Bantari, protectionism is already there. So far it favoured (ex) non-Europeans that instead of Europeans were invited to teach at tournaments. Now it favours also those with higher rating numbers or pro ranks. E.g., during the AGM 2010 it was said that only Europeans with rating 2650+ would be eligible for invited / possibly paid / travel supported teaching at congresses. This is like saying that others would lack sufficient teaching ability and be weaker teachers.

Maybe you did not know and therefore call my statements of facts "much fuss" and dramatic. I would like to see Europeans with the same interests working together instead of carelessly or intentionally trying to divide. That the EGF for too long has been carelessly ignoring some needs of strong and / or professional European players (like timely announcement of prizes) does not need to be continued by a new organization or even carved into stone by a third one.

Mistakes are there to be avoided - not to be made in the first place.

But these decisions are not made by some umbrella organization, but by the organizers at each event, right?
And they have the right to invite and pay whoever they want, I see not way for force them to do something or forbid them to do something else in this respect. And I can understand that - organizers wish to add interest and prestige to their events by having teachers as strong as possible. The question if the stronger player is also a better teacher is immaterial here (although very interesting in another context) since the issue is perception and status, not actual teaching skill. To change this, you need to change the perception, not impose regulations.

Besides, I find that natural:
I would not pay a 10k 'Go Teacher' to fly from New York to San Diego and give a lecture in our club here.
I might however pay a 9d pro Go Teacher for the same service.
I don't see how anybody can argue with the above.

You say that Asian strong players are preferred as teachers over European strong players at events. Well, then, as a matter of fact, what the EuroPro might accomplish is to help the European strong teachers being as prestigeous as invitee teachers as the Asian teachers, or more so. I see it as a tremendous potential advantage to the whole European Go community. Might also give the 'weaker' teachers incentive to actually get better. And if not, there will always be opportunities for teaching for everybody, I think.

There are more and more Go players in Europe, and they need more and more teachers. Take yourself for example. You, as a ama 5d teaching for money - this is not really that strange now. There are many like you. There are kyu players out there charging for lessons... and more power to them, if they find pupils. But I don't remember when I was still in Germany, in the 80s, that people would think like that. Don't remember anybody asking for money for teaching Go, even if there were some 5ds then too, strong ones. And 6ds too... People did not think like that, was just not cool...

Times change, and from what I see - they change for the benefit of people like you, who wish to charge people to teach Go.

Therefore - in my eyes - you fuss! Period.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

The former 10k teacher has specialized in teaching at schools. Possibly he might do it better than a 9p.

I agree with you that times are becoming better in general: the demand for teaching increases. This does not invalidate my earlier objections though.

You are a bit harsh on a very new organisation. I think they are still have to formalise themself and to decide who can join and who not. ( It will be by Egf rating, other rating or some pro test / admission tournament)

Until they have sorted themelves out they cannot be treated as representing the strongest European players, but a bit positive to a new european go organisation is a good thing.


Teachers or strong players?

Here also they still need to sort themselves out. maybe at the end there will be 2 organisations one for teachers and one for strong players.

Professional Status.

Here there will be a problems here as well, I think most strong players will prefer a place in the WAGC or other world amateur tournament than the (non paying) title Go- professional.
(And what if they lose their pro status are they then eligable for amateur tournaments again?)

So the organisers still have a lot to sort out, but still I doesn't concern me (i am not strong enough )
But it is a new organisation to promote Go

(and Robert don't dispair they will need their own rules comitee)

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Promotor and Librarian of Sensei's Library

Sorry, but I couldn't resist posting this link http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-e ... e-10917053

Not necessarily. Usage of the EGF General Tournament Rules and a simple Area Scoring ruleset could avoid it. Then referees (possibly an appeals committee) and maybe a tournament system design commission would suffice.

I suppose you are just joking.
(suppose the clock problem happenned in their league and it was in a deciding game)

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Promotor and Librarian of Sensei's Library

Considering that, according to a very active referee, ca. 75% (!) of the disputes in the EGC 2010 were caused by malfunctioning new Ing clocks (those with 4 languages), one cannot recommend any organization to use them ever.

Where the pure teaching ability is concerned, you might be right.
But there are other considerations:

10k will only be able to teach a small fractions of the club players - the rest are stronger than 10k. 9p will be able to teach all.
10k will not be able to, for example, also give simul exhibitions to club members. 9p will.
10k will not draw additional club attendance, 9p certainly will!
And so on...

Teaching and getting excited about learning is about much more than just pure teaching skill.
And anyways... from my experience, good teacher is important, but still most of the learning you do by yourself, teacher being just a guide, at the best of times. The motivation people have from learning from and playing with a 9p might give them more mileage than watching a 10k, however gifted, teaching beginners,

No offense to all the 10k players out there.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Ha ha However here are a few things to think about:

a) There are a few players in Europe who are certified as pros but who do not perform in European tournaments as well as one might expect (Guo, Taranu) Is it reasonable that so many European players have reached pro 5d level? Or have the pro 5d players lost some of their edge from playing mostly with weaker players?

b) In the Orient (CJK) low ranked pros and inseis usually belong to study groups supervised by a strong pro. They play each other and the games are reviewed by the teacher.

c) Without a stronger teacher people would progress but much more slowly

d) Many of the strongest European players were taught by strong pros, either as inseis in the Orient or by strong pros who visited Europe. Visiting pros from the Orient would be one way for the league memberst to avoid stagnation.

This is from a long time ago, but I didn't see anyone respond to it:

This use of the term is too modern to capture what it means to be a "professional go player" - a proper analogy would be of a professional organization (the Nihon-Kiin, say) to the renaissance-era craft Guilds. So a professional go player is at least a Journeyman, maybe a Master - a member of and protected by the guild, with patrons being directed to him by the guild to sustain his income.

That doesn't mean that masons (for instance) outside of the guild can't ply their trade, and even earn a decent living from it. They might be called "professional masons," but it's not the same at all as being a Master Mason (even if the person in question has the skill necessary, he isn't a guild member.)

Since the term "professional" is overloaded in this manner when talking about go players who are members of professional organizations, using the word "pro" to describe somebody who is not a member of an organization which works the same way that the existing pro organizations do promotes some confusion.

Bantari, I said "school" - not "club".

gowan, it is an interesting question indeed what Asian pro ranks of Europeans or Asians are worth in comparison to European amateur ranks. Every player can have a variation of his playing strength of roughly up to +-1 amateur rank but more likely up to +-0.5. We have seen European 7d been placed higher than European 1p - 5p (Asian ranks) or Taiwanese low p but not always. Thus overall it seems that currently the European Champion level equals roughly Japanese 5p~6p. One should note, of course, that by far fewer Europeans are in that range.

European amateur (high dan) ranks also have had an absolute increment of their strength value every year during the last dozen years. Matthew Macfadyen subjectively estimates it as 0.0625, I as 0.05. If that should be roughly right, we would see the first self-educated European of Japanese 9p strength in about 20 years.

breakfast, that the Russian proposal was not chosen at the AGM does not imply that the supergroup setting could not be changed in principle. During the AGM, nobody (also not you) has made an attempt though to say something about supergroup under the new, BGA style EC system. If anybody might have implied to say anything at all, it was me by getting acknowledgement twice that details are being understood to be worked out later. Now supergroup parameters certainly are details when compared to the basic tournament system structure. The rules commission is more concerned about other details: Whether to have relegation games in between McMahon and KO. We have already discussed supergroup a bit, too, though. Our current opinion: Given the currently weak criterion of current rating based on 0 to arbrarily many played games, a bigger supergroup size (24 Europeans) makes more sense. Given stronger criteria (like peak rating and - with exceptions for Europeans in Asia - a minimal number of played games), a smaller supergroup size (like 16 Europeans) could make sense. However, one should not just make the supergroup smaller while keeping its criteria as weak as currently.

As you see, supergroup is something that can be talked about. Why then do you use it as one of the justifications to have a EuroProGoLeague? That can be justified much better than by such a fake argument!

The AGM discussion about EC systems was mostly a joke though. One had to fight to speak at all. A profound discussion did not take place. Several systems like round-robin were essentially not even discussed at all on the grounds that no proponent for them spoke up. Why then is the EuroProGo system called a league, i.e. a round-robin? The strong players like Catalin at the AGM could have spoken up in its favour but did not. Similarly, at the AGM, the strong players commission could not be revived due to lacking energy by the strong players themselves - why then was their energy to launch EuroProGoLeague just 6 days later? Does merely money (supposed sponsor money found by EuroGoTV) recreate energy?

What I am the most concerned about though is whether EuroProGoLeague, the league as a whole or some of its games, is intended to be played with a parallel schedule to the European Championship. If yes, that would simply be stupid because a) there would be two titles competing against each other (European [Closed] Championship and EuroProGoLeague Winner) and b) the top players would have deceived the EGF's AGM by saying nothing about their intention while the new EC system was being adopted. Of course, interleaving schedules are possible easily: E.g., 1 game FRI, 2 games SAT, 2 games WED, 2 games SAT, 2 games SUN, 2 games WED = 11 games of a 12 player league.

EthanB, I don't think your comment disagrees with anything but my choice of examples, and if I say "professional locksmith" well, there is something close to a guild structure today. My point was just that a minimum income was not a necessary aspect of pro status, while saying that the potential for some income was a necessary condition (but not saying it was a sufficient one).

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Occupy Babel!

You're probably right - I get argumentative when I'm tired. But I was thinking that the sending of patrons to the artist by the guild was more than potential income.

Side discussion about the usage of the word "orient" was moved to this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=47&t=1368&start=40

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be immersed

Is there any official information on sponsorship yet?
I heard on KGS that members earn >$1000 from sponsorship. If that's true then they are absolutely right in calling themselves professional players.

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Sanity is for the weak.

Any news on this subject?

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People are eager to hear latest rumors about the subject. Are there any?

But few random thoughts with little relevance.

Perhaps yearly league champion should be awarded with the honorary title like Grand Master, to express some creativity in title name. And those who enter the league first time, should be awarded a title of International Master. This way it is easy for people to recognize players who are retired as an active players but have great past as player. After all people do like titles to be associated on their heroes.

I find Japanese professional system as a very bad example for European professional association. Perhaps it suits status hungry Japanese, but I would more like to think as an analogous professional, a soccer professional (or that already mentioned pro musician). When soccer pro cannot be anymore on the top, there goes the professional status. Simple injury can cancel the pro-status from player immediately. There is a little money issue with this analog, but any case. this is the way. Being a pro should not be a honorary title. Being a pro just means that you are currently voting a Labor Party. Nothing very honorary there.

But anyway I wish again good luck for this great idea! This is the Way to Go.