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 Post subject: EGC 2015 Main Tournament
Post #1 Posted: Wed Aug 12, 2015 3:32 am 
Judan

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Players

There were 762 players in the list (but I have not checked for any ghosts). Strong players preferred to play all 10 rounds while players with fewer rounds were a bit more frequent among weaker players.

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Main Tournament system:

It was a 10 rounds McMahon, to which the EC games also counted, except for the semi-final and final (and 3rd place) games played during the weekend, when there are no Main Tournament games. The tiebreakers were SOS - SOSOS. A missing round counted 0.5 wins (rounded down) and presumably so for the tiebreakers. All pros were called "8d" during the congress's tournaments.

This system has strange side effects. The EC semi-final (and final) players wishing to win the EOC (European Open Championship) must forget about their EC semi-final and final games, win games during the EOC second week and hope that their tiebreakers are good despite having less chance to get the (possibly attending) strongest non-Europeans (which were present this year). The tiebreakers of the top EOC players, whether non-Europeans, EC Europeans or non-EC Europeans, are affected by how many not-playing-all-rounds opponents ("NA") or NA that were EC opponents ("EC") they get:

Code:
Place Name       Co Wins NA EC SOS

1 Wang, Zheming  CN 10   1  1  319 (Chinese pro, 6p?)
2 Kim, Young-Sam KR  9   2  0  317 (EOC 2011)
3 Lisy, Pavol    SK  7   3  3  320
4 Jabarin, Ali   IL  7   2  2  319


The places 1 and 2 were, IMO, decided by their round 4 game against each other. Wang's win of this relatively early top game made it more likely for him to end with more SOS than Kim. Even if Wang had lost some other, later game, his technically predicted SOS of then 320 compared to Kim's then 316 would have let Wang win the tournament.

For the places 3 and 4, the impact of NA - EC opponents was greater than the significance of the 1 point of SOS difference between Lisy and Jabarin.

In conclusion, unless top places are clearly decided by greater numbers of wins, the tiebreaker design for determining the relative order of the top places is extraordinarily bad. In view of the heavy side effects, it would be appropriate to share places with the same final McMahon score! This is so for determining the top places. For pairing purposes or for statistical fun of watching relative orders of same-MMS players (far) below the top, stating SOS can be useful. (SOSOS is lottery.) Trying to order the top places by SOS as the first tiebreaker is abuse of what SOS can meaningfully do. There can be seen advantages in relating the EC to the EOC, but instead of pretending non-existing numerical tiebreaker precision, we must have the courage to share same-MMS (top) places and admit that the system is not good enough for splitting them meaningfully.

The greatest victims of the rating seeding to the EC were

Code:
8  Kraemer, Lukas  DE  6 (student)
10 Fionin, Grigoij RU  6 (very young)


Surely, they would have had their chances in the EC if rating did not play such a great role for the seeding, or the EGF politicians had been much wiser when choosing the two EGF wildcards.

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Main Tournament McMahon groups:

The top bar was MMS = 26. It included all EC players and the following players:

Code:
Place Name         Rk Co  MMS Wins #NotPlayedRounds

1  Wang, Zheming   8d CN  36  10
2  Kim, Young-Sam  7d KR  35   9
8  Kraemer, Lukas  6d DE  32   6
9  Chan, Yi-Tien   7d TW  32   6
10 Fionin, Grigoij 5d RU  32   6
14 Hao, Yibo       6d CN  32   6
18 Noguchi, Motoki 7d JP  31   5
24 Spiegel, Lothar 5d AT  31   5
39 Sedgwick, James 5d CA  30   4
40 Kruml, Ondrej   5d CZ  30   4
43 Shen Chih, Hao  6d TW  30   4
63 Li, Yue         5d CH  30   2   5
71 Kurita, Shigeru 5d JP  29   3
76 Ishida, Masayuki5d JP  29   3
112Hayashi, Eji    5d JP  28   2


Thus, together with the 24 EC players, there were these 15 additional players in the top bar group (probably called supergroup), i.e., altogether 39 players. An odd number is not helpful. Which might have been the criteria? Playing in all 10 rounds (Li Yue would be an exception for an unknown reason), having a high previous rating or else being a known-strong or "interesting" (see the Canadian) non-European player. From the 2006 experience with the Canadian Chadwick Norman's not so impressive result, choosing Sedgwick, James into the supergroup was unwise. The three Japanese 5d in the supergroup maybe have become too old to repeat their results of earlier years (but I have not checked them)?

Below the top bar group, there were players in various groups often irrespective of their ranks and probably, for EGF-rated players, often sorted into groups by ratings. I am not sure but suspect the (recent?) rating splits could have been 2500+ for 1 and 2400+ for 2 groups below the top bar group, etc.

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European Championship players in the Main Tournament:

9 played all ten games, 15 played fewer games and typically left when dropping out of the EC. So most EC players preferred playing only one week (and possibly the weekend if they reached the KO). This indicates that those were right claiming so when preferring a one week EC system (which should be discussed for its own tournament system within the time constraint of one week and one weekend). Nevertheless, Lisy Pavol and Ali Jabarin scored 7 wins to get places 3 and 4 of the European Open Championship (the Main Tournament).

*******************************************************************************************************************

Congress participants by country, resorted by number:

http://www.egc2015.cz/registered-players

Code:
DE Germany 192
JP Japan 108
CZ Czech Republic 97
FR France 92
CN China 77
RU Russia 46
NL Netherlands 45
FI Finland 26
GB United Kingdom 26
AT Austria 23
UA Ukraine 22
RO Romania 20
PL Poland 19
SK Slovakia 17
CH Switzerland 15
IT Italy 13
SE Sweden 12
HU Hungary 10
BE Belgium 9
HR Croatia 8
TW Taiwan 8
DK Denmark 7
NO Norway 7
CA Canada 6
IL Israel 6
RS Serbia 6
US United States 6
ES Spain 5
KR South Korea 4
EE Estonia 3
LT Lithuania 3
AM Armenia 2
AU Australia 2
MD Moldova 2
BA Bosnia and Herzegovina 1
HK Hong Kong S.A.R., China 1
IS Iceland 1
IE Ireland 1
LU Luxembourg 1
MY Malaysia 1
PK Pakistan 1
SI Slovenia 1
ZA South Africa 1
TR Turkey 1
unknown United States Minor Outlying Islands 1


Total 955

(Reference: Main tournament players 762.)

*******************************************************************************************************************

Players with 7+ wins in Main Tournament compared to a country's congress population.
Only countries with at least 2 such players or at least 20 congress participants.

X = country
# = numbers of congress participants
#7+ = numbers of players with 7+ wins in the Main Tournament
% = percentage of 7+ players among congress participants of that country

Code:
Sorted by #

X   #  #7+ %

DE 192  2   1
JP 108  2   2
CZ  97 11  11
FR  92  9  10
CN  77  2   3
RU  46  1   2
NL  45  1   2
FI  26  2   8
GB  26  1   4
AT  23  2   9
UA  22  7  32
RO  20  3  15
HU  10  3  33


Code:
Sorted by #7+

X   #  #7+ %

CZ  97 11  11
FR  92  9  10
UA  22  7  32
RO  20  3  15
HU  10  3  33
CN  77  2   3
AT  23  2   9
JP 108  2   2
DE 192  2   1
FI  26  2   8
RU  46  1   2
NL  45  1   2
GB  26  1   4


Code:
Sorted by %

X   #  #7+ %

HU  10  3  33
UA  22  7  32
RO  20  3  15
CZ  97 11  11
FR  92  9  10
AT  23  2   9
FI  26  2   8
GB  26  1   4
CN  77  2   3
JP 108  2   2
RU  46  1   2
NL  45  1   2
DE 192  2   1


The countries with significant, unusual behaviour and their #7+ are CZ 11, FR 9, UA 7. CZ and FR are explained easily: they rank their players according to the EGF rating system. Does UA do so as well?

Another unusual value is the CN 77 congress participants. This is the first year with such a great value for CN.

I have not seen all 7+ players' play, but some of them. Sai Sun 3d (3 groups below the top bar group) CN scored 8 wins in the Main Tournament to get place 26 and won the 13x13 Tournament, which used handicaps. After her Rapid game against me, she explained that she was a Beijing 5d and called 3d by the EGC organisers - apparently their mistake. IMO, from watching quite a few of her games (because her play against me had really impressed me and her playing style was interesting and instructive), her play is that of a strong European 5d. Petr Cipra 3d (at times appearing as 2d during the congress) CZ scored 7 wins. He explained his low rank by playing mostly CZ tournaments and badly so while playing like a strong (Czech) 4d in other / international tournaments. My impression from my Main Tournament game against him and watching some of his other games: precisely.

BTW, the Ukrainian player with 10 wins (only he below the tournament winner!) got the ridiculous prize of only EUR 100. AFAIK, there were no below-top players with 9 wins.

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