The purpose of a championship per se are clear:
a) To determine the currently strongest player.
b) To honour him.
c) To enable him to receive honour.
d) To create interesting games for the players themselves and, if games are broadcasted, for everybody.
e) In principle, one could use a championship for promoting the game in the media, but so far this has hardly been done successfully.

Now to the more specific question whether to have an EGC: The top players and many ordinary players want it for all or some of the above reasons, where "European" is inserted in (a).

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Japan, China, South Korea have a modern tradition of sponsored tournaments. Prize moneys roughly equal prestige. Asia now has Asian Games.

It is up to other continents, regions or countries whether they want a championship for their top players.

The amateur scene has in Japan, I think, an All Japan Best Player tournament (or whatever that is called). I do not know about other Asian countries. The world has, obviously, the WAGC.

This is as valid question as why do we need a world champion? Or a national champion (well, if your examples are true, then all nations don't)? Or any champions at all?

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Thank you for explaining this proposal.
Ok, on reflection I would go for Board proposal 1 if I had to make a choice from these 7. A European Championship taking place on rest days would be a good crowd pleaser. However that's just my personal selection and I still wonder if strong players will say No

Board 3 looks just too complex, I mean it is probably ok, but since nobody reads the rules before arriving at a tournament I think that it will create a nightmare.

The following table may be of interest to help evaluation of some of the system proposals.

The column Points denotes the number of wins of the European Champion. The column #EuropeansTied states the number of Europeans sharing MMS and Points with the European Champion; this includes himself.

The same just after round 9, but players outside the supergroup are not counted:

This suggests that shortening the EGC to 9 rounds would improve the selection of the EC. But since one of the main complaints of the European top players is that they don't play each other enough, and are instead playing weaker Europeans and strong non-Europeans, that hardly sounds like the right way to go.

I think this also supports that Dinerchtein's suggestion to make the top group smaller can really work. With a smaller top/super group, fewer people will get to 7 points after 10 rounds, and ties should become more unusual. At the same time, making the top group smaller should avoid some of the pairings against weaker European players, another benefit. I think there is something to be said for simply putting the top bar at 6 dan.

Hi Robert can you publish some more data?

number of topgroupplayers ( all players above the bar)
number of european contestants (all players of the above that are eligable for the best european title)

and if possible what would hapen if the bar was raised with these numbers

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willemien, you can find out and post yourself:
http://www.eurogofed.org/results/congress.htm

Herman, I have not meant to imply that 9 rounds would be better than 10. It depends on tournament system, number of strong non-Europeans, strength distribution of Europeans in the super/top group. That during the last 10 years under the current system (with slightly varying tiebreakers) 9 rounds might have been better on average than 10 rounds might simply be coincidence. It would not easy to prove likelihood of an expected over-determination effect; there are too many input paramaters to be considered.

One reason for my little study is to get a priliminary estimate of how it would be for system proposal #2, which suggests modified Swiss and 9+ rounds. A denser strength distribution and Europeans only make a direct comparison also difficult though.

Making the top group smaller inside the current system means obviously fewer weakish opponents but it might lead to over-determination after a smaller number of rounds. To make this less likely, my suggestion for system proposal #2 is to start with 32 players; thereby one gets a similar distribution of numbers of wins for the top players during the late rounds because 9+ rounds Swiss is similar to the current system, which hides a Swiss-style supergroup on top of the McMahon heap.

Making the top group smaller also has a disadvantage: It makes pairing during late rounds harder, unless one allows repeated pairs, which is disliked. (The alternative, to pair down 2+ McMahon groups because of otherwise missing new opponents, is even worse.)

Presumably one can tune and test a lot with the exact top group size. Values between ca. 24 and 64 all might be feasible. But ca. 16 players for 10 rounds Swiss??? You would always need Andreas Ensch to plan all pairing alternatives for the next 3 rounds fairly. I doubt that it can be done during the last 3 rounds though. Starting with ca. 32 players avoids such problems, even if more and more players are thrown out, so that finally maybe only 8 to 10 remain. If there are ca. 16 before the last 3 rounds, then that should suffice for getting new opponents and fair pairings, I'd guess.

Putting top bar to 6d is too inflexible; don't forget about years like Dublin. The current system of allowing to set the top bar to either 4d, 5d, 6d or 7d is much more flexible.

I did not mean to imply that you did, it was simply an observation. Of course 10 data points is insufficient to make any definite statement about such a thing.



On what do you base your minimum of 24, and your dismissal of 16? Christoph Gerlach, in his doctoral thesis, suggests 11-33 players in a top group for 10 rounds McMahon. The BGA suggests 11-30 in their McMahon guide. The AGA TD guide gives no specific recommendation for 10 rounds, but their minimum for other sizes (up to 8 rounds) is always 1 more than the number of rounds, so extrapolation gives an 11 minimum again.

In general, given a number of rounds N, as the size of the top group approaches N (from above), the top group behaves more and more like round robin. As the size moves towards 2^N, it behaves more and more like knock-out. Round robin is is more desirable than knock-out, IMO, therefore we should not move too far away from N.

I think 16 would be an excellent top group size. Yes, you will have a harder time making pairings, and players will be paired down 2+ McMahon groups, but that is good. If you have 6/7 and have played all players at 5+, then a 4/7 opponent is fine. It is better than having a 0/0 weak opponent in the first round.



6d was a rough suggestion based on recent years. Of course in far fewer strong players show up, the bar should be lower.

I believe that simply raising the top bar is a step in the right direction, and that this should also be "politically" feasible.

I support the query for data on the size of the top groups in recent years.

I do not think that extrapolating this data to "what if the top bar was at 6 dan" is possible, because the top bar decision also leads to completely different pairings.

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

All group size suggestions (Gerlach, BGA, AGA, vDiepen, I) are pretty much educated guesses from experience. AFAIK, serious model simulations are still missing. Even Boscole did not do them, I think.

You theoretical boundary observations N versus 2^N are correct, of course.

Are there any practical experiences with as few as 16 players in a 10 rounds tournaments?

The top group (aka super) was mostly 32 players (24-32 Europeans), except one a few years, where there was no super group and so the top group was 48. (I recall Dublin and Italy, where we had 48.)

Not really, I raise the question because now there is the potential for racial discrimination (by proxy, but it is how it will be viewed by the rest of the World). Without definition of European, I think it's all on very dodgy ground.



But what defines European? If a Korean ex-insei is living in Europe I would consider them eligible to be "European champion". They aren't going to enter a national championship in their country of birth if they have to travel round the World to do it. I am happy with this being extended to having a valid VISA of European Nationality, or joint nationality, or national residence, but simply doing it by actual birth seems, frankly, racist.

If I moved to live in Australia because of work or something, I would expect after a year or so to be eligible for Australian championship status because it's where I live, where my home is, and where I would be intending on being for the indefinite future. I see no reason to discriminate against people who are simply living in Europe who wish to have a chance at being European champion.

"European" is not a race. Some, who think that races exist, call Caucasian a race.

Nor is it a nationality. So why is Cho Seok-bin not eligible to be European Champion, or "Strongest European", exactly?

I don't know how EGF defines it, but I think in most sports the definition is something like "a person who is a citizen in a country, whose <insert name of sport here> federation is a member of European <insert name of sport here> federation". (The definition can be something else too, e.g. permanent resident instead of citizen, as long at is the same for all countries)

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Citizenship in an EGF member country is pretty much the current definition. I would be fine with changing it to "resident for at least X years".

Regardless, the distinction is not race based. Guo Juan moved to the Netherlands and applied for a passport. Once she had a passport, she was eligible and won the title of European Champion four times. If the Koreans currently residing in Europe received a passport, they would similarly be eligible.

Whether someone wants to apply for a passport is a personal choice, I guess. If you identify as e.g. "German" more than as "Korean", then you could apply and in time be European Champion. If you identify as "Korean" more than as "German", then you don't apply and don't get to be European Champion, which is perhaps only fair.

I would agree, this seems very fair.

topazg, find many endless threads on the topic "What is a European" at rec.games.go or godiscussions.com!

Indeed, but if a thread is to state "How to find the strongest european", it's bound to come up again

Not that I know of. The Dutch Championship is Swiss with 16 players over 8 rounds. Usually, the 8th round starts to be challenging to pair. However, this is mostly due to having to pair both the small group of strongest players down and the small group of weakest players up. In McMahon, the problem does not exist for the weaker players, because they will have been paired with players from outside the top group, and for the stronger players the problem will be smaller, because they can meet the best performers from just below the bar



Since the current size of 32 seems to be working rather badly, and since several experienced TDs advocate it, perhaps making it smaller should be tried? The larger size of 48 in Frascati certainly does not seem to have helped.