Yes, this is unlikely to interest many people, but here is the agenda for the AGM
https://docs.google.com/document/d/16aANAUFf0PnihyNRkngOCHP3NTZm-tsWNTrGEFi7Q6o/edit

Not much to see yet. There is a new proposal about how to decide the cost of membership fees, and another design for the European Championship.

_________________
North Lecale

The most terrible aspect of the proposal is the two wildcards. Go is a mind sport game - not a political power game! Wildcards devalue the European Championship.

Why? And where's the source of this so-called political power?

As I see it, the two wildcards take the place of the people 15th and 16th on the rating list, so they are not likely to be depriving people likely to win the championship. On the other hand, a wildcard reserves a slot for a top player who has been out of action in Europe for acceptable reasons (e.g. illness or training in the Far East). Since he would make the event stronger it adds value to the championship.

The one given to the home country is also sensible on the grounds that they can use it to attract local sponsors, if they have a suitable player.

Wildcards like this are common in chess and seem to work well and usually don't attract opprobrium, unlike some invitation-only events. Maybe the secret is moderation - 2 out 16, where those two have to be rated highly anyway - seems modest.

And there seems to be a case for giving the European pros, whose pet project it is, extra weighting in this decision.

Ealier wildcards for European Go Championships have not been chosen wisely but prevented better performing players in the EC / EGC main tournament mix.

It started with up to 2 of 32; such can be neglected. 2 of 16 is an entirely different thing. Among the ca. 16 highest rated, present candidates, everybody has a chance to win the tounament. Not the greatest chance but a realistic chance. Like Greece becoming European soccer champion - unexpected but possible.

Whoever wants to play in the EC must be present in Europe and prove his skill in Europe and be not ill for an entire year preventing current proof of strength.

It does not matter how and which politicians choose wildcards. Negotiation by political power must not replace go skill as cause of qualification.

Objectives unrelated to the purpose of the championship must not spoil its nature. E.g. the objective of host country benefit. If you really think that a congress was not enough benefit, there are others means, such as requiring EC participants to teach local players during the period of the event. There is no need to lower the playing strength and quality of the EC by giving a wildcard to a host country player. Besides, such player's impact on host country observers is very greatly exaggerated. (In 2000, I could have been an EC wildcard player but I had sufficient rating anyway. Wildcard, so my feeling then, would just have been a cause for laziness of proving playing strength. I felt much better about having been qualified by proven playing strength, if we presume rating as evidence for the moment.)

Wild card entrants have recently been introduced into the chess world championship cycle and I hate it. There are always plenty of players who are just as deserving as the one who is chosen. In my opinion the entry requirements for top tournaments should be entirely deterministic. If you're a great player but didn't manage to meet the requirements, sorry, try again next year.

2 wildcards to 14 seeds doesn't sound like a terrible ratio to me. Since their system had a clear diagram and simple rules I liked it. However, at the back of my mind I can't help thinking about just how many different systems there have been.

On a pernickety point of order, the motion is proposed by the EGF Pro Commission, but we cannot be sure who is on that because http://eurogofed.org/egf/commissions.htm is not updated. Who's actually on the Commission?
Sort of likewise, http://eurogofed.org/egf/executive.htm is missing Aldo Podvani and Manja Marz from the Other Officers section

_________________
North Lecale

A slight problem I see with the change in membership fees is that the member countries no longer need to literally put the money where their mouth is when it comes to their number of members (players) and the voting system at the AGM. Under the current system, if you declare more players and get more votes, you have to pay up. I have a suspicion that if the proposal succeeds, the number of countries with over 200 and over 500 will be surprisingly high in a year or two, because let's face it, who wouldn't want their vote to count for more.

I know the current system doesn't entirely prevent this (200 EUR minimal fee) but the new proposal would not prevent it at all. And yes, we could say the countries should be honest, but do we really trust every single memeber of the EGF?

_________________
“Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument an exchange of ignorance.” ― Robert Quillen

The proposal for the pro commission was not fully accepted at the 2016 AGM. Point 13.c. But probably i should just add this commission to the commission page anyway?! I will do that after this year's assembly.
Thanks for pointing this out. I added Aldo and Manja and cleaned up the page a bit.

Coupling membership fees with the rating list is problematic. People may stop sending results to the rating database, to cut down the membership fee. There are also players living abroad and being a member of a different country (or not any counrty) than their nationality. EGF member organisation should have the power to decided its own members.

The proposal for the European Championship system is reasonably good. I assume the design: exactly seven rounds are played and the champion will be decided during the last round. If perfomance is measured with the difference wins - losses, the champions cannot do worse than anyone else. This is not the case with the current system. However the is still room for improvement. A second group with 16 players could be formed, from which a player could become a champion by winning all his games. After four rounds there would be one player with top score and 5 just below. After five rounds we would have 1 and 2 or 0 and 4. At 6th round there would be one of two semifinals and a final one the 7th round.

This way it would be less drastic whether a player qualifies in the top 16. Being just below he still would have a chance.

@Matti: Your proposal of a second group of 16 is exactly the new system for the Dutch Championship, with the addition that it is true double elimination, so if after 7 rounds there are 2 players with 6/7, they play a final 8th round (this fits very well in our schedule of two weekends, four games per weekend)

Interesting. Have you already played a championship with that system?

@Matti: No, it was accepted at our most recent AGM and will be used for the first time in the next championship, which will be in January next year.

Using EGF rating is a lazy method for qualification. Gor was created to enable forming a super group for the European Championship, in which players had one more starting McMahon point tha other strong players. If one was unfortunate to have gor just below the super group he still would have a theoretical chance to win the Championship. When gor is used to exclude players there is no chance.

The system may also introduce other problems. For example, a tournament tries to attract a strong player to attend in June before 15th. He barely qualifies by rating for EC. He says to the organisers that he can play in the tournament if they delay sending the results to the EGD by a few days.

The wild cards can be a remedy for some problems. I think, if one wants to eliminate all the politics from the system, then a lot of the sponsor money also gets eliminated.

I wondered if that might be an issue. When I started playing that several times I tried to set my country code as IE but it was always reset without my assent to UK. Now I find that people want to set me to FR when I play. I wondered what the rule for this code should actually be, but it seems that there isn't any standard approach, and I don't expect that there will be any standard approach as the number of people experiencing this problem are [1] too few and [2] nobody is interested in doing the work necessary to handle this complication.

If a federation witholds tournament records to cut down on payment numbers it should simply be expelled.

_________________
North Lecale