Since it seems to be pretty much a given that six of the top 10 places will go to China, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and North Korea, the question of this poll is: Who else will do well?

Results from past years show that you will probably need to win 6 out of 8 games to get into the top 10 (With 5 wins, you need very good SOS). So who do you think will do well this year? You can choose up to 4 players to fill out the top 10. I've listed all 7 dans and 6 dans, all 5 dans outside Europe and the best 5 dans from Europe based on rating.

If you think someone who is not on the above list will make it, put it in the comments.

The other 5 dans from Europe, not listed, were:

• Denmark - Kasper Hornbaek (5 dan, rating 2494)
• Romania - Lucian Corlan (5 dan, rating 2488)
• Poland - Leszek Soldan (5 dan, rating 2480)
• Austria - Bernhard Scheid (5 dan, rating 2464)
• Finland - Vesa Laatikainen (5 dan, rating 2459)

Full list of contestants here: http://www.nihonkiin.or.jp/amakisen/wor ... tants.html

+1 for T Mark Hall..

Oh, and of course there is always the dark horse candidate Bahadur Tahirbayov 5d from Azerbaijan

I voted for Aguilar, Debarre and Balogh. I also hope Pedro Carmona can score some upsets.

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a1h1 [1d]: You just need to curse the gods and defend.
Good Go = Shape.
Associação Portuguesa de Go

I'm pretty sure Christoph will make it, he has shown very solid play in the last german championship!

For the last 3 spots my bet is on Thomas Debarre, Fernando Aguilar and Ondrej Silt but I'm not sure how I should rate Lazarev.

Why wasn't he listed as one of the other European 5 dans?

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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).

Because the Azerbaijani ranking system has absolutely no connection to the rest of Europe. The dan players they send to the WAGC lose to kyu players. And I'm not talking about some strong 1st kyu, I'm talking 6 kyu, 7 kyu.

I don't know why their ranking system is so inflated. Perhaps they needed to do it that way to be eligible for certain subsidies, or perhaps the founders of the system thought it was good to make the strongest player in the country 1 dan when they founded the system, and the ranks have been based on that ever since.

Whatever the reason, this Bahadur Tahirbayov is not a real 5 dan, he's probably not even dan level at all, so I chose not to list him.

--Geographic Ignorance Alert!-- Is Azerbaijan technically a European country?

There are several different definitions for where the boundaries of "Europe" are, exactly. The most common definition, currently, puts Europe's limits to the far east/southeast at the Urals, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains, the Black Sea and the waterways connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. (See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe#Definition).

By that definition, Azerbaijan is partially in Europe and partially in Asia, as are Georgia, Kazakhstan, Turkey and Russia.

Azerbaijan is also a member of the EGF, and is generally listed under "Europe" in international go events.

One of my coworkers is a good friend and she and her husband are both from Azerbaijan. They told me that the country is quite definitely considered part of Europe but has strong influences from each of Europe, Turkey and the Middle East.

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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).

Predictions

The first 5 spots will go to:

• Hong-suk Song (S. Korea)
• Wang Chen (China)
• Tae Won Jo (N. Korea)
• Yohei Sato (Japan)
• Chan Naisan (Hong Kong)

Then the next 5 will go to:

• Fernando Aguilar (Argentina)
• Yongfei Ge (Canada)
• Ondrej Silt (Czechia)
• Pal Balogh (Hungary)
• Fredrik Blomback (Sweden)

I'm cheering for Geert Groenen.

Mahhhh to bad, Christoph lost his first game

Do you know any more results? Or are the games still underway?

_________________
a1h1 [1d]: You just need to curse the gods and defend.
Good Go = Shape.
Associação Portuguesa de Go

If you have Twitter, you can follow tweets with the #wagc2010 hashtag to get results and updates. Bit surprising that Thailand rep beat Romania's.

I hope Thomas Debarre will do well. I read he defeated Catalin Taranu and Fan Hui recently. And he's still young

How do I do this?

NM: I did it

I don't, sadly. Maybe this will be the thing that finally makes me create an account.

Unless the content is the same as http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23wagc2010

Thanks for the heads-up.

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a1h1 [1d]: You just need to curse the gods and defend.
Good Go = Shape.
Associação Portuguesa de Go

Ranka has some results in their latest article as well, from which I gather that Nikola Mitic has defeated Geert Groenen

Martin Stiassny is posting the more interesting results in the german go forums.

Here his news from the second round:

Northkorea wins against japan

Bernhard Scheid (austria) beats Ondrej Silt

Thomas Hsiang (USA) wins against Thomas Debarre (france) by 0.5 points, both of some stated that they saw themself ahead the complete game and were wondering about the close result

Sadly Thomas and Ondrej both lost