Hello North American Go players,
As teased at the US Go congress, we are now ready to formally announce and open registration to a Go spectacular taking place in Toronto December 28th-30th. We hope this is the chance for Toronto and Canada to welcome the North American community to visit us!
How did we get here? When the North American Go Federation was instituted by the AGA & CGA the heart of the mission was oversight of the North American professional system. Early efforts have included promotion systems, and certification of new professionals. But another area of deficiency is opportunities to compete once professionals are certified. The NAGF therefore targeted adding a North American Professional championships, with a large prize pool. In 2021 Toronto was approved as host.
The next step was adding a North American youth championship to our plans. After some discussion we approved an 8 player U16 and 8 player U12 event. At this point the Toronto organizing team got really excited. We then added open side events, to take place alongside the invitational events.
We’ll look at the open events (a 2 day open tournament and a 1 day novice tournament) in an upcoming E-Journal article. But for today let’s focus on the invitational youth events.
North American players have long had one premium youth event; the Redmond cup. And the Redmond cup will continue to be a key competition for NA youth players. But offering more opportunities to compete for our top players (youth or professional) is a critical part of the mandate of the NAGF. We think North American can support another premium youth event, and to that end we are adding the North American youth championships.
All participants will receive a travel/accommodation subsidy of 250 USD. The winner will receive the right to call themselves “North American U16/U12 youth champion”. In addition there will be gifts for all participants, and trophies for those who placed well. Citizenship in Canada or the USA is not required to compete in these events, only permanent resident status.
Potential competitors should register now on the event web site. U16 applicants should be 1k+ in playing strength, U12 applicants can apply at 5K+. We have set a cutoff date of October 31st for potential youth competitors to apply. It is possible there will be online qualifiers for some or all applicants after that date to make final decisions on who qualifies. Youth players can improve very rapidly so their “confirmed rank” can be quite out of date (and especially so coming out of our Covid-19 live event pause).
Accommodations can be booked after submitting the application. We expect to arrange a group rate at the nearby hotel as they typically do for events hosted at the JCCC. Players can also of course make their own choice of accommodation as they like. The event venue has free parking, and is in a transit friendly location.
If you have questions please reach out, either to our event email [email protected] or you could post in the Facebook Event.
Stay tuned for more announcements in the next few days on other events in our Go Spectacular or sneak a peek on your own on the event website. And I hope you will all get as excited about this as those of us organizing in Toronto are!