Tournament Format
The tournament has three phases:
- Promotional Round
- Challenger Round
- Title Match
The winner of last year's Masters
Tournament is automatically seeded into the Title Match.
Goals
The goals of the North American Masters
Tournament are:
- to promote and to provide a base
for North American resident Professional competitive activities;
- to provide and cultivate a base
for a future American Professional System;
- to promote Go activities, AGA
sponsored tournaments and Go publicity; and
- to raise the level of top amateur
players' strength in the United States.
Eligibility
To be eligible to participate in the
North American Masters Tournament a player must:
- be a citizen of North America
(US, Canada, or Mexico) OR have a permanent residence visa from one of those
countries OR be presently residing in one of these countries and have been
for at least the nine months prior to January 1 of the tournament year, i.e.,
since April 1 of the year prior to the tournament; AND
- have recognized professional standing
from China, Chinese-Taipei, Japan or Korea; AND
- be a full AGA member in good standing.
For an amateur to be eligible to participate
in the 2000 North American Masters Tournament, the player must:
- be a citizen of North America
(US, Canada, or Mexico) OR have a permanent residence visa from one of those
countries as of August of the year prior to the tournament; AND
- be a full AGA member in good standing;
AND
- be the highest placing finisher
in either the US Open or the North American Ing Cup Tournaments held at the
US Go Congress for the year prior to the NAMT tournament.
Promotional Round
Participants for the NAMT were ordered
by seed from the previous year (new entrants at the bottom). The bottom 4 participants
are in the Promotional Round, the rest are automatically in the Challenger Round.
The field is then split in half, with the top half paired against the bottom half
for best-two-out-of-three matches. The winners of these matches are promoted to
the Challenger Round.
Challenger Round
The format for the Challenger Round
is a round robin among the participants, that is, everyone plays everyone else,
in no particular order. Some of the Challenger Round games may be played in person
to accommodate players living or visiting in the same city, but will either be
presented simultaneously (i.e., entered as teaching game while the game is in
progress), or replayed on IGS afterwards.
Determining the
winner
The participant with the highest
number of wins in the Challenger Round will be declared the Challenger, and will
play the current title holder in the Title Match.
If two participants tie for greatest
total wins, the person with higher sum of defeated opponents score (SODOS) will
be declared the Challenger.
If the SODOS is the same for two
or more players, seed position at the beginning of the tournament will be used
to break the tie.
Title Match
The winner of last year's Masters Tournament
is automatically seeded into the Title Match, which consists of a best-two-out-of-three
match with the winner of this year's Challenger round. This match will be held
in person at the U.S. Go Congress.
©1997-2001 American Go Association
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