Life In 19x19

So you want to be a pro?

It seems that the professional qualification in 2014 has 3 stages
1. two initial rounds in Strasbourg
2. two rounds more in Amsterdam
3. A final two rounds in Vienna

a lot of travel

So the line up for the 3 stage tournament is effectively published.

Playing: Pavol Lisy, Cristian Pop, Cornel Burzo, Csaba Mero, Thomas Debarre, Mateusz Surma, Jan Simara, Ali Jabarin, Andrii Kravets, Frederik Blombach, Jan Hora, Lukas Podpera, Timur Sankin, Viktor Lin, Dusan Mitic, Benjamin Teuber

Refused: Ilya Shikshin, Dragos Bajenaru, Antti Tormänen, Ion Florescu, Pal Balogh, Dmitrij Surin, Zhao Pei, Merlijn Kuin

People over 40 were not allowed to play.

I have to say the absence of some of the big guns of European Go takes something of the shine off the event. It does increase the posibility of having a surprise winner. It is amusing to note that Benjamin Teuber wouldn't have qualified ordinarily, since his rating is to low. Somebody dropped out of the China training sessions though, and since he had the 'good fortune' to be given a last minute replacement spot to the training event, were he came second, he qualified. Perhaps he can again come second in this tournament.

When you say refused do you mean they refused to enter or they were refused entry? I assume the former.

DrStraw wrote:When you say refused do you mean they refused to enter or they were refused entry?

I assume it's refused entry. For one, Antti is in Japan training as an insei, so I'm sure he refused entry, not was refused entry.

Refused meant that they were invited to play, but they refused (or declined) the invitation.

Javaness2 wrote: Benjamin Teuber ... Perhaps he can again come second in this tournament.

He has a lot of practice in the German championship

Some details: http://www.eurogofed.org/proqualification/
It doesn't say those players refused to enter, but rather they did not reply yet. They still might chose to join. Or has the deadline passed?
Are you quoting from a different source Javaness?

So it is not the strongest Europeans that can become European Professionals, but it is those not being discriminated, e.g., by

- the age limit 40
- the invitation conditions
- the requirement to be a citizen of an EGF member country (instead of a European country)
- the requirement to be a citizen of an EGF member country for at least 10 years (this in addition to possess a passport of such a country)
- the prohibition to be a professional of another professional go organisation
- precedence for paid work only for European Professionals
etc.

Each of these discrimination conditions is extraordinarily unfortunate and, IMO, causes harm to European Go development, compare §11 of the EGF Professional Go System Constitution, because part of the strong European players, teachers etc. are excluded simply by discriminating definitions and because the unity of strong European players is split artificially into those that may versus may not try to qualify.

http://www.eurogofed.org/proqualificati ... -04-09.pdf

http://www.eurogofed.org/proqualificati ... nament.pdf

90 minutes basic time is short, but maybe it is just at the border where blunders play versus do not play a significant role. With 120 minutes, it would be on the safe side; blunders would be infrequent. The still unspecified byoyomi is of great important WRT blunders. Will the qualifications be a lottery of who makes fewer blunders or will the byoyomi be long enough to see meaningful games?

Robert, which countries are European but are not in the EGF? I'm curious, you're closer to the EGF than I am so probably know the answer.

Re: age limit has been always in place in Japan. I think there are none in China or Korea, but I don't think it's "that bad." I'm also unlikely to win a Fields medal.

Re: 10 years being a citizen is probably a little long, but this evens out the game among countries. Getting a passport is not equally easy in Spain, Iceland or Sweden.

Re: Other professionals. What's the problem here? I totally understand this limitation, and it makes a lot of sense.

Re: Precedence for paid work. What does this mean?

I have to agree with Robert about the age limit. It's completely arbitrary and serves no purpose.

- the requirement to be a citizen of an EGF member country (instead of a European country)
- the requirement to be a citizen of an EGF member country for at least 10 years (this in addition to possess a passport of such a country)

Doesn't the second include the first? And a citizen can always get a password, I assume, so why that requirement?

If we take the example of a Greek or Estonian player, who is say 6dan, they still cannot enter the European Professional Qualifiers, because their country is not a full member of the EGF. Potentially, that is a problem. One would expect that an exception should be made in such cases.
Paid Work; Section 7, Parts (2) and (4) are probably pretty upsetting if you are European, and already a professional. Remember that most of the international events spots usually had to be won through competition. There are, I think, 7 professional players who are European by nationality. I certainly do not claim to know their consolidated or individual viewpoints on the issue.
For the age limit, whilst it makes sense for training, I don't completely feel it makes sense for the pro qualifiers. If you are 50 and able to beat the kids, the why shouldn't you qualify as a professional? Tend to agree with Robert there.

Actually though, what mosts interests me is this sentence: "The exact way how EGF Professional Committee is established, its rights and duties, are a subject of a special document." - where is this document, and who is on this committee?!

EGF countries: http://www.eurogofed.org/members/

Souvereign states (there are further other countries) that are geographically in Europe but not EGF members: Iceland, Estonia, Moldova, Greece, Albania, Macedonia, Kozovo, Montenegro, Liechtenstein, San Marino, Vatikan City, Malta, Monaco, Andorra, Georgia.

Souvergeign states that are EGF members but not geograhically in Europe: Cyprus (but half of it is in the EU), Israel.

Problems related to other professional titles: a) Europeans having such other titles are forced to resign their earlier achievements and gamble to qualify as European Professional. Resigning from an existing title can have financial drawbacks up to risking maintenance of one's go job. b) There is no significant harm if a (European) person has a European and a non-European professional title. Therefore, the harm of (a) is created even without good reason from the view of entities other than the directly affected persons.

Precedence for paid work: I guess it means that European professionals are asked first when there is some teaching, publishing, writing, entertaining etc. to be done. Only after every European professional is asked, other go teachers, publishers, writers etc. would be asked at all, if ever. So the other persons are not supported, while the European professionals are supported. Status replaces quality, achievements of earlier work and related experience. E.g., what would you get if a European professional shall write, say, a history of European go from 2000-2010? I would rather ask an expert such as Pratesi; the EGF would ask a European professional, because the EGF wants to support him regardless of the quality to be produced; well, that is what the constitution suggests.

Splatted wrote:I have to agree with Robert about the age limit. It's completely arbitrary and serves no purpose.

+1

If we start from the standpoint that the aim is to produce players who will benefit European go, then most of the conditions make some sort of sense. You want somebody young enough to be around long enough to deliver on the investment. You want a guy whose roots are firmly in Europe so that he doesn't up sticks and leave that fair continent. You want someone who belongs to a country that supports the EGF because it's the EGF that is both the most supportive environment and also can benefit most from professional input.

I don't know whether that was the thinking, but it does seem much more likely than a simple plan to find the best player and cart him off the Orient.

But if that sort of thinking was behind it, it is absurd to call it discrimination. Nevertheless, the end result (in any circumstances) is much more likely to be a teaching pro rather than a tournament pro, and so Robert's point that teachers are excluded has some weight.

The real problem as I see it in that putative scenario is the continued wilfulness of the would-be pros and/or their backers not to engage with the wider base of people it is supposedly designed to help eventually. Of course we all know management and democracy don't mix very well, but this is not about managing a project to make a profit or a controversial change. It's about delivering benefits to the masses. A bit of consultation about which flavour lollipops we get would not go amiss. After all, we may not like lollipops at all.