Iyama Yuta did it!

[hyperpape]

Ichiriki recently won a game against Lee Sedol by 0.5, and that's about the only notable win I could find between Ichiriki and Yu against international competition from Korea and China. Looking through their records going two years back, they both lost consistently against middling competitors from China and Korea.

Keep looking.

(For the record, I won't bet on Ichiriki being competitive with players like Shin Jinseo or Li Qincheng, but he's young and still improving so we can't rule him out just yet).

[John Fairbairn]

One swallow doesn't make a summer but more than one Japanese swallow can be seen swooping around at the moment.

In the Jastec Cup last month: Hirata beat Li Qincheng and Min Sang-yeon; Yu beat Tang Mengcheng, Song Chi-hun and Li Yixiang; Ueno beat Song Ronghui; Shibana beat Yang Bowei; Son beat Hwang Chae-yeon; and Ida beat Wang Yuanjun.

Not earth-shattering, but there's a little bit of a rumble there that didn't seem to exist a short while back. Maybe the longish time limits of the Jastec helped.

[by78]

One swallow doesn't make a summer but more than one Japanese swallow can be seen swooping around at the moment.

In the Jastec Cup last month: Hirata beat Li Qincheng and Min Sang-yeon; Yu beat Tang Mengcheng, Song Chi-hun and Li Yixiang; Ueno beat Song Ronghui; Shibana beat Yang Bowei; Son beat Hwang Chae-yeon; and Ida beat Wang Yuanjun.

Not earth-shattering, but there's a little bit of a rumble there that didn't seem to exist a short while back. Maybe the longish time limits of the Jastec helped.

Li Yixiang is Taiwanese, as is Yang Bowei, and Song Ronghui is a female Chinese pro... The rest are middling competitors at best.

The Japanese will get my attention when they start winning some international tournaments such as Samsung Cup and LG Cup, where top Korean and Chinese pros participate.

[by78]

Ichiriki recently won a game against Lee Sedol by 0.5, and that's about the only notable win I could find between Ichiriki and Yu against international competition from Korea and China. Looking through their records going two years back, they both lost consistently against middling competitors from China and Korea.

Keep looking.

(For the record, I won't bet on Ichiriki being competitive with players like Shin Jinseo or Li Qincheng, but he's young and still improving so we can't rule him out just yet).

Riiight, and there are still people looking for unicorns. You think they'll find them?

[kimidori]

What do you mean by "pretty good"? Ichiriki recently won a game against Lee Sedol by 0.5, and that's about the only notable win I could find between Ichiriki and Yu against international competition from Korea and China. Looking through their records going two years back, they both lost consistently against middling competitors from China and Korea.

Well, perhaps I pay more attention on their wins whereas you pay more attention on their loss. I don't say that they are already on par with, or better than Li Quincheng or Shin Jiseo (like I never said that Iyama is stronger than Ke Jie or Park Junghwan, or Lee Sedol), but I would expect that if Ichikiri and Yu (and even the others like Kyo Kagen, Shibano or Hirata) can play more international tournaments in the near future, their level will be not far from their Chinese/Korean counterpart. If you want a list of wins:

- Ichikiri won 3 games in the Nongshim Cup last year (1 in the year before), got a 6-1 record in the Chinese C League. IF you still argue that those opponents are only "weak Chinese/Korean pros", he just went 1-1 with Yang Dingxin in 2016 (a top 20 Chinese, 34th on goratings), and kicked out Li Quincheng in the Samsung Cup few weeks before his game with Lee Sedol.

- Yu lost a bad game to Lee Sedol few months ago, but he won to both Chinese and Korean participants in the Asian New Star match recently (Dong Mengcheng is a strong guy who just kicked out both Shi Yue and Gu Li just before the match). Yu also beat Peng Liyao and Lee Donghun (no.2 Korean youngsters) in the LG Cup last year, before failing to the runner-up Park Younghun.

About the chance of a Japanese win a Samsung or LG Cup, well, as their young talents are now at best world top 50-100 level, I would say that the only guy who has a slim chance is still Iyama, but perhaps he needs to play like 10-20 tournaments to really have a chance to win one (so do most of the strong Korean/Chinese players outside top 5).

[idontgetit]

The thing with the new stars tournament is that, by the time China played Japan, their win was already guaranteed so they didn't really try.

That said, it's impressive beating those guys even if they weren't trying their best.

If the top Japanese prospects play in the Chinese A-league and international tournaments, of course they'll be very promising, after all it's not like Japanese people are inherently stupid or anything like that.

The problem is that they don't have such a good opportunity to train. Ichiriki Ryo is the one exception, because his family is rich, so he's not restrained by financial factors, which are very big. However, it seems that being a Go pro is probably just a stage in Ichiriki Ryo's career, unlike most other pros, where go is like their life.

I say this because he's going to a prestigious University at the same time, probably preparing to take over the family business eventually.

[by78]

The thing with the new stars tournament is that, by the time China played Japan, their win was already guaranteed so they didn't really try.

That said, it's impressive beating those guys even if they weren't trying their best.

If the top Japanese prospects play in the Chinese A-league and international tournaments, of course they'll be very promising, after all it's not like Japanese people are inherently stupid or anything like that.

The problem is that they don't have such a good opportunity to train. Ichiriki Ryo is the one exception, because his family is rich, so he's not restrained by financial factors, which are very big. However, it seems that being a Go pro is probably just a stage in Ichiriki Ryo's career, unlike most other pros, where go is like their life.

I say this because he's going to a prestigious University at the same time, probably preparing to take over the family business eventually.

What does Ichiriki's family do? What line of business?

[Uberdude]

I'm really happy he won today and I'll keeping my fingers crossed for Iyama. But the next 2 weeks will be SO busy for him, defending 3 titles at the same time... Monday he'll play the first game of the Oza title match against Yu Zengqi, four days later the Tengen title match against Ichiriki Ryo starts and 6 days after that the next Meijin game is on. And if he manages to win that game, there's another set of three games for all these title matches in the next 11 days after that waiting for him. This sounds like very incredibly tough times.... Both challengers for Oza and Tengen are strong, of course, but I'm a little relieved that Iyama won't have to play against Yamashita and Murakawa instead. I want him to defend his titles! But writing this makes me realize this might be a superhuman effort... >_<

Iyama's doing well so far, beating Ichiriki today (interesting fighting with miai building and busting and variations with double ladder breakers) and Yu a few days ago (I was impressed how much Iyama reduced the centre).

[idontgetit]

I was just watching the NHK cup on youtube, and they said that Iyama's record (before this game) was 5-5 against Kobayashi Satoru...

Would Kobayashi Satoru be able to win 5 games against ANY top Chinese or Korean player in 10 games? Somehow that does not seem likely to me...

Now I'm not normally an Iyama hater, at least not in the sense of doubting his strength. But this was a pretty surprising stat to me.

And yeah sure, sometimes you just have opponents you are weak against, like Chen Yaoye against Zhou ruiyang.

But Kobayashi Satoru? ...

[Uberdude]

Two of Kobayashi's 5 wins were in 2014, but the other 3 were in 2005/6. I don't think it's fair to hold it against Iyama that he wasn't as strong 10 years ago when he was an up and coming 16-year old. You can probably find some weaker pro from a previous generation who has a good record against any current top pro because they played mostly in the past when the current top pro was not so strong yet. You can see the same thing with Dinerstein's record against Ilya Shiskin for example. Should we mock Lee Sedol because he only has 1 win and 4 loses against An Younggil?

[kimidori]

Should we mock Lee Sedol because he only has 1 win and 4 loses against An Younggil?

I remember KIm Myung Wan also said that he has a positive record against Lee Sedol.

[Uberdude]

Only counting games in the go4go database (which is where I got the An Younggil statistic), Lee leads Kim 2-1. Kim is 5 years older than Lee, An 3 years. Of course my question was rhetorical, though I do think it should make us appreciate An Younggil is very strong and was a talented young pro of top calibre, even though he didn't blossom into the same success as Lee (I think military service might have had something to do with it).

[hyperpape]

And Kobayashi was also a very good player at one time: he was runner-up in two international tournaments, though he got swept by Cho Hunhyeon and Lee Changho in the finals. He was beginning to decline by the time of 2005-2006, but he was still a good player.

[kimidori]

And Kobayashi was also a very good player at one time: he was runner-up in two international tournaments, though he got swept by Cho Hunhyeon and Lee Changho in the finals. He was beginning to decline by the time of 2005-2006, but he was still a good player.

According to goratings History page (I use that because I don't know any other ranking that has a history page), Kobayashi Satoru highest rank was 6-7th in 1993-1996 (thought Lee Chang Ho dominated the Go world at that moment, neither Korea nor China had the thickness they now have, so many Japanese pros were still in top 50).

In 2004-2006, his rank was around 40-50th in the world, about the same as Iyama's.

Besides the fact that Iyama plays too few games against top players to really judge his skills, his style is known to be a bit "extreme" (An Younggil once described it as "unique"), so perhaps it can give him some impressive wins (like the game against Gu Li in the Fujitsu Cup, or the one against Park JH in the Asian TV Cup), but also some bitter losses (like some of his games against Zhou Ruiyang and Chen Yaoye).

[Uberdude]

Iyama beat Takao in game 6 of the Meijin, so we go to a decisive final game on 2nd/3rd November.