Takao won the first game in the Meijin, and Ichiriki won against Yamashita to challenge for the Tengen title.

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Occupy Babel!

The opening of Iyama's game against Takao was rather odd to me: it looks like white (Iyama) gave black a load of lower side territory (though perhaps not much more than expected from a Kobayashi opening) and then gave up the lower left corner (albeit with a little long ko aji) for a fairly useless big old wall. As to be expected Iyama did then find ways of turning this thickness into some profit later, but it wasn't enough and he lost.


In fact this way of dealing with the Kobayashi opening was used more successfully by Tan Xiao vs Meng Tailing in the Samsung cup prelims just a month before, I wonder did Iyama/Takao study this? By comparison Meng's tenuki to invade the right for move 21 looks poor compared to Takao's immediate invasion there (move 13) as Tan got to settle his group in the lower right corner whilst Iyama didn't and that caused it to run and struggle.

Seeing that game again, I felt like transcribing the self commentary by Meng Tailing

He talks a lot about process, Korea vs China, go styles, not just the go. He doesn't give so many variations except in the opening, but mostly his opinion of the position at critical points

Iyama finally picked his name: 文裕 "Monyuu". The first character "文" mon comes from his grandfather's name (鐵文), who first taught him Go.

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Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

To me, this seems quite reminiscent of the names of the early heads of Hayashi, but do you know if this is something that would occur to people in Japan, or is it just an artifact of transliteration?

There is absolutely no connection with the Hayashi family and none would occur to an average Japanese. Apart from anything else the two 'mon' characters are quite different.

But this is also very different from Edo name changes in another way. Then a name would typically be bestowed by a teacher or a some other senior person. In the case of the modern Honinbo, it is the player himself who chooses the name, and so it is typically seen as a weighty, even onerous, responsibility. However, I don't think I'm being too cynical to observe that, of the two characters Iyama could have chosen from grandpa's name, he chose the one with 4 characters rather than the one with 21 characters. I'm sure he did a quick calculation of how many fans he will be expected to sign and decided there are more enjoyable ways to acquire RSI.

Is there a combined meaning of the name? Relating to go, MON can have style, art, elegance as meaning and YUU abundance, rich, fruitful.

Why are people wanting Japan's go world to be different? Japanese go has given a lot to the world. Probably Japanese pros, e.g. Segoe, Fujisawa Hideyuki and others, gave great help in developing pro level go in China and also in Korea. Why did Go Seigen go to Japan if he could have developed in China? And why did Cho Hun-hyun start his pro studies in Japan, and why did Cho Chikun go the Japan to become a pro? From the point of view of the West, Japanese pros pretty much spread go to Europe and the USA, and made many teaching tours to the West contributing to bringing amateur go in the West to the present level. Now Korea and China are supporting Western amateur and fledgling pro go in the West. Japanese pros do play in the (early rounds) international tournaments and have prospered in Japan as a result. Twenty or more years ago both CHina and Korea were trying hard to displace Japan at the top. The question is whether they care enough to hold onto the top. In the end Go/Weiqi/Baduk must survive in individual countries not just in international tournaments. Right now Korea seems to be falling behind China. Will the hunger to be at the top persist in Korea? And will China's fire keep burning? Maybe the West might rise.

I have, somewhere, a signed handprint from 90s yokozuna Akebono. I imagine he wishes he'd thought harder about his ring name too!

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Confucius in the Analects says "even playing go is better than eating chips in front of tv all day." -- kivi

Takao Shinji is leading 3-0 in Meijin.

If Takao wins the Meijin, expect Goratings.org to rank him among top 10 in the world. LOL!

I've lived in the Seattle area for the past few years. For any football fans out there, that's the home of the Seahawks. Compared to any other place that I've lived, the football fans here are... intense. Just today, the middle of the afternoon, apparently the Seahawks did something good on TV, and someone in my town is shooting fireworks. Baristas at coffee shops sport Seahawks football gear, babies in strollers wear jerseys on game days, and local churches cancel services to accommodate important football games.

When I first moved here, I noticed that the most popular player appeared to be some guy named Fan. Okay, whatever. Mr. Fan must be a good football player. But upon closer investigation, I realized that "Fan" is not a person. "Fan" is the 12th man, with 12 being a jersey number retired for Seahawks fans themselves. What the...? The majority of these jersey toting football proselytes are fans of not any particular player - not anyone that has any football skill, but the Seahawks themselves. It doesn't matter if Russell Wilson (yes, I had to look the name up - he's not the 12th man, afterall) is a skilled quarterback - at least not as much as it matters that the Seahawks win. It doesn't matter if Richard Sherman has any affiliation with Seattle, Washington, or anything else - as long as he helps the Seahawks win. It doesn't even matter if a player used to play for the Greenbay Packers - if they are on the Seahawks team this year, let's hope they win. If they switch to Greenbay next year - then **** them.

As you can probably tell, I don't care much about football. But still, it's somewhat sad. Looking at this page of players for research right now, I see a Seahawk's player named Jimmy Graham. I don't know who he is. Maybe a diehard Seahawks fan does. But I'd bet that most don't. I bet Jimmy Graham worked hard to be in the NFL. He probably spent hours of his life devoted to the sport. And yes, he's probably getting some money for his efforts. But 50 years from now, nobody is going to remember who Jimmy Graham is (sorry, Jimmy). But I'd bet that there are still Seahawks fans wearing that 12th man jersey. After all, it's the team that matters. Not the people that actually play the game.

This phenomenon saddens me also when it comes to go. We may not wear our 12th man jerseys or get 12-cent coffee for showing our team spirit, but all to often, we focus on "the teams" rather than the players themselves. Who won the last Ing Cup? China? Japan? Korea? Those are the wrong choices.

To answer the original questions, "Will the hunger to be at the top persist in Korea? And will China's fire keep burning?", I don't really care. But I do care about seeing a hunger to be at the top. And I do care about a fire burning for go. I truly respect and admire someone that has this hunger, this drive... this fire. Certainly Go Seigen had it. Probably Koichi Kobayashi, Cho Chikun, Nie Weiping, Kong Jie, Gu Li, Lee Changho, Lee Sedol, and Ke Jie had this drive at one point in their careers. Maybe even players from the west - Andy Liu, Eric Lui - maybe they have it, too. That hunger - that fire - is amazing to see. And I really get interested in the players that have it. Who cares if China has fire? Who cares if there is a hunger to be in the top in Korea? These are geographical locations. Dirt. Dirt that happens to lie within a particular geographical region. I'm interested in the people themselves.

So if we had jerseys for go, I'd be sporting names honoring my favorite players. Maybe people that I've learned a little bit about. Someone who has a career that I've followed. These people are real. They deserve respect. They are the ones that have put in the work, put in the study, and deserve our admiration - not some stupid organization or geographical region that's written on their passport.

You won't find a 12th man jersey in my closet.

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be immersed

No. You have a poor understanding of the Whole History Rating algorithm if you expect that. For one thing winning 4 games won't give him the 150 points or so he needs to get to top 10, that would need far more games. Secondly he already has 3 of the 4 wins he needs in the goratings system and is still down at #52. Cue whinging that even 52 is too high for Takao.

Iyama won game 4 today to keep him in the match. I actually though Takao looked pretty good until he let his entire right side group get captured

Another kadoban for Iyama today, and to me the opening doesn't seem so great for him...

But he pulled through. If you want the odds from goratings, with Iyama being at 3515, Takao at 3363, Takao is just barely favored to win the remaining two games, 51-49.

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Occupy Babel!

I'm really happy he won today and I'll keeping my fingers crossed for Iyama. But the next 2 weeks will be SO busy for him, defending 3 titles at the same time... Monday he'll play the first game of the Oza title match against Yu Zengqi, four days later the Tengen title match against Ichiriki Ryo starts and 6 days after that the next Meijin game is on. And if he manages to win that game, there's another set of three games for all these title matches in the next 11 days after that waiting for him. This sounds like very incredibly tough times.... Both challengers for Oza and Tengen are strong, of course, but I'm a little relieved that Iyama won't have to play against Yamashita and Murakawa instead. I want him to defend his titles! But writing this makes me realize this might be a superhuman effort... >_<

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Park Junghwan had to play 2 games in a single day twice last week (or was it the week before?) For the samsung cup and the korean baduk league

I don't want to belittle Park Junghwan's lot, but I think that games with 4 or even 8 hours of thinking time per player are somewhat more energy-sapping.

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Looks like he's 7-4 against Ichiriki and 3-0 against Yu. That 7-4 might even be the best record any Japanese player has against him (Mr Kin site gives ~34-19 vs Yamashita, ~36-15 vs Takao, and after that I got lazy).

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Occupy Babel!