Joanne Missingham

tapir · #1

It should be big news that Australia is the first country from outside Asia, which sent a participant to the semi-finals of an international go competition. I would like to read some insights and game comments from more competent participants about the recent feats of JoanneMissingham.

Please!

xed_over · #2

link for those who don't know what tapir is talking about
http://senseis.xmp.net/?BingshengCup

schilds · #3

Australia? Go? Eh what? Does not compute!

trout · #4

Park JiEun and Joanne Missingham advanced to final.

tapir · #5

schilds wrote:

Australia? Go? Eh what? Does not compute!

Basically, it is about Joanne Missingham being finalist in the mentioned women's world championship. Shouldn't this be big news?

kokomi · #6

Hope she can win.

I heard that she was about to decide whether to keep on as a Go pro or go back to study in one year. Personally i think she should go back study even thought she's really talented in Go. But women pro's career life isn't as easy as men's. Very few tournaments are for women, and it seems people has less interests on it.

gaius · #7

OMG, a Westerner in a final

.

According to Senseis, she'll earn 70,000 RMB (around 7,000 euros) already even if she loses the final... And if she wins, that'll be a total prize of 200,000 RMB (20,000 euros). Not bad when you're 16! Let's see how the game will be - it's scheduled for tomorrow. I believe her opponent Park JiEun is one of the absolute top female players, but we'll see how it goes!

hyperpape · #8

Kokomi: women can play in men's tournaments, so maybe your point is better rephrased as "only playing in women's tournaments makes it hard to make a living"

kokomi · #9

Yes, women can. But we are talking about the prize or income here. So far it's not very easy for female pros to win the prize against top male pros.
Only Rui Naiwei 9p was able to compete with top male pros as far as i know.

breakfast · **#10**

I saw her games on WMSG. It seems that she improved a lot during 2 years.

Anyway, Park, 9p is too hard to beat. I don't think that Joanne's chances are bigger than 5-10%.
They met each other on WMSG 2 years ago. Park won that game easily

clemi · **#11**

breakfast wrote:

I don't think that Joanne's chances are bigger than 5-10%.
They met each other on WMSG 2 years ago. Park won that game easily

I agree it will be hard for Joanne to win. If you look at the way Park won her games, it was mostly +resigned !

hyperpape · **#12**

On another note, Missingham is, or could be, an interesting aspect of the way that national pride works for go players. She moved to Taiwan at 4, learned to play at 6, then moved to the US while already quite strong, where she continued to study, then returned to China to take the professional exam. Did she ever live in Australia while playing go?

I'm not saying Australians shouldn't feel pride, in the same way that someone from the US might feel pride about Michael Redmond (though I don't know exactly how good he'd gotten before leaving for Japan). Or again, the Japanese are proud of Cho Chikun (though he is occasionally treated poorly because of his Korean origin).

Just making the point that there's lots of different categories here. Compare, e.g. Jie Li and Eric Lui, one of whom became strong then moved to the US, and one of whom learned Go in the US.

kokomi · **#13**

hyperpape wrote:

On another note, Missingham is, or could be, an interesting aspect of the way that national pride works for go players. She moved to Taiwan at 4, learned to play at 6, then moved to the US while already quite strong, where she continued to study, then returned to China to take the professional exam. Did she ever live in Australia while playing go?

I'm not saying Australians shouldn't feel pride, in the same way that someone from the US might feel pride about Michael Redmond (though I don't know exactly how good he'd gotten before leaving for Japan). Or again, the Japanese are proud of Cho Chikun (though he is occasionally treated poorly because of his Korean origin).

Just making the point that there's lots of different categories here. Compare, e.g. Jie Li and Eric Lui, one of whom became strong then moved to the US, and one of whom learned Go in the US.

I think she could represent Chinese Taipei to play in Asian Games, so I wonder if she hold dual nationality? Traditionally, players are rather looked at by go associations than nationalities. I always feel Cho U's Japanese player. Now as people look at Go more like a sport, it becomes quite common for players to represent nations rather than go associations.

btw, thanks for rephrasing my sentence, i did not make it very clear in my first post.

gowan · **#14**

Michael Redmond left the USA to live in Japan at age 13 I believe. At that time he was around amateur 5d in playing strength. Back then 5d was stronger than now for what it's worth.

Nationality is a matter of citizenship mostly but sometimes residence is also required. Rin Kaiho, O Rissei and O Meien have all represented Taiwan at times in international events but mostly Japan where they qualified as pros. Cho Chikun has represented Korea at least once but I could be wrong.

Personally I think nationalism is abhorent. I'd far rather see international go played by teams which are recruited openly, sort of the way pro soccer/football is done. That would be better for the pros who could get more money than having to depend so much on prizes.

Magicwand · **#15**

kokomi wrote:

hyperpape wrote:

On another note, Missingham is, or could be, an interesting aspect of the way that national pride works for go players. She moved to Taiwan at 4, learned to play at 6, then moved to the US while already quite strong, where she continued to study, then returned to China to take the professional exam. Did she ever live in Australia while playing go?

I'm not saying Australians shouldn't feel pride, in the same way that someone from the US might feel pride about Michael Redmond (though I don't know exactly how good he'd gotten before leaving for Japan). Or again, the Japanese are proud of Cho Chikun (though he is occasionally treated poorly because of his Korean origin).

Just making the point that there's lots of different categories here. Compare, e.g. Jie Li and Eric Lui, one of whom became strong then moved to the US, and one of whom learned Go in the US.

I think she could represent Chinese Taipei to play in Asian Games, so I wonder if she hold dual nationality? Traditionally, players are rather looked at by go associations than nationalities. I always feel Cho U's Japanese player. Now as people look at Go more like a sport, it becomes quite common for players to represent nations rather than go associations.

btw, thanks for rephrasing my sentence, i did not make it very clear in my first post.

i know for fact that she holds duel citizenship.

shapenaji · **#16**

Wow, I looked at one of her games, she's vicious, just cut a swathe of destruction across the board.

hyperpape · **#17**

Well, there are lots of different concepts here. Many people draw a distinction between nationalism and patriotism, though I've never gotten my head around it myself.

Bottom line: when spectators on a game between two AGA players ask whether they are "actual Americans" that's awful (I've seen this too many times, though the response is usually encouraging). When a spectator heckles Cho Chikun for being foreign, that's awful. But hating those attitudes doesn't preclude feeling some special interest in seeing players who have learned the game in America do well. Their success speaks to the health of our go community.

Nice to know about Redmond, though the interesting and probably unanswerable question concerns the space between 5d and pro--could he have reached pro level in the US?

gaius · **#18**

Too bad, she lost her game by resignation. Well... Pretty good effort either way!

Magicwand · **#19**

how long it will take for non-oriental player to win a world tournament?
i think not for next 50 years.
then again, i didnt think there will be black president in US for next 100 years and i was wrong.

kokomi · **#20**

I would think within 10 years. Especially now people can use internet to learn go.

Joanne Missingham

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