PGETC 2018/9

[Uberdude]

Is it really going to start next tuesday? No schedule has been published yet.

Maybe team captains got some unpublished info? UK is putting together a team for a league B match with Denmark on Tues 2nd.

[quantumf]

Our players (well, some of them) are only on the EGD by accident from participation in WAGC/KPMC events, and then, more recently, from PGETC games. Efforts to have our local tournament games captured on EGD met with sufficient resistance for us not to pursue that any further.

Can you explain the resistance? If South Africa is an observer member I do not see why it can't have its tournaments entered into the system. Estonia is not a member, but has its tournaments entered into the system.

Looking back at the actual correspondence (from three years ago), I believe I may have misrepresented the resistance. Lorenz and Aldo were very happy to accommodate us, and the resistance was mostly internal - partly because we use club games to keep our ranks up to date, in contrast to the EGD, and partly because we would have been obliged to pick an "accurate" EGD rank for our players, who are mostly slightly overrated by EGD standards. This seemed like a sufficiently contentious issue to make me reluctant to embark on this exercise. In addition, at the the time, there didn't seem to be any real benefit to capturing our tournaments on EGD, given that we had (and have) a perfectly functional rating system already in place.

[Javaness2]

Looking back at the actual correspondence (from three years ago), I believe I may have misrepresented the resistance. Lorenz and Aldo were very happy to accommodate us, and the resistance was mostly internal - partly because we use club games to keep our ranks up to date, in contrast to the EGD, and partly because we would have been obliged to pick an "accurate" EGD rank for our players, who are mostly slightly overrated by EGD standards. This seemed like a sufficiently contentious issue to make me reluctant to embark on this exercise. In addition, at the the time, there didn't seem to be any real benefit to capturing our tournaments on EGD, given that we had (and have) a perfectly functional rating system already in place.

I can see that it would be difficult to make a translation. Indeed if the South African system is better, why bother?
If you really wanted to do it, I guess you'd need to be able to come up with a reliable interpolation formula. What are the chances of a simplistic bodge like SA = 1.4(GoR) + 500 working though...

The PGETC schedules are up now. There is both an arbitration board and an appeals panel.

[Javaness2]

I saw this today https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/446

League A and top League B teams will play special season 2019
Qualification tournaments:

14-16 June in Serbia: France, Hungary, Israel, Romania, Serbia, Austria
19-21 June in Czech Republic: Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Czechia, Germany, Italy

This means League A and top two teams from League B play it out. It isn't clear how many qualify though. Does anyone know the plan?

[jlt]

Four?

§14. Finals at the European Go Congress
(1) The matches are played on four real boards without handicap, Japanese rules and the parameters of §11 (5) and (6)
(2) Each of the four teams has to play three games (round robin)

[Javaness2]

I think that what you're quoting there only relates to the finals which are played at the European Go Congress. The announcement on the PGETC page seems to refer to some new competition, but the format or objectives of that competition are not really explained.

[HermanHiddema]

From an email about this I received last year as PGETC team captain:

Here are the details about the new face-to-face tournaments, scheduled for June 2019:

-- Two seperate EGF-tournaments, each with 6 country-teams on four boards, 5 rounds round-robin
-- All teams of league A and the top two (after 9 rounds online games) of league B will be invited
-- Each team gets 1.000 Euro financial support for travelling/accomodation
-- Organizers for these top-tournaments with at least 24 players are welcomed. 15/16, 22/23 or 29/30 June possible
-- Time setting aequivalent to the online games, so three games on Saturday and two games on Sunday would work
-- Per tournament the 6 teams will be defined in the following way:
-- drawing 2 teams out of top 4 of the final chart after 9 online-rounds league A in May 2019
-- drawing 2 teams out of places 5 to 8 of the final chart of league A in May 2019
-- drawing 2 teams out of places 9/10 from league A and 1/2 of league B after online-games in May 2019
-- Teams from top 4 start with 2 points, teams from 5-8 start with 1 point, last 4 start with zero points
-- After 5 rounds round robin, including the different start-points explained in the upper line, in each tournament
-- Top 2 qualify for the finals at EGC2019 in Brussels
-- Top 5 are qualified for league A in the next season
-- The team on 6th place after 5 rounds will play in league B in the season 2019/2020
-- Each of the four teams qualified for the finals in Brussels get € 500 financial support for travelling/accomodation

[Uberdude]

This new system means there's scope for more fluidity between leagues, and even a high place finisher in league A can get demoted if they do very badly in this real-life tournament. And by the luck of the draw both the top 2 from league B (Serbia and Austria) are in the same group so one of them is guaranteed promotion (and both could), whereas in the other group it's only league A teams and 1 is guaranteed demotion. I believe one rationale for this real life event is if teams have been cheating with AI online they might do well then but it will be much harder in this real life tournament which decides the top 4 for the finals.

[Javaness2]

Is this tournament replacing League A, or is it complimentary to League A?

[HermanHiddema]

It's complimentary. An in between phase between the online games and the finals.

[joachim]

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

[Uberdude]

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.

[Javaness2]

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.

[Uberdude]

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.

[Javaness2]

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.