The Annual General Meeting will be taking place in a few weeks time. Does anyone have a copy of the Agenda?

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North Lecale

Annual General Meeting 2023 of the European Go Federation
Meeting will take place at 18:00 CEST on Tuesday 25th July 2023 at Rudolf Hildebrand
School in Markleeberg/Leipzig, Germany.
Agenda
* Opening of the Meeting
* Verifying Presence and Voting Rights
* Accepting the Agenda
* International Matters:
- Presentations from other International bodies
- Report from IGF Directors
* Acceptance of Previous Year's AGM Minutes
* Admission of New Members
- No applications
* Reports of the President, Secretary, Treasurer, Vice Presidents, Officers
- President Report, Martin Stiassny
- Secretary Report, Nicholas Roussos
- Treasurer Report, Harry van der Krogt
- Vice Presidents Reports
-- Jean-Yves Papazoglou
-- Li Ting
-- Damir Medak
- Other Reports of Board members
-- Catalin Taranu
* Report of the Auditors for 2022 (Nicole de Beer, Toby Manning), discharge of the
Board
- Report (finance / numbers part will be cut out)
* Reports of Officers/Chairmen of the Commissions
- Pros Commission: Ali Jabarin
- Tournaments & Rules, Michal Timko, David Zacek, Laszlo Boviz, François
Myzessin
- Ratings (EGD): Lorenz Trippel
- Rating System Commission: Ales Cieply, Michael Silcher, Dave de Vos, Geoff
Kaniuk
- Appeals: Leo Dal Zovo, Kerem Karaerkek
- Academy: Cris Bratu
- SEYGO: Damir Medak (included in VP report)
BREAK 30 min
* Budgets
- Presentation of Budgets 2023/24
* Proposals from Members / Board Members / Commissions
- Membership fees:
-- EGF Board to devise a fair and transparent system to charge membership
fees for 2025 onwards based on actual registered member players in each
national organisation. The idea is to leverage the EGD PIN in a back office
system accessible only to EGF Members and Tournament organizers (e.g.
Administration Tools). EGF will also issue guidance to members on how to
manage their members and charge proper fees for membership and
tournament participation. EGF Members and their associated clubs will need
to be accountable for managing their members. Vote in agreement of such
system, and assignment to EGF to present it at AGM in 2024 for approval
-- Increase fee per active member for calculating membership fees from €3 to
€5 for 2024
-- Czechia: Modification of the annual EGF fees calculations: to take as reference
the number of active players who are 10 kyu and stronger in the past year as
opposed to the past 3 years.
- Germany: All members of the EGF will pay together the missing membership-fees
from Russia/Belarus for 2023, with an upper limit of Euro 3.000. How much each
country will pay depends on the number of votes per country, and countries
paying the minimum fee of EUR 50 will pay EUR 100.
- Vote for Lapsed member status
-- Armenia didn't pay the membership fee since 2016
-- Latvia didn’t pay since 2011
-- Azerbaijan didn’t pay since 2018
-- Georgia didn’t pay since 2019
- Adoption of IGF article 20 on multiple nationalities.
'EGF adopts IGF article 20 for EGF tournaments, not allowing players to swap
nationalities until 5 years pass from previous country representation. The Board
keeps the right to waive this period on a case by case basis. A special rule applies
for the Pandanet Go European Team Championship, where the rules include a
provision for multiple nationalities.'
- Czechia: Change of the length of the European Go Congress from 15 days to 8 or
9 days
- Italy: discuss and vote whether we can reinstate Russia's membership to the EGF

- UK: Noting that:
At the 2020 AGM the Auditor's Report stated "The financial status of the EGF
is very severe. Although the amount of overspending was somewhat lower
than in 2019, this was mostly because of events being cancelled due to
corona. If the EGF continues to spend money as in the past two years, the
EGF will be insolvent by the end of the year 2023.”
At the 2021 AGM the Auditor's Report stated: "The finances of the EGF are
likely to remain under pressure for at least the next few years, and it is
therefore important that the Executive improves its budgetary control. Both
income and expenses in 2021 far exceeded their budgeted amounts,
although as the Budget and the Accounts seem to have been prepared on a
different basis it is difficult to compare them. We therefore believe that the
Executive should take budgetary control seriously, and in particular it
should:
a) create a realistic budget, and
b) control expenditure so that it remains within the budget."
The 2021 Auditor's Report also recommended: "Some form of Budget
Control should be implemented. .... This budget control should apply to all
categories in the Profit-and-Loss Account, and especially to all major
activities such as PGETC, European Championships and Grand Slam. This
recommendation was made for each of the last two last years, but we do
not believe it has been adequately implemented."
At the 2021 AGM the Treasurer stated "We are working towards a neutral
budget for 2023. If this proves to be too difficult, we will have to cut more on
expenses"
- We therefore require the Executive to set a balanced budget for
2023/4 (excluding one-off items). In doing so any extra income
generated by increasing membership fees must be matched by a
similar sized reduction in expenses.
* Appointment of Commissions, Auditors
- Tournament Rules & Commission:
-- Members
Michal Timko
François Mizessyn
László Bővíz
-- Candidates:
- Appeals Commission:
-- Members:
Leo Dal Zovo
Kerem Karaerkek
-- Candidates:
- Auditors
-- Candidates:
* European Go Congress
- Report on 2023: Leipzig, Germany
- Progress report on 2024: Toulouse, France --
- Call for candidates for EGC 2025,2026:
-- 2025: Poland
-- 2026: Ireland? Finland?
* European Tournament Calendar
- Update on upcoming events:
-- Grand Slam Qualification (Sep 2023 - Online tournament)
-- Grand Slam 2023 (Prague)
-- European Pair Go Championship 2023 (Leksand)
-- European Student Championship 2023 (Timișoara)
-- Grand Prix Final (London, December 2023)
- Call for Candidates/Selection of hosts
-- Pair Go Championship 2024:
-- Women Championship 2024: Slovakia
-- European Youth Go Championship (EYGC) 2024: Germany
-- European Pro Championship 2024
-- Pair Go Championship 2024
-- Student Championship 2024
-- Women Championship 2025
-- Pair Go Championship 2025
-- Student Championship 2025
-- European Youth Go Championship (EYGC) 2025
-- European Pro Championship 2025
* Internet Championships
- Pandanet Go European Team Championship
- European Youth Go Team Championship
* Miscellaneous
- Iceland: Cheating incident on PGETC
- Bosnia and Herzegovina informed the Board through Vodenik Dragoslav that
there is no longer organised Go activity in the country and will not pay
membership to EGF.

Thank you JLT. It seems very much focused on money! Not a good sign when we're losing 5 members.

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North Lecale

"Czechia: Change of the length of the European Go Congress from 15 days to 8 or 9 days"

Hope not. 70% of the main tournament players used to play in all 10 rounds.

"Italy: discuss and vote whether we can reinstate Russia's membership to the EGF"

Really? Interesting timing for such a suggestion considering that little has changed in one year.

"2026: Ireland? Finland?"

Certainly I do not want to discourage Ireland but I wonder whether it is really eager to hold another congress as a small go country. In 2001, it needed a lot of external help. Where is Spain? I have always wanted to see Spain but there never seems to be a congress. Or Portugal for that matter.

"Iceland: Cheating incident on PGETC"

Am I informed correctly that Iceland suggests discussion of this or is Iceland the place where cheating may have happened? What incident?

I doubt that Ireland are going to host an EGC, but yet there name is written there.
Iceland did not cheat, they presumably want to discuss an incident of cheating (adjudged to be cheating) which happened in their league. I don't blame them...

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North Lecale

The captain of the Bulgarian national team, who is (apparently) also the president of the Bulgarian Go Association, cheated in the European Team Championship. You can count his forfeited games in the latest season at https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/draw/144 if you wish to confirm. Otherwise, some details have been provided in egf-members. The cheating campaign may well have involve pretty much every game in three seasons on board 4 for the Bulgarian team. It was banal and destructive but now we got to get rid this cheater.

Some EGF officials, or rather PGETC officials, have made various incorrect claims on punishment for cheaters in the PGETC. Basically, their communication is to the effect that it is somehow for tournament organizers to tie the hands of everyone else when it comes to dealing with cheaters.

We, in Iceland, believe it is the prerogative of the General Meeting to decide on serious sanctions in cases of cheating. In any case it is not up to tournament organizers to decide on more general sanctions. Additionally, in this case it is the team captain of a national team and the president of an EGF member, which is more serious. The EGF mission would be completely compromised if its members are represented by cheaters, there are some expectations of EGF members officials.

It is astonishing that the PGETC project leaders and the PGETC arbitration board didn't refer the matter for sanctions.

Somehow, we end up with this discussion topic under "Miscellaneous" in response to our demand that the General Meeting (either a special general meeting or an annual general meeting) should decide on sanctions: a lengthy ban from all activities related to EGF, Go and any role in any Go organization. Maybe the email was too long, it didn't get any reply other than that this discussion was added on the agenda. Maybe the message was more suited for direct address to the EGF members.

It is not ideal to tell the AGM at 1 am in the morning what we think we should do with a cheater (it is the last item on the agenda) but it can't be helped that the agenda is packed.

The usual way to handle (alleged) cheating for each game is according to the EGF General Tournament Rules https://www.eurogofed.org/egf/tourrules.htm §7 via 1. referee, 2. the tournament's appeals committee (if any) and 3. the EGF Rules Commission (currently called the EGF Tournament and Rules Commission). In the team tournament, online this may have been difficult so maybe it is a flaw of the tournament rules or organisation. If I am informed correctly, the "cheater" did so to exhibit the possibility. Whether he might do so for a greater aim is up to the AGM or whomever. His functions create the political objectives you have mentioned indeed.

For German Championships (real world tournaments), I have proposed the now adopted rule:

"Ein Spieler darf während seiner Turnierpartie keine künstliche Intelligenz, dafür prinzipiell geeignete Hilfsmittel oder Informationen verwenden."

(During his tournament game, a player may not use artificial intelligence, principally suitable aids or information for that.)

The EGF is still missing some such rule. The sportsmanship in §1.5.8 of the EGF General Tournament Rules may not be enough. Statistical overkill without complete scientific justification is not needed though. Online tournament games might need supervision or one avoids them entirely. For real world games or supervised online games, a simple rule as above together with the usual arbitration process should be able to handle AI cheating.

The player was found to have cheated and confessed. According to PGETC officials there is no appeal possible as a rule in PGETC, I disagree but this is an entirely different matter.


This is what was reported as being part of his confession. A summary of the finding was never made available by the PGETC officials, but it was reported that there was something about bringing attention to the problem of cheating. Writing an email would have been sufficient if this was the goal.

I have tried to read what I can about cheating cases in chess and some sports. One thing that I have seen mentioned is that cheaters often make excuses. They say everyone else is cheating, that they want to see if it was possible, that they didn't realize what they were doing was cheating and so on. Maybe it is a sign of how insignificant of a crime cheaters think cheating is? It doesn't seem surprising if a cheater is capable to normalize their actions. This is probably a phenomenon that is studied in criminology.




Simple rules are only sufficient for excluding someone from the remainder of that tournament or at best future editions and some related events. When it comes to sanctioning someone for gross misconduct it may not be easy to list every type of conduct and the sanctions that would protect against this conduct may fall outside the scope of what most people call 'tournament' rules. For example a campaign of cheating by a player for multiple months or years, something that is (arguably) done deliberately to undermine the integrity of the game Go, is a threat to any tournament this player would register to. If this player is then also in a leadership role in the local Go community, it is an especially acute threat that can't be dealt with by only forfeiting a few games and saying "...and never do that again".

If the EGF wished to cover most such cases in regulations, then it would have to set up a full fledged Disciplinary Procedure and a Disciplinary Code. EGF has not done this yet, there only exists the General Tournament Rules which are not a Disciplinary Code by any means. IGF has done it only in some general terms with its Code of Ethics, which is especially concerned with gambling and other activity but also actions that bring the game of Go into disrepute.

For example:


Maybe the EGF needs a Disciplinary Code or at least a Code of Ethics, but it doesn't have this and in that case, it is incumbent on EGF members and the General Meeting to organize a Disciplinary Procedure for the case at hand. If that means to simply hear the case for sanctions at a Special General Meeting and voting on sanctions or to delegate the judgment to someone else (for example to committee, commission or to nominate judges) that then takes charge of the procedure is something that is in the end up to a General Meeting to decide on.

The current case is simplified by the fact that the player confessed and what remains is deciding how to view the offense and what sanctions would be fitting. It seems sufficient to me if the decision on sanctions is made by a General Meeting.

Considering that the person appears to be the president of the Bulgarian Go Association I wrote this to the EGF president:



To reiterate, it is not in question that the player cheated, what we want now is to start a Disciplinary Procedure. This case is exceptional in the severity of the cheating, the durations of the cheating activity, targeting of the innocent (for example there are maybe only kyu players on board 4 in league D) and so forth, all done by the team captain of a national team and a president of an EGF member. I think these circumstances call for a long term exclusion of the player in question from the game of Go. Not only as a punishment but also to protect the game of Go. EGF and its members have a duty to protect the game of Go from people that have demonstrated that they will bring our game to disrepute by cheating.

It is a pretty shocking case. I think the punishment needs to balance preventing such a blatant abuse from happening again, and wiping out the Bulgarian Go Association. Without any update on its website since 2017, it doesn't exactly look active, and well, we're not discussing all the suspicions here.

I think the meeting should also be careful about who it is asking to pay money, and what it is paying for. Something like 10 years ago now, the board decided we should increase our IGF membership fees, then it increased EGF fees, and still we continue. Children and new players probably shouldn't be expected to pay as much as established/strong players. The dual aim of having Germany pay less and Russia pay more is no longer applicable. But let's keep in mind we should not kill off Go in developing countries by raising the fees so much as to demand 1 guy pays the same as 10 elsewhere.

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North Lecale

I have not noticed public support for this proposal. It is really something that is directly from the president of the Russia's Go Federation. As a suspended member, RGF doesn't really have a right to make proposals. It is not clear if Italy meant to support the action of reinstating RGF or if it is simply that they want to discuss the topic.

Apparently, the German Go Federation wants to hold a conference on the topic during EGC. You are probably in a better position to understand German thinking on this.

The president's report from Martin discusses the status of Russa and Belarus. That the board has had to monitor this situation and has discussed the situation at every meeting. That the decisions that were made were the right decisions. That not much has changed in the political scenery since the decisions were made. That the recommendation is to keep the current mode of operations. That EGF views on this topic are respected by Go organizations in the far east.

I wholeheartedly agree with Martin. The decisions to suspend Russia and Belarus and other decisions were good decisions. I'm not sure if I see the point of rehashing that discussion.

I have got no idea what the German representatives might aim in this regard. I can just say what might be possible. Some time, the war will end. Afterwards, reintegration of Russia, its association and players can be desired. Discussion in the go world is a small contribution to a (potential) peace process (and already as such worthwhile) and potentially prepares easier reintegration when peace comes. Even if it takes years, talks do not hurt but might even achieve something good.

And that is something very important too. I don't want delve into other suspicions. This case breaks the assumption (or aspiration) that cheating doesn't involve the people that we depend on to teach the community that cheating is wrong.

As to "wiping out the Bulgarian Go Association", I think there is more risk of this if we don't act. Most Go players aren't involved in any official business but they would still expect us to ban cheaters from our activities. The EGF has supervision over Go in Europe and it should never tolerate cheating at this level in its structures, else it can not be worthy of its role in the world of Go. The same goes for the Bulgarian Go Association which, in a way, has endorsement from the EGF.

Italy withdrew this item.

It was a different experience to tune in with Google meetings. Somehow, I wasn't let into the meeting when it was supposed to start. I think I was still trying to join the meeting 20 minutes past the hour and then assumed it was supposed to start the next hour, which is actually what the agenda said but the time had indeed been moved forward. When I managed to join 5 minutes before the next hour the discussion on the second to last commission report appeared to be just finishing.

I could only understand half of what was said because of the poor audio but most of the worse proposals were not accepted and most of the good proposals were accepted.

It is very subjective but these decisions were memorable:

• The proposal for shorter congresses was withdrawn.
• EGF members didn't agree to pay Russia and Belarus membership fees (the proposal also wanted to share the contribution in a way that I don't consider fair).
• EGC 2025 will be in Poland.

I mostly joined the meeting for the discussion topic on the cheating in the European Team Championship but it is always nice to hear what everyone has to say. That meant I spent most of the meeting worrying if anyone would be able to hear me clearly when it was finally my turn. I could only hear some people because of poor audio and I obviously worried they couldn't hear me and that it would therefore be difficult for me to communicate anything useful. It is safe to say I was very disappointed when I learned that the room had to be cleared by 10 pm and that the meeting would then end before it was my turn

Yes, I can't say that the hybrid meeting was a great success, and I hope they will figure out ways to improve it in future years. In his defence, Nicholas Roussos did make it clear beforehand that it probably wouldn't be possible for remote observers to participate in the meeting, and he made no promises about the quality of the broadcast from the AGM.

Still, once they started to accept input from the remote observers, they should have done a better job of monitoring requests to speak — I did not get the impression that anyone was keeping tabs on the Google meet interface at their end.

I believe it would be beneficial for the go community to learn what measures EGF is taking against cheating on pandanet. This issue was known to most of league C captains, the administrators decided to take action months after it was initially reported even though the evidence was damning from the beginning and it just kept piling. Some form of monitoring and harsher punishments might go a long way.

Undoubtedly the talking process has begun at the EGF.

My latest attempt at summarizing my own views:

Only if more people communicated to EGF and their country organization that they expect cheating to have consequences, that it is not something that can be considered over and done with when the tournament finishes.

This has been discussed before but how does one prove that there was cheating? This happens to be an open-and-shut case because the cheater admitted his guilt but most of them aren't quite so honest afterwards. I would perhaps agree with harsher punishments in cases where there is no reasonable doubt but I don't think there'll be many of those so this will have little effect on the issue.

On a related note, I'm against online tournaments counting towards rating (now that the pandemic is over) and I also believe that the use of cameras should be obligatory for all players if there is prize money or if the tournament is an important national or international event. With the way monitoring is done at the moment, cheating is all but encouraged.

"Reasonable doubt" has nothing to do with it. The sports movement is not state authority and it handles disciplinary matters very differently from how the police and the state courts handle criminal matters. It is important to understand this and not draw incorrect parallels.

Usually, the standard of proof for disciplinary matters in the sports movement is ‘comfortable satisfaction’ or ‘preponderance of evidence’.

• Preponderance of evidence, also known as ‘balance of probabilities’, means that the facts are considered sufficiently proven when the decision body considers them more likely than not.
• Comfortable satisfaction means that the facts are considered proven when the decision body is comfortably satisfied that the facts are proven, absent of doubt being unnecessary. This implies a variable standard of proof; the decision body may require more substantial evidence when making more consequential decisions.

Comfortable satisfaction is applied by CAS (Court of Arbitration for Sports) when another standard is not clearly specified somewhere in relevant regulations and should therefore be considered the default.

“Good practice handbook No. 5” has this to say about the standard of proof:

If we accept (as we should) that comfortable satisfaction is the most appropriate standard of proof, then proving cheating is a matter of presenting evidence and arguments that are sufficient to sway the decision body. That could be witness statements, expert statements, investigation findings or reports, decisions by tournament directors and even confessions which don’t appear to be that unusual.


Having online events is a huge benefit to the community and there is always some balance to be struck.

If there were more Go players in Europe, then we would certainly have separate online rating, and be very happy about it. We would also have video monitoring if we had people to carefully watch the ridiculous amount of video that it generates. We would have so many good things

Since mid-2022, the FFG adopted two parallel ratings: a main rating which only uses real-life tournaments, and a hybrid rating which uses all tournaments (including online). I think this solves the issue.

Actually the two ratings are usually very close to each other, the difference is less than one-half rank for most players. I imagine that the exceptions are:

• Players who improved a lot recently, and played a lot of tournaments online and very few IRL.
  
• Players who cheated a lot recently, and played a lot of tournaments online and very few IRL.

Actually I can't find any player for whom their two ranks are several stones apart. I guess if this were the case, the player would be strongly suspected of cheating and would be kindly asked to play more tournaments IRL.