jlt wrote:Oh I didn't see the bottom of the page (and didn't smoke anything). Indeed there is no woman. Maybe they should have given a wild card to the female European Champion? Or maybe they did and she declined?
There are 1001 options, and a 1001 reasons why a specific player might not join a tournament. Or why a tournament might run out of candidates, or ways to accomodate. I don't know.
I do know perception is a reality of its own. I'll come to that later.
Then, an association, any association, has to deal with growth and reason. For example, any go association would probably grow more if it started setting up soccer tournaments. But that would collude with its reason. What I'm not sure is that the EGF has a proper balance, or that it has a clear vision of its reason. Is it there so that people can play? Internet has sort of turned that obsolete, even if you only use it to set up real life meetings through Whatsapp. Is it there to give pros a marketing push? That's the origins of the Kiin, as I understand it, but not of the EGF.
If the reason for the EGF is the *promotion* of Go, then not using Asian certified Pros AND not making sure there are women in the *general* events is a mistake. It's not a question of rank. That 5d in the listing might actually be the best player, for all I know, and 5d is simply his current rank. But at some point some young woman who's discovered Go is going to browse those pages, and the Pro Qual pages and ask herself... "Do they even _want_ me, in there?" Sure, it's a question as old as time, but... we can do better. Specially because we DO actually have good female players. The Asians themselves have told us that. But, as I see it, the message right now is that, if you're a woman, you're out of luck: you can play in the Female Tournament or Go East, but there's not much for you here.
And it might be completely accidental, the whole issue might not have crossed anyone's mind... But it's there.
Take care
