What seems clear to me is that the Open Championship is biased in favour of the Europeans by the 24-8 split for the super group.

That I believe is wrong, unethical, and bad for the prestige of the EGC.

There are, I am sure, difficulties in allocating players to the super group - but it should be done without favour to the European players.

The rules are wrong and they should be changed.

You should not call it "unethical"! Rather it the AGM's laziness.

Otherwise, provided the basic McMahon system should be continued for the Open, a much greater supergroup for the sake of including more non-Europeans or more top groups are a good idea, provided other parameters are also right (like a continued requirement to play all 10 rounds to win the titles). E.g., one or two years ago Matti and I suggested something like a huge supergroup with up to ca. 64 non-Europeans and up to ca. 32 Europeans. One should think more about details though; top groups above the supergroup (where the top Europeans are) might be yet better in some cases.

Would you now cry that it was highly unfair (you: "unethical") to admit up to twice as many non-Europeans as Europeans to the supergroup? (Or in case of fewer Europeans in the supergroup, up to four times?)

The problem is not to improve the system - the problem is to get the AGM actually doing some improvement (like letting a commission work out and adopt such, e.g., giving it the task "minor improvements on the current system")!

More than ca. 64 non-Europeans in a supergroup would not make much sense, even if 200 professionals and amateur 7d came, because 64 = 2^6 and we have only a 10 rounds McMahon tournament, which needs a few more rounds than a KO to allow for lost games and still a reasonable winner determination.

With a huge supergroup, there is yet more reason not to use SOS for the splitting final result places but rather places should be shared.

littlle bit more thinking and you maybe end up at my proposel

ok there are some differences but it has the idea of a huge supergroup are the same.

(but then my idea is then an accelerated swiss system insteead of mcMahon for the european title)



also did some checking it looks that Breakfast became european Champion while he only played 4 or 5 games against europeans

(while under my system it would be 7)

_________________
Promotor and Librarian of Sensei's Library

Note that my proposal above is only meant a fall-back option if the main tournament should continue to determine both EC and Open-EC champions.

As said before, 7 is too few.

yep,

That is what the AGM has decided
Maybe sometime the AGM will decide that 7 is enough.

(And hope that you will agree that my fall back option is better than yours)

_________________
Promotor and Librarian of Sensei's Library

I think that you are too set on validating your proposals (in the case of willemien, "proposel").

Gather the facts, goals, and constraints first!

_________________
A good system naturally covers all corner cases without further effort.

EGF constraints

- The Open and the (Closed) european Championships are both held during the EGC
- The european championships are independent of the Open Championships
- The european Championships has at least 10 rounds
- The Open Championships has at least 10 rounds


Under constraints I also count:
(an average strong european player) "I don't want to play 2 tournaments at the same time" and
(an average strong asian player) "I come to europe to play strong Europeans, not just to win Open tournament"


If you accept all these constaints as well then you are facing something impossible.

a player cannot play in 10 rounds 10 europeans and also some rounds against Non europeans.



But if you (ONLY) reject constraint that The european Championships has at least 10 rounds.
an embedded (Europeans only) tournament becomes a reasonable option.

Within this group there are (as far as I know) 2 sugesstions

Hermans http://senseis.xmp.net/?HermanHiddema%2FDoubleEliminationPlusMcMahon
and mine.

The problem with both is that they (by setup) are less than 10 rounds and therefore not inside the constraints of the EGF.

A solustiion against this all would be that the EGF would decide that the go congress would become an 3 weeks 15 rounds tournament then i can adjust my proposel to 10 rounds

_________________
Promotor and Librarian of Sensei's Library

Yes, I think that is a good list. I would add a constraint along the lines that the tournaments' internals should not be negatively affected. Does anyone else want to add something?



I agree.



That is not the only pair of contradictions.



That is not the only way to break the contradictions.

_________________
A good system naturally covers all corner cases without further effort.

The members of the supergroup should be selected entirely on merit. Of course it would be a little embarrassing if there were no Europeans at all.



I think there is little chance of this if they just meet for a few hours. The reps need to be locked into a room for a week for something sensible to come of it.



In that case one could select the supergroup by holding a lightning tournament beforehand - or in place of the first round.



Or a lightning tournament instead of SOS.

You violate another one you have not listed: High quality of winner determination.

I am glad starting to see some support for my idea.

Lighting game sshould have nothing to do in such an important tournament. They are almost purely based on luck. But SOS is no good either - maybe there should be one more (or two) rounds between players with the sam MMS.

_________________

IMO, best options in order are:

- more rounds
- share title
- playoffs (the more thinking time the better)
- lightning games tiebreaker
- classical tiebreaker(s)

I disagree with you on this

In my system the european champion is decided by

- a 7 round swiss tournament (between europeans only)
so
- NO interference of non european players on the determination.
- No inference of MM scores
Also it allows more people in the tournament


I am wondering how you can get a higher quality (in 10 rounds and still have some non european - european games.

off course there are some negative sides as well.

High influence of the TD (because of accelerated pairing)


Except of the Europeans only tournament ideas all have the interference of non european players on the outcome.

(Even the mixed supergroup ideas have this problem, maybe even in a bigger scale we imagine at this momen, supposing a 16E- 8A group an european will on average only play 66% of his games against other europeans, in an 16-16 group it will only be 50%)




- More rounds good ides lets make it a 3 week event
- Share title, difficult but agree with share prizemoney, but to cut the cup in quarters.
- Play offs same problem as more rounds
- Lighting games, same problem


- Classical tie breakers, maybe the only opion

_________________
Promotor and Librarian of Sensei's Library

Off course there is always Arrows paradox

But which other contradictions do you mean?

_________________
Promotor and Librarian of Sensei's Library

I have described such systems before.



Up to 14 rounds, 2 weeks suffice.



What is difficult? (There is not even a cup.)



A congress has 15 days. Which problem?

More rounds would be the best option but i guess some players would object to that as well. so i did not consider that.

But even then I think my system is best making it an embedded 9 or 10 rounds swiss tournament.

(I do restrict the number of tournament games to 1 per day)


I don't remember to have seen which system has your preference. (Be a bit open about it)

Then i will try to shoot some (More) holes in it



Why a single Champion? Yes good philosophical question.

Why a tournament at all ? (same category)

_________________
Promotor and Librarian of Sensei's Library

My favourite is Proposal 2. Other proposals are good second candidates though if their core is only one stage so that during the tournament tiebreakers are not needed. For me the most important criteria are:

- high tournament quality: no relevant tiebreakers, enough rounds, long thinking time, enough top European-only games
- enough Europeans in the EC

Your proposal puts almost the entire emphasis on the closed championship. I think that the main tournament (the open championship) is crippled by having excluded the top europeans for most of the rounds.

_________________
A good system naturally covers all corner cases without further effort.

The whole set of goals and constraints you listed is contradictory, and there are numerous ways of breaking the contradiction. For example, the current system only takes out this constraint:

_________________
A good system naturally covers all corner cases without further effort.