And hopefully this crap is a one time show and next season the league will be meaningfull again.

https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/eu ... ps/draw/93

So this extra league meant that Hungary, who came 2nd in the regular season with 16 match points (same as #1 Russia but fewer board points) from 6 wins, 2 draw, 1 loss, far ahead of 6th place Romania who got only 8 match points from 1 win, 5 draw, 3 loss, ended up not going through to the finals and Romania do as they tied on extra league points (starting on 1 fewer from main league position) but pipped Hungary to 2nd place with board points tiebreak. Looks like Catalin Taranu playing for Romania in this event but not the main league might have made the difference (but well done to Israel's Amir Fragman for beating him!). I thought Diana Koszegi not being able to play for Hungary on the board might have made a difference, but looks like she didn't play online this season either.

France, 3rd in main season, came comfortably top of the extra league even without Dai Junfu.

Indeed, at first sight this new dual mini league play-off stage seems to make League A kind of pointless. I was a bit thrown by the whole thing. Still, I'm glad Romania qualified, they deserved to.

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North Lecale

The 2nd qualification league starts today. Russia are missing Ilya, Poland Mateusz and Ukraine Artem as they are playing in the Chinese C league at the moment. Bit of a scheduling fail. Or testing squad depth if you are a glass half full kind of guy.

Ouch. That's really going to hurt the qualification chances of the 3 favourites in that pool.
It's a bit funny, as this is the pool that was wasn't meant to ensure Italy got relegated.

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North Lecale

https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/eu ... ps/draw/98

It isn't very clear to me how the points are allocated.
Ukraine 1 win 1 draw = 5 points
Czechia 1 win 1 draw = 4 points
Russia 2 draws = 4 points

This feels like one of those Facebook meme where you have to work out that a bio banana is worth 2 extra, but the equals sign actually means cube root. Here the trick must be to do with the initial positions in the league.

The other thing to do note is the composition of the Italian team.

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North Lecale

Win is 2, draw is 1, lose is 0, Plus:

What strikes you about the composition?

Thanks Uberdude. I totally missed this rule, which is giving points for placings in the original. Now this additional tournament phase seems normal again.

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North Lecale

That's an ugly subject. The reason for this phase of the competition is so that everyone can have confidence in the accuracy of the results which were played online. The reason why people need to have confidence ... well there is a thread on L19x19 for that. A long thread.

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North Lecale

I think Hungary would have a legitimate cause for complaint/annoyance at the relatively small effect of league A: they got 6 wins and 2 draws vs Romania's 1 win and 5 draws in league A, a big difference in performance, but this only translated to a 1 point seeding advantage (ie difference between 1 win and 1 draw) in the qualification league of 5 games where Hungary only differed by that amount with 2 wins 2 draws vs Romania's 3 wins 1 draw. It's a judgement of the organisers how strongly to bias the qualification league by main league results: doubling it to 4 points for places 1-2, 3 points for 3-4, 2 points for 5-6, 1 point for 7-8, 0 for 9-10 doesn't seem unreasonable to me. That way it would still be possible for a great performance by one lower team and a poor performance by a higher one in the qualification league to cause a different top 2 to go through, but would require rather starker difference than between Hungary and Romania here. Too little and what's the point of main league, too much and what's the point of qualification league, a difficult balancing act. Also Russia is not in a qualifying place at the moment (Poland's Leszek Soldan 4d (but used to be 6d) beat Dmitry Surin 6d)... is a bigger upset possible from 2nd league? Russia vs Czechia this afternoon will be crucial.

Annoyance certainly, complaint only if they weren't properly notified or consulted.

France, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine are going to the finals in Brussels.
Italy and Serbia are in league B. Austria get promoted.

Think how many chocolate go sets could have been created with the budget for this special event.

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North Lecale

Yeah, budget was 1k euro for every invited team plus (I guess) something for the two host venues.

I compared the original teams line up with those who played there, I think almost all the teams have been significantly shortened, that's a pity

I read the rules of the Pandanet Go European Team Championship https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/4
There is no qualification tournament !
The rules cann not be changed after the tournament started.
So the Qualification Matches are not valid !

Cancel the results of the Qualification Matches !

The participants of the Final is Russia, France, Ukraine and HUNGARY ! Of course Serbia can play in the next season in League A.

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Of course I am not the team captain, so I cannot protest

Well, the change of rules for this season was communicated to the team captains before the league started but no one bothered to update the rules pages of the tournament website.

Seriously though, who do we contact to nudge them to update the website?

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North Lecale

I have notified the PGETC tournament management yearly for the last couple years that the rules on the webpage are outdated. I am afraid it is unlikely they will change it soon.