I think you missed the point entirely, and your reply actually strengthens my point. The game of Go is not one in which whoever reads faster takes the win. It's not as if each player is only allowed to read 50 moves ahead, with the fastest player reaching that number being the winner of the exchange. Players with faster, deeper, and more accurate reading skills, along with better working memory, are at an even greater advantage under longer time controls, simply because he or she is able to try more variations in order to find the most optimal move.

And you are missing my point. But seeing as last time I took the time to methodically deconstruct one of your forthright opinions you just disappeared without an acknowledgment I don't think I'll bother, and just continue to post the results.

Common group 1:

Shi Yue 9p bt. Gu Zihao 9p
Liao Yuanhe 7p (CN) bt. Lee Jihyun 9p (KR)

Common group 2:

Yang Dingxin 7p (CN) bt. Chen Yaoye 9p (CN)
Jiang Weijie 9p (CN) bt. Byun Sangil 9p (KR)

Senior group:

Yoo Changhyuk 9p (KR) bt. O Meien 9p (JP)
Yuki Satoshi 9p (JP) bt. Cho Sonjin 9p (JP)

The group finals are on 29th January.

Keep an eye on Liao Yuanhe and Yang Dingxin in 2019 - they are both incredibly strong but yet to perform in major international tournaments.

A very satisficing reply from you indeed.

These discussions on whether faster time settings favor younger or older players can continue forever without backing up arguments with numbers. The best way would be to compute

a) Elo ratings using only fast games
b) Elo ratings using only slow games

Calculate if the difference b-a is correlated with age. But probably no one can produce this calculation without unreasonable effort.

I looked at the list of titles of a few players (Cho Chikun, Lee Changho for instance) and it seems they stopped winning competitions with long time settings at about the same time as they stopped winning competitions with fast time settings. But this is just an impression, not statistics.

Liao Yuanhe 7p beat Shi Yue 9p, great result for rising star Liao


Jiang Weijie 9p beat Yang Dingxin 7p, but not so lucky for Yang, Jiang hasn't had much success for a years (won LG cup in 2012) but is having a resurgence recently. LZ said the very natural looking m15 hane was Yang's biggest mistake (as it just gives black momentum to wall off the centre) and he should have ignored to sabaki in the centre around j/k10. And conversely black's n15 hane was better at j11 but with some preparatory probe at d17 (because if white answers c17 e17 c18 you generate a nice attachment at d13 to lean on in the centre fighting to come, really high level play). I recommend exploring this middlegame fight with LeelaZero, it's the sort of position it excels at.


Yoo Changhyuk 9p beat Yuki Satoshi 9p, no surprise from the 2nd strongest player in the world in late 90s taking the lead in middlegame fighting. Yuki was doing well in the opening, but the trade that Yoo managed to bait Yuki into with j7 was too good for white: I suppose Yuki thought white should have connected around j10/k11 so when he didn't fighting spirit compelled him to cut but losing the left stones was too much as white's centre group is unkillable. LZ recommends calm g8 for black 109, white k11, black g6 and it's an even game (d13 earlier was heavy, j14 tenuki better to treat left lightly and attack top white).

So the players for the finals will be:
1. Park Junghwan
2. Ke Jie
3. Shin Jinseo
4. Iyama Yuta
5. Liao Yuanhe
6. Jiang Weijie
7. Yoo Changhyuk
8. and maybe Chen Shiyuan from Taiwan as Wang Yuanjuan was in the prelims, who is their top-rated player atm? Maybe Lin Junyan or Xu Haohong.

I understand the last seat goes to Cho U, effectively Japanese No 2 holding the Meijin title. Taiwan doesn't get one in the final stage as in last year.

Interesting, he's from Taiwan (though is he naturalized Japanese now?) so it's not totally 2 seats to Japan (though as the sponsor such favouritism is reasonable IMO), plus the Taiwanese player would be the weakest and only there by virtue of being a separate* country (though you could almost say the same for Iyama). The Chinese dominance of the prelims shows just how much they fill the top 20 pros at 3500+ on goratings: Korea has Park and Shin at the top, and Kim Jiseok in a sea of Chinese with Lee Donghoon (or Byun Sangil for mamumamu) scraping at the bottom. Places 20 down to 50 are a roughly equal mix of Chinese and Koreans (plus 2 Japanese: Iyama and Ichiriki), given the cohort of top Koreans are around 100 Elo behind the top Chinese it's quite remarkable Shin Jinseo rose above them to the top.

Ke Jie plays Yoo Changhyuk tomorrow.

Round 1:

Cho U vs. Shin Jinseo
Liao Yuanhe vs. Park Junghwan
Ke Jie vs. Yoo Changhyuk
Jiang Weijie vs. Iyama Yuta

Shin and Ke won as expected. Iyama won too against Jiang who currently rated a fair bit above him so that's nice for Japan. Park won too.

Tomorrow:
Ke vs Iyama
Shin vs Park

First variation Iyama is black, 2nd Park is black.

I really enjoyed the English language commentary on the Nihon-Kiin's Youtube channel by Antti Törmänen today a lot and I'm looking forward to seeing more of that tomorrow - and hopefully another win for Iyama! I wonder if it'll be similarly spectacular as the Kisei game last week..

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Ke and Park won, so play the final tomorrow. They'd better practice nigiri!

Kind of disappointing for Iyama. It seemed like he was in the lead until he double hane'd instead of cutting. I was sort of expecting a breakthrough for him.

The theme of both games seemed to be that it's hard to kill groups.

Iyama is white vs Ke:


Park is white vs Shin:

The Japanese commentary on Game 7 of the Kisei made the point that Iyama deliberately made 3 weak groups. Given the orthodoxy that deliberately making one weak group is accepted as a valid shinogi strategy but making two is stupid, what are we to make of three? Is this perhaps part of the pro response to trying to learn rom the bots?

It may also signal a change in style by Iyama as he strives to close the gap with his international rivals.

Regarding the game between Iyama and Ke, Ke's S13 then Iyama's answer look somewhat questionable to me. Wouldn't it better for Iyama to look for a move that takes care of center or bottom or maybe both?

Iyama didn't have to kill anything to win.

Cho Chikun was very optimistic about Iyama's chances, so was LZ: Iyama dominated Ke Jie the whole game pretty much.

He had trouble bringing the win home because he had too many ways to win while in time trouble, if I understood some of Cho's comments correctly. Well, Cho may have missed some variations since he seemed very busy trying to entertain the audience with all sorts of jokes

Anyway, one thing I personally learned after this game, I hope, is to never think again that I have a won game and it's over until it's over-over.

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Sorin - 361points.com

@John, I think this take the money and say "Ner ner ner ner ner, you can't make enough profit attacking me" style could be influenced by bots being very good at it, but it's not as if humans never thought of it before. So not so easy to say definitely AI influenced, unlike easily recognisable new opening ideas.

@Control, keeping s13 dead is very big, not just for points but also for safety of the right group and giving m9 group somewhere safe to run. Would you suggest something like m7 instead? I think black would s12, get the r10 peep and then s14 and say whatever white does on lower side he can't close any big efficient territory so black can still mess it up, and on th right there are future attacks and middle stone aji still useful with eg n8/n10 peep.

It looks like Iyama's 164 instead at p10 would be a safer win, maybe he was too much looking forward to l16/m12 pokey pokey fun fun once he took that lib?


I have learnt this too many times