Life In 19x19

We did find tournament supervisors: ourselves.

Maybe you are not aware of the history of congress supervision: Basically it was done by the rules commission. The greater flexibility of allowing tournament supervisors set by the rules commission was put into the rules to allow the job being done if not enough rules commission members would be present. Now you read the rule independent of its history as something that would require the rules commission each year to spend much time looking for other persons doing the supervision. It is not like we would be required to install other persons. Rather we may do so if think that we want to do less work ourselves and if finding and educating others actually would be less work than doing the job ourselves.

Do you have the email addresses of all EGF Certified Referees? If so, please forward them to us, thanks.

Why does accelerated Swiss (in a tournament like KPMC or WAGC) provide any advantage? Why would it better than cross-pairing in the first two rounds, then fold-pairing? In which sense better?

RobertJasiek wrote:Why does accelerated Swiss (in a tournament like KPMC or WAGC) provide any advantage? Why would it better than cross-pairing in the first two rounds, then fold-pairing? In which sense better?

Better in the sense that accelerated pairings allow more games between the top players to happen, and avoid games with an overly large strength difference between the players. Currently, there are many games in the first round of the WAGC that are pretty much pointless to play, because the strength difference between the players is too large. If we look at the playing field of the latest WAGC, for example, then if we order by strength and cross-pair, the top players (6-7 dan from) play against 1-3 dan players, while the weakest of the top half (4-5 dan) are playing against kyu players.

Accelerated pairings effectively eliminate the first round by pairing the first quartile against the second and the third against the fourth, then forcibly pairing the second against the third in the second round. So now you have 6-7 dan playing 4-5 dan in the first round, and 1-3 dan playing kyu players. Then in the second round the 4-5 dan are paired against the 1-3 dan, while the 6-7 dan are already playing amongst themselves, as are the kyu players.

If most of the games in the 2nd vs 3rd quartile have their expected outcome, then only about 1/8 of the players will be undefeated after the first two rounds, as opposed to 1/4 with normal Swiss. At the WAGC, that will be ~8-10 players. Those players will get to play more of their games amongst themselves, which improves the sampling for the top places. More games between the real contestants (CN, JP, KR, KP, TW, HK) will happen.

RobertJasiek wrote:We did find tournament supervisors: ourselves.

Maybe you are not aware of the history of congress supervision: Basically it was done by the rules commission. The greater flexibility of allowing tournament supervisors set by the rules commission was put into the rules to allow the job being done if not enough rules commission members would be present. Now you read the rule independent of its history as something that would require the rules commission each year to spend much time looking for other persons doing the supervision. It is not like we would be required to install other persons. Rather we may do so if think that we want to do less work ourselves and if finding and educating others actually would be less work than doing the job ourselves.

Sending out a few emails is not much work. Finding others to do the work is a good idea, regardless of historical necessity. The EGF needs all the volunteers it can get, so any little task that can be delegated should be delegated if an appropriate volunteer can be found. It is a well known problem in many volunteer organizations that certain people tend to prefer doing jobs themselves rather than finding others to help, and then when such a person quits the job, there is a much bigger problem than needed.

RobertJasiek wrote:Do you have the email addresses of all EGF Certified Referees? If so, please forward them to us, thanks.

Why should I do your job? I assume you have a list of who is certified? Finding email addresses for many of them should not be overly hard.

Finding all the email addresses would be more work than we would want to do any time soon.

RobertJasiek wrote:Finding all the email addresses would be more work than we would want to do any time soon.

If you're not willing to do the rules commission work, why are you in the rules commission?

Robert, what will be the supergroup size this year in Tampere?
I am not sure, will I take part or not, so it's important to find more info.

Right now there are only few Asians registered - it's unusual.

It's hard to find any info on prizes -it's the biggest problem.

You spend 2 weeks, teach lot of 4-5 dans, play only few games with equal/stronger opponents and get 500 Euro at the end (less than the hotel fee).
The title is important, but it's a very expensive to get it!

Right now the Congress is not attractive for top europeans, so usually we can see only few of them

Herman, we in the rules commission are not willing to do every work that some external person wants to load onto the commission. We are willing to do the congress tournament supervision. We are in the commission because we do the necessary work - not because we would enjoy doing every possible but superfluous work.

RobertJasiek wrote:Herman, we in the rules commission are not willing to do every work that some external person wants to load onto the commission. We are willing to do the congress tournament supervision. We are in the commission because we do the necessary work - not because we would enjoy doing every possible but superfluous work.

So instead of spending 2 hours to find supervisors, you spend 10 hours doing it yourself?

breakfast, the supergroup size tends to be set on site because only then one really knows who is present. From a quick look on the preregistered list, the usual size ca. 32 (incl. up to 8 non-Europeans) seems to be pretty likely.

Unfortunately, still the congress organizers are responsible for the prizes and for announcing or not announcing them. So please ask them about prizes! (I have been complaining about that for longer than you...)

Presumably, Oza-like travel support for the top players would increase their numbers. Such sponsoring is not within sight though because congress organizations prefer to spend sponsor money differently.

Herman, from the 10 hours, subtract those that provide fun: Ca. 5. So we have 5 hours to compare. By experience, finding all emails would take weeks (not 2 hours as you suggest). (Contacting only the 3 persons with easy to find email addresses would not change the situation in the long run.) Plus education of the apprentice supervisors: several hours. So it is time-efficient for us to do the supervising ourselves.

RobertJasiek wrote:Herman, from the 10 hours, subtract those that provide fun: Ca. 5. So we have 5 hours to compare. By experience, finding all emails would take weeks (not 2 hours as you suggest). (Contacting only the 3 persons with easy to find email addresses would not change the situation in the long run.) Plus education of the apprentice supervisors: several hours. So it is time-efficient for us to do the supervising ourselves.

It is very simple:

Step 1: Look at the list of pre-registered players for the congress
Step 2: Identify the players that are eligible (EGF certified and/or experienced referees)
Step 3: Email the Finnish organisers, ask them for their email addresses
Step 4: Mail these people whether they want to be supervisors.

If that takes you more than 2 hours, you're doing something wrong.

Also, There are plenty of supervisors who do not need training at all. If I were to visit Finland, which I probably won't, I could do the job without any lessons from the rules commission, no problem. There's dozens of other referees for whom the same is true.

It is nice for you that you are an optimist:) My experience with the current congress organizers differs though: For a simple information, I am now waiting for some 6 weeks.

(Then data protection is another problem, but this becomes too far OT.)

You do not need education, I guess, but still you would have to be told about which tasks to do at all etc.

RobertJasiek wrote:It is nice for you that you are an optimist:) My experience with the current congress organizers differs though: For a simple information, I am now waiting for some 6 weeks.

(Then data protection is another problem, but this becomes too far OT.)

You do not need education, I guess, but still you would have to be told about which tasks to do at all etc.

And that is the wrong attitude. I am not saying that he is, but maybe Herman is more competent than you are. There are a lot of experienced and more than competent organisers and tournament-running experts in Europe, so probably the rules comission should be widened.

What is the problem? So far, I have not heard any serious complaints about the EGC tournament supervision. If the Rules Commission thinks they can handle it, why should they change it?