yeah, i think wu qingyuan is a special case, and he is kind of recent... (I mean, he only died a few years ago, if that).

But yeah, AlphaGo's style has been compared to Wu qingyuan a lot lately, and my chinese sucks so I can't understand most of it, but it seems that Wu Qingyuan had a lot of ideas that other pros didn't really believe but are similar with AlphaGo's evaluation or something like that.

Part of the reason pros used to study old games was a practical one. It was only famous old pros who had their collections of games published, and even then amateurs were the driving force. Even getting hold of single games by contemporaneous pros was a great chore, especially if you were e.g. in Tokyo and wanted to see games by Kansai players. Go magazines were relatively new, rather small until recent times, highly selective, and usually quite of out of date.

For quite a few pros in 20th century Japan there was also the question of family loyalty. They might not have been part of the traditional go families but they had teachers who were, and ancestors who had to be "worshipped".

Nowadays there is a kind of dichotomy: pros who have studied old games and pros who haven't. I think it is true to say that none of those on either side believe that any ancient pro would win titles today, although many will say something like such and such a player would be a top player today if he was allowed a year or so to study modern fuseki.

I think it is probably safe to say that those who have actually studied the ancient games know what they are talking about than the haven'ts, and I don't think they put the best of the old pros down as far as amateurs, or anywhere near. It's complicated, of course, in that old players often lacked true rivals and played lots of weakies, or in that many like Shusaku died before they could reach the top, or in that politics played a part in many ancient careers.

But in a way this is all irrelevant because old games are not necessarily studied because of how strong a player was or wasn't. What studying old games of a single player best gives you is the arc of a player's life. You see how a player makes mistakes, learns, changes his style, meets new challenges, then declines. Because he is famous there are stories about him. You understand his character as well as his go. I think many modern pros, starting at one end of the rainbow and facing a long journey to the other end, have found this sort of thing valuable and inspiring.

At the other extreme, I can mention a top Chinese pro who was commissioned by GoGoD to do commentaries. He refused point blank to do any ancient Chinese games on the grounds that it would corrupt his understanding of modern go, where his livelihood really lay. Fair enough, but for contrast look at the profound, loving and very extensive commentaries on ancient Chinese players by Chen Zude. He was for a long time the top player. I'd like to believe that one reason for his superiority is that he never forgot his roots.