I'm the world Champion!

well, almost :-))

by Massimiliano Zecca

 

After over one year of games, the Polish Go Association Interne t Cup (or PGA IC) has ended. 91 players from 21 different countries played about 350 games in 5 small tournaments, each one composed by 5 rounds. The biggest group was the Polish one (31 players), followed by the Japanese (11). I was the only Italian playing this tournament.

At the end of this long tournament, just one was the winner: me!!! :-) A perfect score in the last small tournament, in fact, put me in the first place. Second w as Peter Hoehe, from Germany, followed by Roman Pszonka, from Poland. All the results and the games of PGA IC are available at http://go.art.pl/cgi-bin/pgaic/getsumresults.pl?lang=en.

Let's talk with the organizers, Slawek Piela andPrzemyslaw Wesolek, about this very nice tournament.

MZ. PGA IC has been and interesting tournament, involving more than 90 players from several countries, ranging from USA to Japan. Could you tell us how did you have the idea of an Internet tournament?.

PW. Generally, I was responsible for technical issues. Slawek is the correct person to ask about "marketing" and stuff. :-)

SP. Originally it was supposed to be Polish Internet Championship. Then we thought : "why not intern ational polish championship? " then we thought more people would enjoy event if it were handicap tournament. then we though one tournament is fine but why not try to keep more people intersted through a longer period of time? And thus we came to the idea of PGA IC.

MZ. How was organising the tournament? Was it difficult? Did you have in organising the pairings, and how did you resolve them ?

SP. Organising is not difficult but lack of experience made the work double. Now for the 2002 edition of PGA IC we have new ideas and we hope PGA IC will be even more interesting.
Pairing was at first done by hand then we started using MM preogram written by Christoph Gerlach BIG thank you Christof :). Christoph even make certain modification which saved us a lot of time.

PW. The starts were not easy. Everything was prepared by hand, with no automation. The points were calculated using no computer. As the tournament grown, we needed to make it easier for us to manage the cup. So the automatic results were intoduced - in fact not so automatic, as they should be. We think of putting the reSPonsibility of entering the results directly to the players, through WWW interface.
Some minor problems ar ose when some of the players improved and their ranks got higher. The system was not prepared for such a change during one, small tournament.
MZ. How did you managed the players who registered but never played?.

SP. We just tried to get in touch with them. if it was not possible we just took the off the list.

PW. That was a bit unsatisfactory part of the tournament. The general rule was not to pair the player, who didn't show up two consecutive matches. However, these two matches were lost (meaning, two other players didn't play, which was not a joy for them..) and the actual number of games played was lower than it would be in a classic tournament. But I think these are the specifics of Internet communication, where you are somehow anonymous and you don't feel the responsibility of playing the match, as it would be in the face-to-face meeting.
If the next release of the cup it is planned to introduce the pause-on-request feature. The player, who doesn't plan to play in the next round or few will enter the webpage and mark his absence for not to be paired.

MZ. Are you satisfied by this tournament? Do you think there are some major points that sh ould be changed, or there are just minor points?

SP. Major point is to make it shorter. In 2002 edition ther will be definetly only 12 rounds maximum - just one tournament. There will most probably be a penalty for NOT playing. There will be more automation - Przemek is working right now on new web pages that will make it easier to report results etc. There will be less mess with the pairings. there were a f ew glithches on the way and we know how to avoid themn now. Pairing will first apper on the web - we probably will give up sending it out.

PW. I'm satisfied. The major income was the increased number of players at the PlGS server and the notation of Polish Go in Europe and even outside the continent.
About changes... The major change will be to shorten the cup. It is generally too long, it took over a year t o coduct the whole cup. Also the procedures of registering, pairing and playing will be simpler.

MZ. Do you think you will organize another edition, during 2002?

SP. Definetly YES! we will try to get more Sponsors to make it more attractive but I cant promis anything now.

PW. Yeap.

MZ. Would you like to thank someone in particular for her/his help in the organization of the tournament?

SP. Many people helped through PGA IC. Our thanks go to:

  • Przemek Wesolek (Aurora admin, lots of work, patience, excell ent www service and impressive game search engine)
  • Leszkek Soldan (financial support, owing to his work we were able to secure Tei Meikou sensei's approval of supporting PGA IC)
  • Wojtek Szychowiak and Krzysztof Grabowski (financial support)
  • Pascalowi Souvion (french mirror )
  • Shigeru Mabuchi (japanese mirror)
  • Seongmo Yoon (korean mirror)
  • Christof Gerlach (ad opted MM program to suit needs of PGA IC)

I hope that for PGA IC 2002 edition will be able to communicate in more languages. Hopefully Italian ;) and Esperanto. Thanks to all that participated - we had great time.

 

 

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