The Reign of Ke Jie

[xiayun]

So after winning the Samsung and Agon cup, Ke Jie still has a busy December.

First up is the Bailing cup final where he is 2 games down against Chen Yaoye (who was on top form back in August/September where he also convincingly beat Korean wonderkid Shin Jinseo 2-0 in the semis whilst Ke Jie only beat not-so-top-player Won Sungjin 2-1) so has to win all 3 games on 14th, 16th and 17th to prevail: viewtopic.php?p=214205#p214205.

And Chen Yaoye beat Park Junghwan in the quarterfinal, so based on the strength of opponents he had to beat to reach the final, he deserves to win Bailing, and I do pull for him to finally get that 2nd international title. Ke Jie did beat Chen the last two times they played since late September.

I remember Ke Jie reflected on his busy December schedule in a post-game interview earlier and said although it's definitely challenging, it means he has done well enough in the first part of the year to have the opportunity of a packed month, so he's happy about that.

At least the quarterfinal of the new Xin'ao Cup is not until next April.

[emeraldemon]

Ke Jie lost the Bailing Cup final 1-3 against Chen Yaoye. Perhaps having so many big games in a row finally wore him out, or maybe Chen really just played better.

Ke Jie fans can look forward to him playing in the Chunlan Cup round of 8 on Dec 20th. His opponent is Mi Yuting 9P, no easy foe....

[xiayun]

At least he provided us a couple of brilliant moves, w112 and 132, in Game 3. The calculation behind them was remarkable.

[Uberdude]

Ke Jie should be playing in the Chunlan cup quarter-finals in a bit over 12 hours.

Edit: he won by resign after a big fighting Kobayashi opening game.

[Knotwilg]

Aren't we in the AlphaGo reign today?

[pookpooi]

Aren't we in the AlphaGo reign today?

Maybe, but AlphaGo needs to play more games, right now it's #2 on goratings and Ke Jie is #1.

[xiayun]

After the Chunlan semifinal against Park Yeonghun on 12/22, Ke Jie will continue his crazy month with the start of Mingren preliminary on 12/24; the first opponent there will be Li Xuanhao. If he wins, the next match will be two days later against the winner of Gu Zihao and Fan Yunruo.

[xiayun]

Ke Jie got through the first two rounds of Chinese Mingren and into the quarterfinal.

[Uberdude]

Ke Jie's second game was an interesting moyo and invasion one: as white he gave black a big moyo and built his own, black invaded and ended up living but at enough cost to an outside position that Ke came out ahead.

http://gokifu.com/f/2meb-gokifu-20161226-Fan_Yunruo-Ke_Jie.sgf

Also Shi Yue vs Zho Ruiyang was a very interesting game that seemed to be AlphaGo inspired, I posted about that here: viewtopic.php?p=214957#p214957.

[xiayun]

Yeah, that ko to survive was costly for black, as it ended up giving white not one, but two free moves and costed its bottom group.

[Uberdude]

What would have happened if black played m16 at m3 instead to defend the bottom group? I imagine white would make some reduction into the top side moyo using the aji of those stones in the centre, but where and how much of a reduction? Losing that lower group was big, and ending in gote at o5 seemed pretty miserable to me.

[xiayun]

What would have happened if black played m16 at m3 instead to defend the bottom group? I imagine white would make some reduction into the top side moyo using the aji of those stones in the centre, but where and how much of a reduction? Losing that lower group was big, and ending in gote at o5 seemed pretty miserable to me.

White could also make more territory at the top if black was forced to defend further reduction of the moyo after w's initial move.

Next month's schedule for Ke Jie: Mingren quarterfinal/semi/final, Tianyuan (will get the entire bracket played over 6 days), and CCTV Lunar New Year Invitational (an exhibition tournament with Ke Jie/Park Junghwan/Iyama Yuta).

[anpd]

Could someone list some of Ke Jie's greatest games to look closer at?

Cheers

[Lucian]

I decided to do a quick check on how Ke Jie compares to Park Junghwan for the past three years (I included also Shin Jinseo who is only 16 years old and rose sharply each past year). For reference, I included Lee Chango stats during the same age interval as Ke Jie (17-19 years old) and Lee Sedol stats during his best three years (so far at least) when he won three world championships.

All data is taken from Mr. Kin site (Win-Loss pages), except for Lee Chango which is from SL:

stats.png (14.84 KiB) Viewed 16876 times

Ke Jie won three more championships then Park during these years but noticing the marginal difference between them makes me wonder if The Reign of Ke and Park is not more proper...

Also, looking at the Lee Chango stats, makes me marvel again at his dominance: he played in world championship finals for about 20 years (1992-2012). For that matter, Lee Sedol played in world finals for "only" fifteen years (2001-2015).

Ke Jie made a great start toward a legendary career, and for sure in five-ten years he will accomplish much more. As for now, I don't think that is fair to put him yet in the same discussion with Lee Chango (and Cho Hun-hyun, Lee Sedol, Gu Li etc) as the best ever Go player.

[idontgetit]

The thing is, you can't just look at the winrate. You need to look at the strength of the opponents as well. I have a much higher than 80% winrate on flyordie, because I sandbag 15kyus. I'm definitely not stronger than Lee Changho.

When you look at Shin Jinseo's games in the Chinese A league, his winrate is not all that great, because the competition is fierce. While Park Junghwan does quite well in the Chinese A league, his winrate is also slightly "inflated" by the relatively weaker opponents in the korean domestic matches.

On the other hand, pretty much all of Ke Jie's opponents are top 50 in the world, at least. Top 30 even. All of whom are probably at least as strong in absolute terms as Lee Changho at his best.