From: Larry Kaufman COMCAST NET> Date: 12 dec 2002 Subject: Re: Proposal ----- Original Message ----- From: "bogin" YAHOO CO JP> To: TECHUNIX TECHNION AC IL> Sent: Thursday, December 12, 2002 5:55 PM Subject: Re: Proposal > > Also, Mr. Kaufman, I think you're idea isn't a bad one. Whether or not > you've made it half-jokingly (as was suggested) it may turn out to be > something to seriously consider. The problem is picking the 4 players. > Anytime someone is excluded who feels they should be allowed to > participate, feeling s are going to be hurt. Perhaps 2003 is too soon and > more time is needed to determine the qualifying system. I agree with Mr. > Tisdale in that the Internet could be a valuable ally here. The qualifiers > could take place over the net and the then the main tournament could be > made live. Of course, we could just assume that most of the people here > aren't cheaters and that the games would be fair but probably some system > should be discussed to try and eliminate that possibility as much as > possible. I'm sure that most of the participants would not be cheaters, but "most" isn't good enough. Even the suspicion that someone might cheat (i.e. using computers or Japanese friends) would be a reason not to use the internet for this purpose, unless every game were monitored by a neutral proctor. In practice, this is probably not feasible, because in many places the only available shogi players are all buddies, and would not be neutral. Anyway, we have a perfectly valid rating system that is a much more accurate way of choosing participants than a single tournament would be. > > Finally, just one more question about your reason for excluding foreign > players residing in Japan. A while back when I made the erroneous > assumption that the average strength of Japanese dan players was higher > than the average strength of average Westerners, many people wrote to this > board to argue the opposite. Well, I stand corrected and realize that my > earlier statement was inaccurate. > > But, you wrote that Western players who have lived in Japan for a long time > should be excluded because they "might" have an unfair advantage. Since > they probably have improved much more since arriving in Japan and therefore > their participation may be unfair. As I said, players of the same rank are comparable in the West and in Japan (or perhaps stronger in the West at lower levels). However, players living in Japan for a long time should be stronger and higher ranked than if they had stayed in the West. But to my thinking that's not the main point; once someone stays long enough somewhere to be considered a permanent resident, it becomes debatable whether to categorize him by citizenship or by residence. I would think that a Pan-Atlantic championship should be for people who are both citizens and residents of North America or Europe, though if a majority feel that only citizenship should matter that would be okay with me. Also, Japanese-Brazilian players should > be excluded because their command of Japanese presumably gives them an > unfair advantage. This is confusing to me. If you really believe that the > average dan level of the between Japan and the rest of the world aren't all > that different then why exclude people simply because of where they live or > what languages they understand. Again, it's not the meaning of the dan levels that's different, it's that many more Japanese-speaking people are 4 Dan and above. As long as they're not a Japanese national, > they meet all of the requirements ( rating, rank, whatever) to participate, > have shown a willingness to pay their own way or come up with the money > needed to participate then why would it be necessary to exclude them? I wasn't proposing to exclude such people; we have a couple of Japanese-born U.S. citizens who would be eligible if they were strong enough, but as far as I know the strongest of them is just middle 3 Dan. I merely mentioned this as an additional reason not to expand the event to cover South America in view of the distance and costs from both USA and Europe. Native Japanese speakers do have an obvious advantage in shogi, and while I would not exclude any who are US or European citizens and residents, I don't see much point in including distant countries where all of the players are in that category. We might as well include Japan then, and we know what that result would be! Also, > I would think that the 4 players or so chosen would be a pretty confident, > as well as, a strong bunch. I don't think they would be "afraid" to play > against the someone just because they understand more Japanese than > they,themselves, do. > Of course not. It's just that we are talking about some sort of "Western" championship. It all comes down to whether being "Japanese" is defined by citizenship, residence, or first language. > Bill Gaudry > Larry Kaufman