Of course it is always better to announce the prizes early, especially if they are meant to attract players. But it may often be difficult to do that. Many congresses have been very late with announcing prizes, or haven't announced anything at all.

Most organizers of EGC:s don't have ny big funds to draw on, in case of poor financial outcome. Normally one doesn't know for sure how many will turn up until the event actually starts. There are also many fixed expenses involved, such as rent of venue, down payments on accommodation and many other things, so one needs some flexible items in the budget, that can be cut down if necessary, in order to avoid a big loss. It is easier to announce prizes early if in a conditional manner, such as prizes will be such and such if the number of participants is > N.

At the EGC 2008 we didn't announce prizes well in advance either. In the end the cash prizes came up as 15 keuro or so (136 kSEK), which is ok I think, but that was not announced in advance, nor was the distribution between europeans/non-europeans, main tournament and other events. We still got a good number of Korean participants.

We had a fair idea early that there would be many participants at EGC2008, so if we had given it higher priority we could have announced minimum prizes early. A reason why we didn't get there was a longish internal discussion on what the the relation should be between open championship prizes and prizes for europeans - a difficult question at the time as it still is.

One possibly big failure in 2008 was that the European Masters was decided/announced so late. If it had been in the schedule from the beginning we could have announced substantial prizes for that, maybe we could have attracted more top European players that way (we did have many of them anyway of course...).

In 2008 the largest Korean group was sensitive to costs, such as accommodation. I would guess that this is an important parameter as well for their paticipation, not only prizes. Of course, with the intercontinental flight to pay, attending the EGC is not cheap for non-europeans.

best regards,
Henric

I wonder if this is true. In Italy in 2006, there was no prize money at all, yet 6 Korean 7 dans participated the next year in Villach.

In Villach 2007 there were high prizes, and in 2008 again 6 Koreans show up.

In Leksand 2008 again high prizes, yet only 5 Koreans in Groningen.

Also, AFAIK three of the Korean players in Groningen were there because they knew some Dutch players personally, players who had visited Korea, and part of their reason for being there was making a return visit (ie: Social reason, rather than financial).

I think that even with higher prize money like Villach or Leksand it is hard for a Korean player to break even, considering the cost of the flight, accommodation, food & drink, etc. Especially if they have to compete not only with top European players, but also with other strong Korean players.



No information about prizes was available in 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, etc. I doubt this has any impact on Korean visitors.

I think for most Koreans, the prize money is a nice extra, but the main reason for visiting the EGC is to be on holiday, to meet people, to see new countries and to play the game they love. The same reason 60-70 Japanese (and of course 600-700 other Europeans) show up.