"A mail from WOF President, Benkt Steentoft"

Dear Daniel,
Dear all Othello enthusiasts,

It's fantastic that we have all those enthusiastic players and
organizers all over the world who is burning for our game, Othello.
These real enthusiast are needed so that our favourite game will be
more well known and make our Othello community grow. We can see that
this will happen now in South America. Brazil, Argentina and Chile
is three countries who are relatively new in the World Othello
Federation. We hope that this enthusiasm will spread to other
countries in this part of the world. Well done!

Its also great that the Othello world is growing. This year we can
welcome Finland, Brazil and Israel as nations with Othello
federations. Also Cyprus, Greece, Belarus, Chile, Bulgaria and
Portugal have started groups and have a contact person for their
nation. Hopefully they will one day create an Othello federation and
be even more active. Tournaments and homepages are coming in many
new countries!

When we are growing we can also see that more and more players want
to attend the WOC. Thats also great. But it means that if all 31
nations who now are members in WOF could send 4 players, it would be
124 players. That would be an amazing tournament, and one day I hope
we can have a WOC with so many players. But not this year in
Athens.

This year the sponsors gave us a maximum number of players that is
lower then last year. In fact, if all European nations should send 4
players we would not have room for any more players! So thats the
problem we have. So thats why we, in discussions with Anjar, decide
this system. Hopefully it will be only this year.
We could go another way: we could decide that this year each nation
only could send 2+1. But I think thats a very bad idea when most
Federations already have decide their qualifications and started
their tournaments for this year. We tried to be careful. Nations in
group 3 is nations that normaly send one or no players.

Another importent thing to remember is that Anjar pay for the WOC.
In many years they have not asked us for anything. They also pay for
the WOC participations for nations who do not have a licensee. Every
licensee pay a little to the WOC.
But times changes. And the only thing Anjar asked for is that we,
WOF and all nations, can give something little back. And what they
wish is activity. Help to make Othello more famous and well known. I
dont think its too much to ask from Anjar. In fact: The more
activity from our side, the more well known Othello will be, the
more people want to buy Othello, and Anjar get more money from sold
games to spend on WOC, more money to WOC = more players in WOC. So
what it is about is that we together, WOF and all federations and
nations and Anjar, must work for Othello so we can survive and grow!
It is easy to forget this.

I will again remember you all that we are growing. And right now we
are growing fast and that means that we must, together with the
sponsor Anjar, who are the head of the WOC, discuss how it is best
to organize WOC in the future. Is it possible to have 4 players from
each nation or is it time to try out another system? I know that it
is a lot of thoughts about this so please tell us. Send us an email
with your thoughts to woc2007@worldothell ofederation. com. We will
suggest several different ways on how to arrange WOC to Anjar, and
we need your ideas and thoughts!

Hopefully you got an answer to your email Daniel and we also hope
that you will still be an Othello enthusiast and be a part of the
discussions about a fair system to arrange the WOC. And we hope to
see Argentina as an Othello federation and also see a lot of players
in future WOC.

Best regards

Benkt Steentoft
TD WOC 2007 Athen
President World Othello Federation