SportAccord Mind Games US and EU teams

[Hsiang]

I find there to be something distasteful about an EU team. This is pretty silly in an international event which is supposed to be between countries. Canadians playing for the USA, what the heck is that?

This event is a small, invitational, tournament. Go is allowed 30 players total. SportAccord had wanted only NATIONAL teams and we were asked to pick one team from Europe. Your EGF reps argued hard for broader inclusion, which is how an "EU team" came about. I actually thought for a moment that they would be heralded as heroes by a grateful EGF membership. ^^

[shapenaji]

@Shapenaji I don't see the issue surrounding having a pro system. There has been talk that there might be one started in 2012. If so, what will be different from today?

Or if your issue is that American amateurs aren't good enough to match professionals, as you suggested, you're not quite right. The best amateurs are just barely weaker than Ming Jiu Jiang and Feng Yun (two players have good records against Mingjiu and Feng Yun combined over the course of several games. Guess who?). There is a modest gap between them and the next set of amateurs, and from there, there is continuity all the way down.

Well, I withdraw my previous argument, if they don't have the ability to play for the countries that they're pro with, (what does pro mean at that point?) then I see no reason why they shouldn't play,

My argument largely hinged on the idea that they had the ability to play elsewhere and chose not to. If that is not the case, then they're in the same boat as everyone else.

I wonder how much continuity there is, at most of the bigger tournaments I've been to, it feels like there's a group of 8d's, a 7d, and then a group of 6d's... it feels like there's a gap there, though I can't see one in the ratings data

[Javaness2]

I'll give them credit for a good negotiation, but lets face it, it would look pretty nuts if NATO entered a team at the Olympics, so why is there an EU team at this SportAccord event? Besides, Romania should clearly be representing the EGF

I find there to be something distasteful about an EU team. This is pretty silly in an international event which is supposed to be between countries. Canadians playing for the USA, what the heck is that?

This event is a small, invitational, tournament. Go is allowed 30 players total. SportAccord had wanted only NATIONAL teams and we were asked to pick one team from Europe. Your EGF reps argued hard for broader inclusion, which is how an "EU team" came about. I actually thought for a moment that they would be heralded as heroes by a grateful EGF membership. ^^

[daniel_the_smith]

...

Again, they have the right to compete in these tournaments ANYWAY, inside their professional system. As long as they have that, it seems silly to duplicate their eligibility inside the US.

...
This is not true in almost all cases. In fact, I only know of one extraordinary exception.

BTW, Hsiang, thank you for making the announcement here and for continuing to inject the forum with facts.

[tapir]

And I do think that Tapir's point is on target. Even players who trained in the US but are second-generation are special in that regard. There's a difference between discovering Go because your parents play or your community is full of players, and discovering it as a player whose culture has no history for the game. It seems like second-generation Asians in the US are less likely to play than their parents.

So you can ask hypothetically, if Asian immigration to the US dried up, even if all the current players stayed here, would we still have top level amateurs in three generations?

I don't think there's anything wrong with asking that, and being sad if the answer is "no, we wouldn't."

I just think the answer has nothing to do with limiting who represents us.

Thanks. I was fearing a rather different response. I believe AGA should ask itself some questions if the top 50 are almost exclusively 1st/2nd/3rd generation immigrants from CJK. It is a failure in the internationalisation/popularisation of the game in my opinion, and the resident professionals are not the cause. Mingjiu and the other teachers in the U.S. do teach in English as well, and may teach predominantly in English if I am correct.

I also believe JF is a bit fast with the accusation of "whining", the wish to contest for a berth in an Americas team is not a wish to get a reserved place without competition. And don't forget that South American results in international tournaments are afaik better than North American, even if only due to the famous two wins of F. Aguilar in the 1st Toyota Denso Cup. What about sending a South American team only? It would be just fair, but still I believe AGA players would probably complain about it.

Furthermore, I believe nationalism is introduced by a sponsor insisting on "flag and anthem" national teams. If we don't want it, we need a different kind of tournament. Accept the federation level instead, and you will get an EGF team. But Serbia, Russia, Israel, Ukraine, Turkey are all rather unlikely to be EU members in the near future, but still they are members of the EGF and should be represented (or at least be elegible for representation) as such, not as some bogus "guest EU-members". The "EU team" could as well ended w/ Ilya Shikshin, Alex. Dinershtein, Svetlana Shikshina, Dusan Mitic and Ali Jabarin (if the Romanians had a bad qualifier that is ).

Although I believe EGF representatives did a good job in selling an EGF team as EU team, even if the "European Union"ess of the team could have been entirely fictional. It is something to tell the sponsors next time, that they have to cope with federations not with pseudo-nations. (Take the EGF logo and a nice song, instead of flag and anthem!) And AGA did not do such a good bargaining job as EGF rep's it seems, at least they totally forgot about the bigger part of America.

Best, Tapir.

[hyperpape]

Thanks. I was fearing a rather different response. I believe AGA should ask itself some questions if the top 50 are almost exclusively 1st/2nd/3rd generation immigrants from CJK. It is a failure in the internationalisation/popularisation of the game in my opinion, and the resident professionals are not the reason. Mingjiu and the other teachers in the U.S. do teach in English as well, and may teach predominantly in English if I am correct.

It is not a matter of popularization.

The playing population in the US is not overwhelmingly Asian. Or perhaps it is--I don't know how many Asian Americans play but never attend a tournament--but the tournament going population is not overwhelmingly Asian. Instead, as you rise in the ranks, the proportion of non-Asian players drops. If you look at the general population, I'd guess that half of players are non-Asian, give or take a dozen or two percent (how do you like that estimate?). That doesn't look like a terrible failure of popularization to me--we have a substantial Asian American population, and it's a fantasy to expect non-Asian Americans to play Go at anything approaching the same rates in this generation or next.

As I said, what's true is that as you go into mid and high-dan ranks, the proportion of non-Asians drops, until you have only two non-Asians (Trevor Morris and Matthew Burall) in the top 50 American players active since 2010. Double or triple that number, and you'd still have very few. Note: in listing the top 50, I excluded people I knew to be visitors from another nation like Jujo Jiang or Hu Zi Zhang, but I must have missed some. Ethnicity was judged by names, and I don't think there were any borderline cases--though some years ago, I did fail to realize that John Lee was Korean.

Recognizing that fact, the question is whether as you go more generations beyond the initial immmigrants, will you still continue to see players of similar strength? (Of course I don't know that we haven't. I know a few player bios, but maybe some of the folks on that top 50 have several generations of ancestors who lived in the US).

The density of players in the EGF nations seems to be higher, but not enough to explain the difference (6000 to roughly 2000 active players, with a somewhat larger population base). Thus, I think the phenomenon is not about the popularity of Go in the US, but something else.

[RobertJasiek]

This event is a small, invitational, tournament. Go is allowed 30 players total. SportAccord had wanted only NATIONAL teams and we were asked to pick one team from Europe.

So the tournament title with "World" in it is very wrong when Europe is invited and "represented" by an EU team but, e.g. Africa is not represented by, say an OAU team (OAU also has sort of flag and anthem) and when countries are put on one level with political organisations. Call the tournament what it is, an invitational meeting, and all is fine!

All this reminds me of the first British mind sports "olympics" with Go handicap tournaments. Also there "meeting" would have been a more fitting title.

[John Fairbairn]

At the level of what the event itself could and should have done, while I don't know the details, I was told that funding was a major headache and China acted as a white knight. In such cases, to mix metaphors, the piper gets to pay the tune, so we have to be careful to make our omelette only with the eggs provided.

[HermanHiddema]

I, for one, am very grateful to Sport Accord that it is sponsoring such an event, and I think they are doing an invaluable service to mind sports at large in getting recognition on par with other sports. I find it extremely distasteful that many go players can apparently only complain about technicalities and side issues.

I also think the concept of an EU team is a wonderful idea, and I applaud the EGF for actually getting it accepted. The EGF at large can definitely put together a stronger team than any individual member could, and the qualifier gives strong players throughout Europe yet another chance to compete at the highest levels.

[RobertJasiek]

technicalities and side issues.

Calling an event a World event but not making it world-wide is not a side-issue but a core problem. It is like running Olympics for only the first world countries.

I also think the concept of an EU team is a wonderful idea, and I applaud the EGF for actually getting it accepted.

Why an EU team and not an EGF team or a European team? What is so wonderful of the EU in the European world of Go countries? Calling it EGF team or European team would have fit the selection of players and agreed to the political Go power in Europe behind it.

[HermanHiddema]

Robert, thank you for the excellent example of the kind of useless whining I was talking about.

[tapir]

Robert, thank you for the excellent example of the kind of useless whining I was talking about.

I am pretty sure it is among other things the expectation of much more whining by many players that made EGF representatives bargain hard enough to get de facto European representation instead of sending a Russian team (which would have been the most obvious choice as they won the European Team Championship). Kudos to them for that.

But honestly, the logic that players not eligible to compete (South Americans) should behave and be happy with an omelette others are going to eat is pretty much incomprehensible to me. Imagine the EGF sending a strictly EU team according to sponsor wishes, excluding all non-EU EGF members from competition. There would have been and rightly so an outcry amongst non-EU federations and many EU federations as well.

[HermanHiddema]

But honestly, the logic that players not eligible to compete (South Americans) should behave and be happy with an omelette others are going to eat is pretty much incomprehensible to me. Imagine the EGF sending a strictly EU team according to sponsor wishes, excluding all non-EU EGF members from competition. There would have been and rightly so an outcry amongst non-EU federations and many EU federations as well.

Well, if any sponsor decides to spend money on go, that makes me happy. Even if I, or my country, are not receiving any of that money.

The sponsor decides to spend a lot of money to organize an event. They make certain choices, set some criteria, on how that money will be spent. That is their choice, and their right. It is, after all, their money. What possible justification could any player have to claim to somehow "deserve" some of that money?

Really, IMO, it is a bit like saying: "I am going to spend a million dollars to feed the poor." And then the overwhelming reaction is: "What? Why aren't you spending two million? Why are you not also providing medicine to sick people? Why are some people, who are not quite as poor, excluded? Also, you should say that you are 'feeding the hungry', because there are also poor people that have sufficient food! In conclusion, you are a horrible person, and all the people that are helping to deliver the food are horrible people as well!"

[RobertJasiek]

Robert, thank you for the excellent example of the kind of useless whining I was talking about.

Pointing out big mistakes is useless only if the "money justifies all" camp of John and you succeeds and prevents things from improving and continues to discriminate many countries (from subtle discrimination like Russians having to play under the EU flag to hard discrimination like forgoing entire continents in what is called a world event).

[RobertJasiek]

Well, if any sponsor decides to spend money on go, that makes me happy. Even if I, or my country, are not receiving any of that money.

The sponsor decides to spend a lot of money to organize an event. They make certain choices, set some criteria, on how that money will be spent. That is their choice, and their right. It is, after all, their money. What possible justification could any player have to claim to somehow "deserve" some of that money?

Really, IMO, it is a bit like saying: "I am going to spend a million dollars to feed the poor." And then the overwhelming reaction is: "What? Why aren't you spending two million? Why are you not also providing medicine to sick people? Why are some people, who are not quite as poor, excluded? Also, you should say that you are 'feeding the hungry', because there are also poor people that have sufficient food! In conclusion, you are a horrible person, and all the people that are helping to deliver the food are horrible people as well!"

Everything you say above is about right and that sponsors support Go with lots of money is great. It does not imply though that everybody approves the mistakes made in tournament organisation. When a sponsor sells his event as a world event but does not make it a world event, then he has to live with the criticism for doing so.