European Pro Qualification 2023

General Go Discussion
1

As usual EGF is very secretive.

It seems the tournament is broken up into two stages 24-26 February and then 10-12 March.

The pairings are:

  1. Cornel Burzo – Benjamin Teuber
  2. Lukas Podpera – Elian Grigoriu
  3. Jan Prokop – Dominik Boviz
  4. Oscar Vazquez – Jan Simara

This implies that the participants are:

  1. Lukas Podpera 2708, 7d
  2. Oscar Vazquez 2659, 7d
  3. Cornel Burzo 2607, 6d
  4. Jan Prokop 2588, 6d
  5. Benjamin Teuber 2580, 6d
  6. Jan Simara 2576, 6d
  7. Dominik Boviz 2575, 6d
  8. Elian Grigoriu 2563, 6d

Is it me or the line-up is a bit weakish? Maybe it was worth to skip this year. Remember last time, we had Drean-Guenaizia, Rob van Zeijst, Rémi Campagnie, Jonas Welticke.

4 Likes
2

Should be about how much money they can handle. And capacity in organizing the competitive side.

1 Like
3

Let’s see if Lukas can finally succeed in becoming Pro.

1 Like
4

Sadly Rob isn’t playing, my money would be on him.

I hope they broadcast some of these games live on OGS, would be interesting to watch.

1 Like
5

They used to so i hope too.

1 Like
6

He has had bad luck in these pro qualifiers, he’s been a top European player for a long time: he lost vs Ali Jabarin in the final for 2nd pro back in 2014!

2 Likes
7

My money is on Oscar in case anyone wants to place some bets :wink:

It would be great to see guys like ben0 and Mitic brothers participating, but i guess we can still expect some great games from that tournament, they are all extremely strong players ^^

1 Like
8

I’m surprised to see the event take place given my understanding of the EGF’s finances. Didn’t they take a bit of a hammering with Covid, and a further pokering with a hot iron with the Ukraine war?

9

I don’t think EGF pros get any salary / game fees / stipend / pension, so there’s no additional cost to having one more pro other than organising the qualification tournament?

1 Like
10

EGF still takes some responsability in delivering pro qualification.

11

EGF tournament page. A bit sad.

https://eurogofed.org/proqualification/index_2023.html

12

Sad? Fact is games moved on kgs (and scribed, not played online which is not sad to me)… or for something else?

13

Compare with 6th European Pro Qualification 2021

In 2021 there were 16 players, including three 7d (Rob Van Zeijst, Lukas Podpera and Stanislaw Frejlak).

In 2023, only 8 players among which one 7d.

Edit: Oscar is in fact 7d according to his rating, so there are two 7d in the current tournament.

1 Like
14

This qualification is not following the system they established before, so i dunno what happens.
In the documentation linked on the EGF website, it has to be 16 players. That’s for qualifying either 1 or 2 pros.

IMG_20230219_191815
IMG_20230219_191815698×183 60.3 KB

IMG_20230219_191504
IMG_20230219_191504714×102 29.4 KB

15

In the documentation linked on the EGF website, it has to be 16 players.

No it says 16 players can apply.

Apparently this time there was only 8 players interested in this Pro Qualification, and so they were all accepted… which is a bit sad indeed.

2 Likes
16

But then they cannot play 6 games, and in the fixed organization explained…

1 Like
17

Yeah it seems they didn’t envision a scenario where less than 16 people would be interested in becoming a Pro.

2 Likes
18

I notice that in the fixed organization they proposed before, even when there is only one place at stake they invite 16 players. It’s then much harder, as we know already the schedule with half of the games only (direct elimination system is kept)

19

Isn’t this just repeating the second half of my sentence?

20

EGF takes more responsability as just organizing the qualification tournament. They run the whole thing and so can give more or less credit to the quality of the pro status. I think they run some pro tournaments and league on their own too. They don’t distribute money from their pocket (not sure myself too) but they do chose sponsoring and contributors and be engaged with.