The rules and conditions of tournaments not covered by sections 5, 6.1 and 6.2 are at the discretion of the tournament organiser.

Tournament organisers are asked to note that entrants may assume that:

• the playing rules will be as described in our Rules of Go, and
• no smoking will be allowed in the playing area

unless stated otherwise on the entry form.

Further information and advice for tournament organisers is available in our Organisers Handbook. There is some supplementary material in the Notes for tournament organisers.

Tournaments supported and recognised by us are encouraged to publicise and solicit membership of the Association for players who are not existing members.

Council will endeavour not to make changes to the requirements for tournaments, e.g. the Levy, without prior consultation with tournament organisers and normally with at least 3 months advance notice of such a change. Council will normally use the bga-policy mailing list for such consultation, so tournament organisers are encouraged to sign up to this list.

Our Levy is a fee paid by tournaments to us in exchange for use of our tournament equipment (sets, clocks, software and so on), public liability and loss/damage insurance, publicity (see section 6.6) and submission of results to the website and the rating system. The tournament levy is not charged for youth events.

There is no requirement for tournament organisers to relate entry charges to the levy charge, though it is hoped that differential pricing will be used to benefit BGA members. The levy is charged in the method below partly to

Note: These charges are reduced by 50% for any tournament not requiring the provision by us of any equipment. For events longer than two days discounts are available - please contact our Treasurer to discuss details.

Loss-Making Tournaments

Our Treasurer has discretion to waive all or part of the levy in the event that the Tournament makes a financial loss.

Tournament organisers requesting a waiver of the levy should contact the Treasurer. They should provide brief accounts for the tournament, and a justification for the proposed waiver. This should include an explanation of how any surplus would have been used, and a statement as to how the levy will be financed in the event that a waiver is not granted.

A waiver is likely to be granted in cases where the event is new, and where any loss would fall personally on the Organiser. Where the event is of regular standing a waiver is unlikely to be granted, as it is expected that the club organising the tournament would have sufficient reserves to cover the occasional loss.

We underwrite the costs of running the British Congress. By approval of Council, we may also underwrite the costs of other tournaments considered important to us, for example events such as the London Open.

Tournament organisers seeking an underwriting arrangement should contact our Treasurer at least 3 months in advance to discuss it. A draft budget will be required.

We provide facilities for hosting tournament flyers on our web site (in the form of a PDF), as well as showing the event in our calendar and list of tournaments, and we also offer a complete registration system. These facilities and many other recommendations are described in Publicising Go Tournaments.

Our Tournament Coordinator maintains a calendar of tournaments and helps tournament organisers to identify free dates and to avoid clashing tournaments and reduced entries to tournaments in consecutive weeks. However, this help is advisory and the date of a tournament is ultimately at the discretion of the tournament organiser.

Books stalls are provided at tournaments at the discretion of our Book Seller. (A book stall is not usually provided at events where a local supplier is actually selling Go books and equipment, because we wish to encourage them to stock these).

Our Annual General Meeting approved the American Go Association (AGA) style rules with no opposition on 5th April 2008. The statement of the Go rules used in our tournaments is found in Rules of Play.

This document is inspired by the AGA's official statement of the rules and our interpretation of those rules.

Tournament organisers can get an easy to digest statement of the rules in the AGA Summary to print out for display.

Players can get a crib sheet showing guidance in playing by AGA-style rules from Short Guide.

Referees should refer to Rules of Play for the definitive statement of our tournament rules of play.

Organisers of tournaments will also need the Tournament Organisers' Handbook and the Organisers' Toolbag to establish their tournament rules.

We are asked to nominate official representatives for various international tournaments. In general we operate a points system to help the Board decide who should be nominated. When such a system is in operation the Board will normally nominate the person with the highest number of accumulated points, who has earned some points within the last 5 years and who is an Association member. Players who attend the tournaments for which they are nominated will have their points reset to 0. If two or more players are tied on the same number of points, then priority is given to players who have been to the World Amateur Go Championship less recently (Council decision 25.2.17).

The main exception to this is the World Mind Sports Games (WMSG) which for 2008 and 2012 used the existing European Go Federation (EGF) ratings list as a selection mechanism. Without committing the Board in the future players should assume that if the WMSG is held again that the ratings list as displayed on our website will be used again.

Please note that these are guidelines which may be not be followed by the Board in exceptional circumstances (for example, someone becoming British Champion for the first time).

All nominations will be subject to the rules for attendance at the respective events, e.g. some may be restricted to UK-born or UK-nationals.

For International Go Federation (IGF) sponsored events representatives also need to abide by the IGF Code of Conduct, which can be seen on the IGF Members Documents page.

World Amateur Go Championship

If the two challengers are selected from a Candidates' Tournament then points are awarded to the eight highest-placed players therein. The winner receives 8 points, second 7 points, and so on down to 1 point for eighth. Points are shared between players who finish on the same McMahon score, with any fraction rounded to the nearest half integer (quarters rounded up). The eventual British Champion gets 9 points instead of the points for their qualifying position.

If the two challengers are selected from a Challengers’ League then points are awarded as as follows:

Except that: if there are players on an equal number of wins at the end of round seven of the Challengers’ League, then the points for those league places are shared equally between the league places concerned.

A player taking part in the World Amateur Go Championship has their points reset to zero and this happens before any points for that year are awarded.

International Amateur Baduk Championship

Points are awarded to the eight highest-placed British players (by nationality or residence) in the British Open Championship. The winner receives 8 points, second 7 points, and so on down to 1 point for eighth. Points are shared between players who finish on the same McMahon score, with any fraction rounded to the nearest half integer (quarters rounded up).

If two or more players are tied on the same number of points, the tie-break is: first, priority is given to players who have been to the International Amateur Baduk Championship less recently; second, who played in the British Open more recently; third, who finished more highly placed in that British Open; fourth, nigiri.

Women’s World Amateur

Due to the long time since the last Womens World Amateur, Council decided to suspend this points system. The following has been retained for historic purposes:

This points system is used as a guide for selection of British representatives in international Women’s Amateur Go events, such as have been held in Japan and South Korea. Points will be awarded to women competing in the British Open. Points are given according to final ranking by McMahon score, with players tied by that score sharing the points assigned to the places. Up to eight players will be awarded points, with 8 points being given to the top player, 7 to the second player and so on with a decrement of one point each place.

International Amateur Pair Go

Points will be awarded to individuals in a pair. A point is gained per person for each game won in the British Pair Go Championship.

Only teams that have played together will be considered.

Current pairings will be given preference. This is interpreted to mean that normally only pairs who have played together in one or both of the two most recent qualifying Pair Go tournaments may be nominated.

European Amateur Pair Go

This is identical to the International Amateur Pair Go Qualification Points System.

Other International Events

The points systems described above may be used as guidelines when selecting representatives for other international events, as alternatives to the rankings from the most recent British Championships or the EGF ratings.