Highlights of the BGA Council Meeting, 2010-11-28

There was a meeting of BGA Council on 28th November 2010. Here are the highlights:

• Simon Mader may have to stand down as Treasurer. Toby Manning has volunteered to be nominated to replace him after the 2010 accounts have been completed. Toby and Jonathan Chin are to be added as signatories on the bank accounts and Edwin Brady removed.
• Fred Holroyd has stepped down from his role in Journal publication. Steve Bailey has resigned as Congress Co-ordinator. Geoff Kaniuk intends to stand down from Council, and therefore as chair of the Tournament committee and from many other roles, at the next AGM. He will continue his EGD liaison; to support and to develop GoDraw; his work on ratings; and to help with technical typesetting in the Journal. Toby intends to stand down from his roles in the Player Development and Youth committees.
• Winton has not renewed their sponsorship.
• Plans for 2011 were discussed in some detail and the outcome of the discussion is to be published in the Journal shortly.
• A subcommittee has been set up to be responsible, once details are known, for BGA involvement (not including team selection) with the second World Mind Sports Games being planned in Manchester.
• Well-organised ladder events that meet class A or B time limits may be rated as class B in the European rating system.
• Due to complications with downloading/processing the EGD data that is used to produce the BGA rating graphs, Council decided, for now, to replace the BGA graphs with references to the EGD graphs.
• The BGA website is to move to its new hosting provider in mid-December.
• Council discussed the recommendations in Geoff's article in BGJ 153, "Championship format survey - results". Based on feedback to the journal article:
  • The Candidates' remains as a six-round Swiss other the first May bank holiday with the current entry requirement (ie. achieve a GoR or 1900 by 31st March).
  • The Challengers' remains as an eight player all-play-all event over the second May bank holiday.
  • If a qualifier for the Challengers' League represents the BGA at the World Amateur then their place is deferred for one year.
  • The Title Match is to be reduced to a best of 3.
  • Teaching at the Candidates' is to become a regular feature.
• Following a request to host the Oxford club mailing list, Council approved BGA hosting of club mailing lists for other clubs that may wish to make use of this service.

Full minutes may be requested from the Secretary.