Flera intressanta upplysningar, se nedan.
Dear friends,
here's a summary about the latest developments:
1) WAGC 2012 - will be played in Guangzhou, China, at the same location where the Asian games 2010 were organized. The planned date is the last week of March, one week before easter. The deadline for nominating players isn't known yet, but I assume that it will be end of 2011. The reason of changing the date from end of May to end of March is the expected hot weather in Guangzhou end of May. I hope this change won't generate unsolvable problems for your national championships and/or the nomination-procedure of your representative.
2) WAGC 2013 has been given to Japan. There's the idea to keep the new date set by China in 2012 (end of March/beginning April) to have a chance for enjoing cherry-blossom in Japan (maybe Kyoto).
3) World Mind Sports Games 2012 - no news about this event. Neither the planned date (second half of August) nor the city (Manchester) is confirmed.
4) Sport Accord World Mind Games 2011. This new event will happen in Beijing from 8th - 17th December. For the Go part we'll have two competitions, one team-event (5 players per team) and a pair-event. In the team-tournament 6 countries will start: China, Japan, South-Korea, Chinese Taipei, USA and the European Union. Each team has 5 players, with at least one woman and one man in the team. The pair must be built out of the 5 team-players. All costs (travelling, accomodation, meals, local transport) are covered by the organizer. Each team and each pair will win prize-money.
Deadline for nominating the teams will be the 31st August 2011. Therefore the EGF-executive board decided to organize a special qualification-tournament from 25th (evening) -- 28th August 2011 in Prague.
-- 24 top European players according to their best rating within a period 1st July 2010 - 30 June 2011, including at least three women players on condition, that they have reached at least rating 2400 during a given period, will be invited for the tournament
-- 5 best players from the tournament will represent the European Union in the Games.
-- Players must be citiziens, e.g. have a passport of any EGF member country (not restricted on EU-countries), and there cannot be more than 3 players from one country.
Of course only players can participate in Prague if they commit to play in Beijing in December 2011 as well.
Exact conditions for the Qualification Tournament and more details about Sport Accord World Mind Games will be announced next week by Jana Hricova
5) As proposed by the Annual General Meeting of the EGF in Tampere Martin Finke has been voted for IGF director, following Victor Bogdanov
6) The 22nd World Pair Go Championship will be held from 18th - 22nd November as usual in Tokyo. 10 pairs from Europe can participate, like last year. This year we see a major change: The representatives have to pay 30% of the airfare between their cities and Tokyo due to the limited budget of the WPGA. It's obvious that sponsors in Japan have some other priorities than sponsoring Go after the several catastrophies.
More details about the tournament and the nomination process will be sent as usual by Tony Atkins to the qualified countries. Deadline for the nominations will be 31st August 2011.
7) The IGF will prepare the documents (under the lead of Korea) for applying to be an accepted sport for university sports events. Hopefully 2013 we are able to nominate players for these very interesting international competitions.
Korea is working hard on getting Go as a sport in the program for the Asian Games 2014 at Incheon. Best regards
Martin Stiassny