Life In 19x19

Kirby wrote:To speak from experience, my wife is Korean, and....

wow..that is intresting to know.
i guess if i visit you i can expect authentic korean dish??
you will get plenty of teaching game from me with that dish

Magicwand wrote:

Kirby wrote:To speak from experience, my wife is Korean, and....

wow..that is intresting to know.
i guess if i visit you i can expect authentic korean dish??
you will get plenty of teaching game from me with that dish

Sure, you could expect that...
It depends on my mood, but my favorites are 양념치킨, 만두, and 김치찌개. Maybe you can submit your order before you come, and she can make it

Helel wrote:

Kirby wrote:However, I think that, while it may be hard to understand some aspects of a culture, it is not good to associate it with being "right" or "wrong". As you experience and live in a culture, you can come to understand it better. The only thing that you can really say is that the culture is simply different.

Regarding some issues, the thought process is very different between, for example, America and Korea. That doesn't make either way of thought right or wrong. It is very difficult to isolate oneself from any bias and to be purely objective.

I do agree with you about not associate it with "right" or "wrong", but this does not mean you have to accept other peoples views. I am who I am, and believe me I will fight for what I believe in.

Kirby wrote:The solution to this is to broaden your experiences and communication with cultures that are different than your own. After that, you can come to a better understanding of how and why things are the way they are.

Being much less nice than you I can tell you that any amount of understanding won't change the fact that people with some views really belongs in an early grave.

I agree with your first point to some degree. When there is a conflict, to make a resolution, one side has to adjust. The adjustment could come from either direction.

I'm not sure if I'd go as extreme as agreeing with your second point

Kirby wrote:Sure, you could expect that...
It depends on my mood, but my favorites are 양념치킨, 만두, and 김치찌개. Maybe you can submit your order before you come, and she can make it

same goes for you. if you happens to visit Savannah GA.

I don't understand what the problem is. It's only an amateur championship and not a matter of obtaining some country's citizenship.

I've never been on the EGC yet, but in 2012 I plan to attend it, and I hope and expect to play with people from all over the world. It's actually one of the main reasons why I would want to attend it. Why the %*!$ do they want to spoil the party?

Ok, I am biased, but is just makes me angry.

karaklis wrote:I don't understand what the problem is. It's only an amateur championship and not a matter of obtaining some country's citizenship.

I've never been on the EGC yet, but in 2012 I plan to attend it, and I hope and expect to play with people from all over the world. It's actually one of the main reasons why I would want to attend it. Why the %*!$ do they want to spoil the party?

Ok, I am biased, but is just makes me angry.

From what I gather, it's not about spoiling the party for everybody, but rather about spoiling the party for some of the strongest players - either the Asians or the Europeans. The difficulty is finding a compromise between:

a) Having a great tournament with strong players from all over the world

and

b) Giving some legitimate recognition to the strongest European player.

A sub-problem of b) is defining "European."

Maybe it's my outlook on Go, but if I was actually strong enough to be in these top divisions, I'd choose to play in an open division against the Koreans even if it meant having no shot at the title. If Oh Chi-min, Cho Seok-bin and In-Seong Hwang are likely to be excluded because they are too strong and messing up the ease of finding a bona-fide European champion, I think the top Europeans should be delighted to have such incredible strength to play against.

One solution may be simply not to have a European champion at all. There's no Japanese, Chinese or Korean champions after all. We could instead have a number of European titles, that are all completely up for grabs. If Ondrej Silt won the international tournament he was in this year (BC Card Cup? I forget which) I'm sure none of the Asian professionals he would have had to have beaten would have begrudged him the fact he won.

I think any tournament that has the strongest players moved sideways because of ethnicity, race, or simply nationality, has the cart pulling the horse somehow.

What about making it plain simple: Give everyone, who is willing to play, their chance. Top ranked European (common is like born inside Europe - yes, you can determine that - or residency for at least 5 years in one country in Europe) becomes European champion and gets price money. And top ranked player overall gets price money, too.
I would say, both get the same amount. If you win both, well, then you get both =D

And if you don't have enough money for four prices (EC and place 1,2,3) then just split the pot accordingly.

Now, one can argue about how to handle professional participation. I would say for instance, that Taranu or Dinerchtein should be willing to constribute simul games and/or commentary, when they want to participate.

I think the mainproblem behind the idea of seperating the top EU players from foreigners is the McMahon-System.
If the first spots are filled with asians it is much likly that not the direct result but some kind of tiebreaker like SOS, SSOS determinates the "Euro-Go-Champion". It is really sad if the championship is based on some kind of badluck-pairing and therfore resulting bad SOS-Points.

Jonas,
Best solution is smaller MM top group. So, top Europeans will have time to meet top Europeans. They will not spend time playing 2d-4d players (I played lot of them during the last few EGC)

Making MM groups smaller does not solve the tiebreaker problem. Not using tiebreakers at all for the final results ordering does solve the tiebreaker problem.

Sang-Dae Hahn,

this is not a race issue at all. It is about citizenship and / or place of regular residence: Europe(an).

It is also not against mutual respect, appreciation, friendship, mutual understanding at all. Many Europeans perceive Go as a multi-level gaming family. There are different levels from family / personal, close friends via city, region within a country, country, the continent to the world. When I want to play Go within my family, I do so and do not make it an open event for guests from everywhere in the world. Europan Go culture has - besides the great majority of tournaments open to all players from the whole world - also a small percentage of tournaments for the non-world-wide-levels of gaming family: in particular national championships and the European (Closed) Championship (title). Since you speak of mutual respect, can you respect it that many of us Europeans want to have a closed championship at all - quite like we respect however open or closed the Koreans organize the tournaments in their home country? It is not only Europeans with a sense of closure though. E.g., the World Amateur Go Championship allows per country only players with its respective citizenship. I am not allowed to organize and play in Kiribati's championship to represent that country and Koreans are not allowed to qualify via Tuvalu's championship.

The European Open Championship belongs to the most liberal tournaments. Amateurs, inseis, and professionals from all countries may participate. Can the same be said about all Korean tournaments? No.

That we have the European Open Championship does not mean though that we would want to forget about our European level gaming family - rather we also want to have the European (Closed) Championship.

Different cultures can exchange their different experiences only if each culture is allowed to survive. Permit European gaming culture to survive! Having also a European (Closed) Championship is part of our cultural desire. Having it at the congress as well: We like the exchange with kibitzes, to meet players in / outside the championship and need to keep annual travel costs within reasonable bounds.

Having a closed European Championship is not anti-competitive. Quite contrarily, it increases competition among the Europeans themselves.

Most Europeans like to play everybody at suitable opportunies. In particular, strong Europeans like to play the usually stronger East Asians. This does just not go so far to stop and abandon the European culture of having a European (Closed) Championship. You do not forget your own family entirely to spread Go around the world 365 day a year, right? Likewise, we do not forget our own gaming family to play with East Asian players as often as we can.

"The spirit of Go" is not as one-sided as you suggest. It is a game the CAN be played between players from the whole world but it is NOT a game that ALWAYS HAS TO be played at the global level.

The more I see the more I agree with Java. Let the congress pick the top 8 Europeans who then play a double round-robin tournament to decide the European champion.

This way the congress with 100+ players gets to be entirely open, and a place where the very best Go is played, and the Go championship a small closed tournament with the top eligible participants.

The British title is a 1 vs 1 tournament, selected from the top 2 in an eight way single round robin, selected from the top eight in a 1k+ open swiss. This I think adds a lot more credibility to the title itself, and whereas the logistics of the individual title match are not appropriate for Europe, one double round robin tournament is.

Beautiful. The depth of our ignorance is beautiful. We should be honured to have Korean players on our congresses. European players learn so much from them. My teacher played on the last congress. He and his friend were pleased about the number of games they played against top players. Both teaching and playing. They are making our players feel good, and we are well on our way to make them spot coming to the EGC. Event should be open. If needed, it would be best to remove the top european prize, and make another tournament, not associated with the EGC, that will determine European Champion. But I do not want to linger on this subject. I want to ask everyone of you who have the need of ruining the EGC for Koreans one question: Who do you think you are?

LovroKlc: No one wants to ruin the EGC for the asian players; that is why we have this discussion!

Currently, the closed EC is somewhat ruined for the european players; that is why something might need to be changed.

There is no reason to insult the participants of this discussion for their draft proposals.