan has been out of it for a while, and TaiwanChinese Taipei* doing better too with a win in 2014).

* I don't want to be refused entry at the airport!

Worth noting that Japan is sending Hiraoka Satoshi, who won in 1994 and more recently in 2006.

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Occupy Babel!

Official list of participants:

http://www.ranka.intergofed.org/?p=13731

Just out of curiosity, is your visa a 2-year multiple-entry one? I heard that longer visa would become standard after the visit of Chinese president to the UK earlier this year but not sure when that arrangement takes effect.

Yes everything is expensive nowadays. The UK government is partly to blame. Your flight costs include an air passenger duty of £146. The visa fee is unfortunately reciprocal - the Chinese have to pay big fees to visit UK. And all the visas are handled by a company that charges an extra fee.

Hope you enjoy the trip. Wuxi is a wonderful city.

Yes, I got the two year multiple entry visa without asking for it, my wife (Thai) just got the single entry. And yes I know about expensive UK visas, hers cost over a grand!

My baduk teacher is playing there , Dai junfu 8 dan from france ^^ GO GO GO !!!! I like this tournament , good opportunity for amateur players to compete

Results for the first day are available: http://www.ranka.intergofed.org/?page_id=13885.

Usual suspects are at two wins, but Japan met Taiwan and dropped that game.

Uberdude is at one win.

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Occupy Babel!

Several upsets, apparently, in the first two rounds.