How many stones has humanity gained since the invention of Go? That is, if you took the masters of old (not like Dousaku, but really old, within a hundred years of the creation of Go) how would they fair against today's professionals? Of course, there are no records from this time, so it's all speculation, based on how valuable you feel modern strategic style, jouseki, and pro training is.

First off, we must assume that they are, in fact, weaker by some amount, else we concede that we've all just been making much ado about nothing for the last few millennia.

Their local reading ability is probably a little bit behind the pros, since they wouldn't have done as intense training(wasting time with other aristocratic duties, presumably.) -2 stones

Basic shape should be about the same. Things like don't make empty triangles and diagonals are connected would still be obvious to sharp players even without books or teachers. No stone loss.

Jouseki may or may not be of help, depending on how closely the old players' corner movers line up with toady's normal moves. But modern jouseki is pretty extensive and the old players are bound to try a knight move or an attachment eventually. And in the mostly solved corners, even a two or three point reading mistake will be noticeable. -2 stones

Global strategy will be the biggest difference. Fashions from thousands of years ago are unknowable, but the oldest records we do have seem territorial and fighting oriented. The pro's might try to out speed the old players and develop a framework game. This is the hardest to judge,as opening styles can't be compared by simply counting, but I'll give humanities struggles some credit and say -3 stones.

Endgame should also be the same, it's just math. No stone loss

So my wild guess is that the top players of ancient China would be about 7 stones weaker than modern pro's, or about amateur 3 dan.

What would you guess? stronger? weaker? How far have we gotten in actually understanding how to play Go?

I find it hard to think that those original players would be much better than amateur shodan now. That would mean at least nine stones. But I also think that early development would have been quite rapid, so it would not stay at nine stones for more than a few centuries.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

... and rule sets.

While go is ancient in its origins, we have no good reason to assume the rules were the same. So "a few hundred years from its beginning, not going to be the same game as now.

I think that "modern go" and "modern chess" are approximately the same age (a few hundred years old). For example, when exactly did it become "black moves first with no stones already placed on the board"? That was less than 300 years ago, right?
<< Yuan Zhou's "Learning from Pro Games" includes a game between Shi Xiangxia and Fan Xiping just under 300 years ago so the change had to be after that >>

And fighting strength.

Anybody who thinks that the endgame is just math isn't fighting hard enough in the endgame.

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Go is probably older than chess anyway, and its modern form (I assume you mean rules etc and not strategy) is much, much older.

Surviving game records go back at least to the late Tang and we have records such as the Dunhuang Classic that imply the game is the same as today (because it talks about ladders and so on). With the exception of the group tax (no more significant than changes in komi), any player in China, Japan or Korea over the past 1000+ years would recognise their game in a game today. The four starting stones is a trivial difference, since the same position often occurs under today's rules, but the Japanese dispensed with them long ago (at least 600 years ago). But even in China starting stones were not used in handicap games, so those games look just like today's.

Literary evidence showing that strategy in go was far from naïve survives in Chinese texts almost 2,000 years old, and in Japan from about 1,000 years ago.

The stories about Yao and Wen inventing go 4,000 years ago can, however, be taken with a large pinch of monosodium glutamate.

None of this is meant to prove anything (except perhaps that modern man is not quite as superior as he often likes to think).

Can you give me rough estimate dates in which 1. when best Japanese becomes better than best Chinese and 2. when best Korean becomes better than best Japanese? You don't have to worry about precision and accuracy.

The fundamental object of the game has always been to get more stones on the board than your opponent. The only specific rule differences I've heard of are the aforementioned group tax, set stones and no komi, which do affect high level strategy planning, but not the relationships and effects between the stones on the board. Also, the board was 17 x 17, which doesn't change the rules but the ancient player's might take some losses before adjusting.

The question of how quickly Dosaku would adapt to the modern game, is a very different one than the question how much better the modern game is than in Dosaku's age.

I don't know Dossaku's games well enough but I know enough about the history of math to make the following comparison: if you look at Galileo's writings, they will come across as rather verbose. He surely could have written it down more concisely? Well, he couldn't, because symbolic algebra hadn't been invented yet, so he had to settle with words. He could perhaps have invented symbolic algebra, just like Newton invented differentials when he needed them to describe his laws in a more profound manner. The latter feat makes Newton a true genius but it makes Galileo only a tiny bit less of a genius. Surely, Galileo would quickly adapt to today's mathematics, if exposed to it from childhood. But the average kid today is much better schooled in math than the average (schooled) kid in Galileo's time because math has evolved in such a tremendous way. So even if Galileo's genius is hard to compare with, say, Perelman's, no doubt math today had evolved a lot since the middle ages. The verbosity is not the main issue here: if Galileo had had modern algebra to his disposal, he would have made more and more profound discoveries. The interface with the object tends to influence its comprehension heavily.

Perhaps Go has not evolved as much, but the quality of the game today should not be measured by looking at Dosaku's innate ability.

There is a lot of fuzziness in this question because for a long time there was little interaction between these go cultures. Then there is also who counts as Japanese, Chinese, or Korean. Specifically Go Seigen. He was born in China but reached his mature strength playing in Japan, thus his go represents Japan rather than China. Likewise Cho Chikun represents Japan. Just to take the bait I'll guess that the Japanese were best in the Edo era if not sooner, Again a guess, I'll say that the best Korean player became better than the best Japanese in the late 20th century (Lee Chang ho? or Lee Sedol?) Actually I know so little of Korean go history. And which go players werwe best when changed over time and then back again. Possible the early Chinese players were better than the Japanese but the Japanese maybe outpaced the Chinese during the Edo period and again China passed the Japanese in around 2000. Of course I could be wrong.

Well, in the modern era the Chinese did take a bit of a break from weiqi for awhile. Their playing numbers and organizations have mostly recovered, but given the vast population discrepancies between China and JPN/KOR, it's reasonable to expect the Chinese domination of the game to only grow and grow.

In my opinion the initial question comparing the strength of players in history is misleading.

Consider go being an art, would you ask, whether contemprorary artists do better art than the ones in past centuries?

Consider go being science, then you will end up in discussions like 'critizism and the growth of knowledge' e.g. between Popper and Kuhn.
I favor Kuhn for his idea of the paradigm shifts; he's pointing out that paradigms form scientific thought and that one cannot easily compare scientific thoughts of different paradigms.

Reading Kawabata's Meijin I believe that using the term 'paradigm' leads to a clear interpretation: It's a clash of times, two paradigms that coexist but can't find together. Shusai with the Edo periods mind set. And Kitani with the revolutionized new Japanese existence. They speak different languages.

Different languages also in more philosophical dimension: terms like 'art', 'science', 'game', 'strength' etc. do not have a consistent meaning and connotaion over time.

So, for me the initial question tells much more about the mind set, the expectations of the person who's asking.
Still, I would like the hear Masukawa Koichi's answer to the question.

Cheers!

It's a game, mate. Come back down to Earth.

We've got at least 100 years of dead accurate kifu to compare techniques and strategies. Going back further is a bit dicey, but there is still physical evidence to judge.

Bill, you've mentioned this before, and I was wondering if you might elaborate. It's slightly off-topic from the current thread, so I don't know if you want to answer here or not.

From your posts on endgame, my impression is that you have a good handle on getting value of plays, tedomari, sente, reverse sente, and these sorts of concepts. If you can calculate the value of all the plays, have a clear idea of what is sente, reverse sente, gote, when it's important to get the last play, and so on... What's left to fighting spirit?

Does all of this study not give you a clear path to the end of the game when you're given an endgame board position?

I'm not an expert on endgame, so I can see how fighting might come into play - I can try to push to get all of the big points. But I've always felt that this was due to lack of precise calculation on my part.

Maybe the fighting spirit you refer to is different than what I'm interpreting?

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be immersed

What is the premise of the question?

The strength of the players during their first game against modern pros? Or after some adaptation period?

Isn't it conceivable that some of the "bad joseki" of early games would trick a modern pro during this first game because those moves have been discarded so completely that their refutation has been forgotten?

The match happens right after they arrive at the present.
I don't think pros would be tricked by subpar moves, corner jouseki covers most possible aproaches.

Ke Jie got game-over level tricked in a the large avalanche by Qiu Jun in the 2nd Bailing Cup final (http://www.go4go.net/go/games/sgfview/45289).

No. Nearly all of my endgame problems or studies are about the late endgame. It is true that Berlekamp and his students composed late endgame problems that challenged top pros. Berlekamp once signed up for a lesson at the Nihon Kiin with a 9 dan, and set up a problem to see if he had made a mistake that the 9 dan could show him. After failing to solve the problem by playing it out a few times against Berlekamp (who was something like 4 kyu at the time), the pro waived his fee and said, why don't you teach me? Nonetheless, late game endgame mistakes in pro games are rare. At least they were when they got at least 5 hours plus byoyomi. However, even top level players make mid-level endgame mistakes, usually costing a point or two.

Several years ago I helped out at a professional endgame tournament in Seoul. The endgames were set up, starting in the mid-level endgame. The results were surprisingly varied. At one point the pros were laughing and Rui Naiwei had a grin on her face. She had killed one of her opponent's groups. Now, that's fighting spirit.

As for my problems, they are mostly about the concepts you mentioned and are thus mathy. But a lot of players think that endgame math is just about the size of plays. It is not, as you know. And there is a kind of fighting spirit to it, I think. The fight to get the last play or the fight to take sente apply at all levels of the game.

Here is an example of the wrong book play from The Magic of Go articles in the Yomiuri Shimbun. See http://senseis.xmp.net/?YoseErrorsInMagicOfGo .

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Issue 160 Problem 2
$$ ----------------
$$ . . O . 1 . . . |
$$ . X X O 2 . O . |
$$ . . X O O X O . |
$$ . . X X X O O O |
$$ . . . . . X X X |
$$ . . . . . . . . |[/go]

This is a mid-level endgame position. is tesuji, showing good fighting spirit. However, is gote.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Issue 160 Problem 2
$$ ----------------
$$ . . O 3 1 . . . |
$$ . X X O . 2 O . |
$$ . . X O O X O . |
$$ . . X X X O O O |
$$ . . . . . X X X |
$$ . . . . . . . . |[/go]

takes sente. That's fighting spirit, too. It takes fighting strength to find the tesuji, , and it takes fighting strength to find . is deceptive, because it gives up 3 points locally. However, when is played, there will almost certainly be opportunities to gain more than 3 points elsewhere on the board. Described in those terms it is a mathy decision, but normally the decision is obvious, once you see

Anyway, my problems are seldom about tesuji and fighting strength, but are about concepts that any dan player and many kyu players can use to play the late endgame almost perfectly.

----

Edit: Back when I was 3 dan, before I had studied about tedomari and so on, a go magazine ran a series with early endgame positions taken from pro games to play out with an opponent and then compare your results with that of the pros, who presumably played correctly. A local shodan and I played the positions out and I always scored around 10 points better than the pro results. It was as though I had a large gote and then the rest was miai. I basically got all the points that were up for grabs. It takes fighting strength to do that. Math is not enough.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.