Kind of reminds me of debates about the best basketball player between Michael Jordan and LeBron James. Jordan has argued that basketball is a different game today than it was during his prime, and LeBron argues that he's simply more skilled.

I feel both sides of the argument have merit. On one hand, the skill level today appears stronger than that of the past. On the other hand, the "kids" of today have advantages not available back in the day. Could the stars of the past overcome today's greats given the same advantages?

Nobody really knows.

My opinion is, to be best in the world in any time period is an amazing feat.

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Ke Jie has maintained 3600+ for almost 2 years now. He only has two more months to go and he's got 30 points to spare so we even if he performs poorly over the next two months, he most likely will have maintained 3600+ for 2+ years. That is in my opinion the strongest 2 year stretch in go history.

As for missing games in the database, we might be missing some early Ke Jie games, but we certainly have just about every single game over the last two years, which is the time frame I am discussing. Is it possible that Go Seigen had a stronger 2 year stretch that we don't know about due to missing game records? I guess it is possible, but highly doubtful as the strength of his opponents was just too low compared to the depth of today's game.

If Go Seigen were re-incarnated in today's era and had the same environment since birth as Ke Jie, who would be better? Obviously that is a hypothetical that no one can answer.

If peak form Go Seigen were re-incarnated in today's era and played Ke Jie straight up, obviously it wouldn't even be close, especially due to the accumulated knowledge of all these years.

Let's say Go Seigen was the best player out of a pool of 1 million players. Who knows what the actual number is but let's just roll with it. Let's say Ke Jie is the best player out of a pool of 1 billion players. Could Go Seigen actually have been 1 out of a billion if given the chance? Again, possible but not probable. And again, no way to know.

Bottom line again is not to discount Go Seigen or Cho Chikun, Lee Changho, etc. I am not saying that they could not have been one out of a billion if given the chance. I am saying Ke Jie is currently the one out of a billion and ranking first in a MUCH tougher environment is a more impressive achievement than ranking first in a far easier environment.

Any way you slice it, it a'int just par for the course is the point I'm trying to make.

You could be correct, Brooklyn, but I think your argument over-simplifies the situation. Obviously, all other things being equal (variance in population, etc.), it is more difficult to achieve #1 out of a higher population. But there are many important yet unquantifiable variables that play into the equation. For example, if you have someone aiming to be number 1, that drive might be able to take them there, regardless of the population.

We know more about physics than in Einstein's time, but who is to say how good of a physicist he'd be today.

Of course this is all hypothetical and we can only give our opinions.

You have admitted that an older generation player could possibly be as skilled as Ke Jie if they peaked today, but it is not probable.

The only part that I disagree with is that it is not possible to quantify this probability with any accuracy - who knows - maybe Ke Jie's presence would be enough to drive a modern day Go Seigen to the top. Or maybe not.

The population is greater today, but I don't feel it gives us much data to answer this question.

That all being said, for fun, if I had to guess, I think your conclusion about Ke Jie is correct. But that's just a hunch, which is not scientific in any way.

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Jordan vs. James - The talent pool in basketball is greater now than in the mid 80's to 90's but the difference isn't that great. There wasn't an obvious event such as the breaking of the color barrier in baseball that opened the flood gates. Sure you have a lot more international players now, but even in the 80's you had guys like Patrick Ewing and Hakeem Olajuwon that were born overseas and basically recruited for their athletic ability. The leap in talent pool and overall quality development in basketball from the 60's to the 80's is far greater than from the 90's to today. While advances are continuing and the talent pool growing, it has definitely plateaued.

If you look at historical ELO rankings, the top player throughout the 70s and 80s consistently had a ELO rating in the 3300s. Then Lee Changho came along and established a baseline of 3500. He led a wave of Koreans that were new additions to the talent pool that made the competition much tougher than when the pool was limited only to Japan. The top 10 went from all Japanese, to a mix of Japanese and Koreans. Chinese economic development occurred a little after Korea but you can see China rising slowly during Lee Changho's era. Then in the 2010's you see an explosion of Chinese players in the top 10 and Ke Jie sets a new ELO bar at 3600.

I imagine we will see it plateau from here on forward. Maybe if go becomes huge in India and a billion new people start taking the game seriously, then we may see another big talent pool jump.

I think a good example is Cho Hunhyun during the 70's and 80's. He thoroughly dominated Korean Go but all the accolades were heaped on Cho Chikun. If you take a look at the historical ELO ratings, Cho Hunhyun doesn't even appear in the top 10 until 1988. For the next 10+ years, his ELO remained higher than Cho Chikun albeit, they were often separated by only a few points.

Point being, in hindsight, Cho Hunhyun was probably nearly the same strength as Cho Chikun throughout the nearly ten years or so that he was universally considered the strongest player in the world. Only problem is that he couldn't prove it by playing against such weak competition. No matter how much you dominate the minors, you only get so much credit.

Then Lee Changho came along and Korean Go as a whole improved dramatically and suddenly- not to mention the newly established international tournaments - and Cho Hunhyun is finally recognized as one of the best in the world. It's not that he suddenly got stronger, rather he was able to finally prove himself against proper competition.

Can you hold it against Cho Hunhyun for having to compete against such weak Korean competition for all those years? A man can only beat his opponents, right? While you can't hold it against him, you can give credit where credit is due. And credit is due to Ke Jie for facing the stiffest competition the go world has ever seen and still thoroughly dominating.

I personally have never had any patience with the sterile "who was the strongest ever" arguments in any discipline. The figures I quoted were simply to show that the top player in any era scoring something like 71% is not "insane" but typical for any given era in go. I imagine that it's also typical, even if not quite universal, for each generation to be stronger in competitions than the previous one.

If you really do have the urge to spin out the coffee break, though, what you can more usefully argue about is contributions to the discipline. In the case of go, Ke Jie is still a no-show in that regard. Go Seigen may be top of the list, and Cho Hun-hyeon scores well. Cho Chikun and Sakata maybe score low (Takagawa may have taught us all more about go theory than either of them, and maybe Takemiya brought in more fans). And so on. In other words, who would get the Nobel Prizes for go? Or even better, what have been the greatest contributions in go?

The Nihon Ki-in Hall of Fame is a little too parochial and slow, and all halls of fame eventually (soon?) suffer from the problem of bloat. Maybe we need dan grades within a hall of fame reference. In that case, I would nominate Dosaku, Go Seigen, Huang Longshi and Cho Hun-hyeon for the first 13-dan HoFers. Ke, Pak, Iyama and the rest still have to buy tickets like the rest of us.

Before the end of your sentence, I thought you were going to say that Go Seigen would win. Not even close.

About that accumulated knowledge. First, Go Seigen was the source of a lot of that knowledge. Second, he was not only the best player for a considerable time, he understood go better than anybody else. Takagawa said that the 20th century produced only one go genius, Go Seigen. Even when Go Seigen was well past his prime, in his 80s and 90s, top players clamored to study with him. He remained creative to the end.

At the top level, go knowledge progresses much slower than we think. (At least among humans. ) What is deceptive is that improvements are made in certain lines of play, but the go board is vast, and even in such lines the law of diminishing returns kicks in. Some ideas seem new, such as approaching the lone 3-4 stone with the 3-6, or the mini-Chinese, but these were played over 200 years ago. The Shusaku kosumi has made a comeback, as well. If go has made such progress, why are these old moves good enough to resurrect? I can't prove anything, OC, but my guess is that top level go knowledge advances at around 1/2 stone per century. That's actually a pretty good clip.

Edit: Under the influence of AlphaGo and other programs, maybe Cosmic Go will make a comeback. Shades of Takemiya and Go Seigen.

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What on earth makes you think you can meaningfully compare gorating's ELO scores that have multiple decades between them? The scores are relative, and I believe they have a prior of 3000. 3300 or 3500 or 3600 have no intrinsic meaning, they are just comparisons with the other players involved. And in 1980, there are 67 players rated, there are 216 players in 1990, 453 in 2000, 836 in 2010, 895 in 2016. The pool of players is changing too much to make comparisons worthwhile.

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Elo rating definitely skews in favor of current players with more recorded games and more pros in general. I mean, Xie He had a higher peak ELO than Cho Hunhyun ever did just because Xie had one good stretch in 2006. When you get that many more pros, the whole baseline becomes higher, and it's not necessarily because the No. 100 ranked player today (around 3,300 ELO) is as good as the top players in the previous decades.

Tuo Jiaxi took Game 1, defeating Ke Jie by resign (although they pretty much played to the end).

This game was yet another to feature the AlphaGo (peaceful variation) opening*. AGA commentary with Stephanie Yin 1p: https://youtu.be/6hgsBZLpQFo. A very nice result for Tuo, who was 1 win 6 loses versus Ke up to now. Record below:


It also featured in the semi-finals of this Samsung cup, when Lee Sedol scored his only win agaisnt Ke Jie in a very dramatic game with an a amazing comeback by Lee. That also featured the same o11 reduction/ladder breaker:



Ke Jie also lost with the same opening as white against Mi Yuting in the 6th Quzhou-Lanke Cup final. Given his fantastic record with white perhaps this opening is a weak point of his?


Another recent loss from Ke Jie as white with this opening in the Chinese league against Kim Jiseok:


Ke beat Zhou Ruiyang as black with this opening (he's never lost to Zhou):


There's also the final Meijin title match game Iyama lost against Takao where Iyama made that very early turn and capture at the top right (which no one else does) which put him behind for the rest of the game to me.


* By which I mean black answers the turn at top right instead of invading as Lee Sedol did in game 5, perhaps we can call that the AlphaGo (resistance variation) opening

I liked this AGA stream (Bad@Baduk and Stefanie Jin 1p) on the Tuo Jiaxi 9p versus Ke Jie 9p game very much!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hgsBZLpQFo&feature=youtu.be

2nd game;
Ke Jie defeated Tuo Jiaxi by resign.

Ke Jie vs Tuo Jiaxi - 1:1

3rd game:12/8/16

What a game! And congrats Ke Jie for his 4th world title, now 6th all-time.

Wow, Ke Jie turned 19 only four months ago. To have won four world titles before turning 20, this has to be some kind of world record.

A great lesson in the power of tenuki at critical times from Ke Jie: both from the top left to change the balance of power in the centre fight and then leaving that single stone hanging in atari on the lower side to make beneficial eye-stealing sente exchanges first (that's when I joined the game and at first thought there was a transcription error!). Here's the game record (corrected to game on mainline) plus variations from the AGA demo:



Also interesting that he felt it playable to give the opening huge wall like Tang Weixing gave Park Junghwam and then lost with in the Ing cup (and that here as more generally top Korean/Chinese pros don't follow Sonoda's advice as reported by JF not to invade 3-space extensions):

There's no doubt that 'right now' Ke Jie is the strongest one, even if he lose Bailing Cup next week (if he win then I really can't find a word to praise his strength). He has been no.1 in goratings for 2 years, and counting...
But too bad he can't compete in World Go Championship due to schedule conflict (same reason as AlphaGo) while other top Chinese pros are available at that time. Luckily the difference between top Chinese pros is insignificant.

Not necessarily I thought, as Lee Changho got his first aged 16 in 1992. But although he had collected an impressive collection of domestic titles (much more than Ke Jie) by the age of 20 he only had two international ones. It's a bit of an unfair comparison though as there weren't as many international tournaments back then (the Samsung cup started the next year). But set against that Ke is playing in a more competitive era with a higher level of Go so I think his achievements to date are roughly comparable to Lee's at the same age. If he can keep this form going and achieve the longevity of dominance like Lee that would be even more amazing and he could go down in the history books alongside LCH.

P.S. Lee Sedol started winning a bit later and had 5 international titles by 22 but only 1 at 20.