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
Please send comments and corrections to Jeff Shaevel, page maintainer.