I think that, as a potential future location for the CIS tournament, we in Yekaterinburg can take note of the feedback and make the next application much better (deadlines, prices, gifts for the right people, bribing the judges, etc.).
Therefore, I appeal to the best qualities of its residents and ask them to pay attention to the essence of the matter - in this case, the votes were indeed divided (22/20 - even a simple count shows that it's roughly equal), but Volgograd's slight advantage is not due to Merlin's machinations or a "rigged" point-counting system, and I would even venture to say that it's not even due to certain expected weather conditions (although that's also a plus).
Just look at the voters with common sense. Those who really need to move from their current location and travel somewhere are generally more inclined towards Volgograd. This is evident from the list of votes, regardless of Merlin (and it has already been mentioned several times in the thread).
I risk incurring the righteous wrath of the Siberians, but I would like to point out that Volgograd has a more convenient geographical location in terms of gathering people from different regions of the CIS. This is its initial advantage. :smile32:
And I'm sure that many will vote for Korolev for the same reason.
I'm not trying to claim that Volgograd is better in 2017. I don't have any experience to make such claims.
I just want to reduce the tension and subtly steer the discussion away from subjective preferences towards objective criteria.
There are objective advantages for Yekaterinburg as well, but in order to present them convincingly, perhaps it's time to try to look at the situation not from within Yekaterinburg, but from the perspective of the CIS as a whole?
