European Go Grand Prix 2.0 - Announcement for 2021

[Dmitriy]

Dear friends,

Although we'll see a lot of problems for our tournament-scene under the Corona-restrictions it's my pleasure to announce the Grand Prix 2021. Attached you find the from now on valid overview-chart for this year's Grand Prix, with the different levels of Bonus Point Tournaments.

There are some essential changes compared to the last years:
1) Online-tournaments possible, with special rules
2) New category - Level D Bonus Point Tournaments
3) Prize money at the tournament for all players who won Bonus Points
4) Support of game-comments on Twitch (European Go Federation Channel)

The Grand Prix with all the Bonus Point Tournaments is part of the EGF-CEGO cooperation. Main aspect: Generate a system of top international tournaments with an exciting final for the most active and successful 16 tournament-players of the year, the Grand Prix Final.Tournament-organizers have to pay management-fee, and this money is used as the base for the prize-money in the Grand Prix Final Tournament. Qualifying for this Grand Prix Final is very attractive for the strong players, and strong players at a tournament motivate weaker players to attend a tournament. So tournament-organizers will probably get more participants when hosting a Bonus Point tournament.

Well, for 2020 I had 17 tournament-organizers who wanted to be part of the Grand Prix 2020, more than possible in the announced Grand Prix System. But without travelling in Europe nearly all tournaments had to be cancelled last year, also the Grand Slam which was planned in China. To be honest, I expect similar problems for the Go-scene in 2021, at least till the EGC, but maybe some more months in autumn 2021 as well.
Setting up the Grand Prix 2021 only with face-to-face tournaments will not work - too risky - not enough events guaranteed. On the other hand the Grand Prix is an essential part of European Go, with more and more interest over the years.

What to do ? Let Online-tournaments be part of the Grand Prix 2021 officially, of course with rules against cheating.
So you see in the attached chart three possible kinds of Bonus Point Tournaments in 2021:
-- Our normal face-to face tournament
-- An online-tournament where all players play online only (for example the Corona-Cup)
-- A so called "Mixed Tournament" - this is a face-to-face tournament where some players can join by playing online as well

For motivating more people to organize online-events I added for this year the new Level D tournament, with 50% management-fee and 50% points compared to Level C. With 60 players in a Level D tournament and an entry-fee of 6 Euro you get already enough money for the management-fee and the guaranteed prize-money for players who win Bonus Points. By the way, 60 players is in my opinion always the minimum number of participants each tournament-organizer of a Bonus Point tournament should try to get.

One more statement about the new Level D tournament: The winner (member of an EGF member-country with citizenship of this country) will not get a seat in the Grand Prix Final, only a "0,5 participation". But with winning two Level D online-tournaments a seat is guaranteed !
The ruleset against cheating for "Online" tournaments will be published soon in a seperate mail. Same rules will be valid for online-players in "Mixed" tournaments. It will be in the direction used several times in the last EGF-tournaments, so two kinds of communication between the players (laptop-camera and separate additional video/audio-connection) must be set up for all Dan-player's games - with a recommendation for all tournament-games.

As you see in the chart between 4 and 8 players win Bonus Points in a Bonus Point Tournament. New from this season: The won Bonus Points must be honoured with prize-money by the local organizers. So, whenever you plan to organize a Bonus Point tournament, don't forget this (not really high) amount of money in your financial calculation. With this new rule now every Bonus Point winner gets "something", also the many players who will not qualify for the year-end Grand Prix Final.

One positive development of the last years in European Go are our activities on the EuropeanGoFederation twitch-channel. Instead of supporting organized workshops of top-players at a Bonus Point Tournament (which has been always difficult because of the limited available "free time" during a 5 round weekend-tournament) the EGF reserved in its 2021 budget now some money for paying players commenting top-games on twitch. Still you get as an organizer a small reduction on the management-fee when you motivate EGF-Professionals to show up in your tournament and make your tournament more attractive. What you see: We switch in the EGF from "only broadcasting games" to "commenting games via video, chatting included". We are convinced that this is at the moment the right direction for spreading Go in Europe - and games of the Bonus Point Tournaments are an essential part of this strategy.

So I hope for many Bonus Point Tournament offerings / requests of yours.

Best regards
Martin

P.S.: Already fixed:
-- Grand Prix Final January 2022 in Grenoble
-- Bonus Point Tournaments (face-to face planned at the moment) in Mannheim and London (4th quarter 2021)
-- New edition of the Corona-Cup (look at tournament-calendar on the EGF webpage)
-- Paris Tournament (will soon be announced)

[Dmitriy]

fyi - I hope you take the first chance of winning Bonus Points for the Grand Prix 2021 season by attending the announced 3rd edition of the Corona-Cup
(https://www.eurogofed.org/tm/uploads/to ... -%20EN.pdf)