richardamullens wrote:breakfast wrote:EGF members voted for the system proposed by British Go Association.
7 rounds as usual, after that - play-offs for best 8 Europeans. After losing in play-offs, Europeans returns to Main tournament.
I can clearly see some pluses, but ...
I would like to understand how it is that last year there was a vote that the European Championship should not be affected by games with Asians. (Now, of course we have a decision that reverses this although it is presented otherwise).
I think that reflects the way last years' vote was carried out: three questions were thrown on the table for voting, without having been announced on the agenda and without discussion, just as the meeting was to be closed. One doesn't extract any well reflected views that way. From what I heard at the EGC, many were unhappy with the numerous proposals that had been prepared based on last year's decisions.
The proposal that was selected this year was not on this year's agenda either, which is a bit unsatisfactory. I would have preferred to see a final vote to choose between the knock out proposal and not changing anything at all, at least to have a clear picture of what the opinions are.
The knock-out proposal has a history. It was proposed by the Dutch in 2006 (KO after 5 rounds) and by Sweden in 2007 (KO after 8 rounds). In the pre-AGM meeting on thursday last week it came up again, actually proposed by the Russian delegate, suggesting KO after 7 rounds. When people present asked why it had been turned down earlier years, they were told that it had been sort of adjourned, since nobody knew e.g. what the strong players thought about it. Oleg Gavrilov from Russia asked for an investigation based on congress history of who had been the top 8 Europeans after round 7, the president and others said that this was not relevant. I guess it is a bit unfortunate if nobody has looked closer at the possible consequences of the proposed system in the years since 2006. It is certainly a bit surprising to me that Catalin is not among the top 8 after 7 rounds. One can also imagine unpleasant situations where one or a few non-Europeans are paired down so that they can not win the open tournament due to the KO rounds.
The four suggestions that were voted on this year were Martin Stiassnys proposal (Catalins favorite), Dinerchteins proposal only to cut down the size of the supergroup, the Executive's proposal and the KO proposal.
Of these, the Executive's proposal had the drawback that it entailed cutting down the thinking time for the majority of participants in the open EC in order to make room for a parallel closed EC to be played during the EGC. It seems disproportionate to me to make unasked for changes to the tournament for everybody, just to solve a perceived problem at the top. When it also became clear that neither Alexandre nor Catalin would play in both the closed and the open EC anyway, that proposal clearly had only drawbacks.
Martin Stiassnys proposal was the second most popular at this years meeting. However, as many other proposals it has the drawback of severing the top European players both from strong visitors from outside Europe and from Europeans further down the list in the open tournament. This is an aspect that clearly many of us don't like. Many feel that the open congress tournament is a very successful recipe.
Another contributing factor could have been that there were too many proposals (someone counted to 13) on the agenda this year, it would probably have been better to prepare things better by condensing them into fewer schemes.
To the Swedish association the Dinerchtein proposal would have been the second best alternative, but it didn't get much support in the initial vote. Still, it would have been interesting to see if many of those supporting the MS proposal would have preferred leaving things as they are, in a final vote against the KO solution.
The details of the new system are to be better defined now, including the number of qualification rounds I think. If it will still be felt that this doesn't solve the problem, maybe it will be time to look again at the idea of an open European championship at the summer congress and a closed European championship as an elite tournament some other time of the year?
best regards,
Henric
