It seems really tough. I guess he misses one of those three

Cheers,
Vesa

Tengen game 2 vs Yamashita today. Yamashita had a nice lead all the way from move 33 to 173 but 174 placement was an overplay given his adjacent group wasn't alive yet, which Iyama nicely refuted. Yamashita kept digging his hole for a bit before admitting his mistake and aborting to live with his group but he lost a fair few points. Closer endgame now...

Update: Yamashita held on to win by half a point!

It looks like Iyama's empire is collapsing.

Anybody's would with that insane schedule he has to endure... For fans it's great to have so many exciting games, but it must be really exhausting as a player. I really do hope that he can win the decisive Meijin title match next Thursday / Friday and that he then can finally get a bit more rest.

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What insane schedule? Iyama only has to defend his titles. He doesn't have to participate in league play or the Oteai.

Agree. One can argue that Iyama is facing somewhat more difficulty games (most of being title games and some are 2-day games), but his schedule is definitely not busy. In the past 12 months he played 56 games, which is not that many at all. In comparison, over the same period of time, Shin Jinseo played 101 games, Park Junghwan played 88, Ke Jie played 78, Ichiriki Ryo played 74.

Thanks for the statistics. Also, in the recent past, the toughest opponent Iyama had to face in his title defense was ranked a mere 44th according to Goratings ranking as of today, with the second toughest opponent ranked at 65th, and with quite a few of the rest falling outside top 100.

Top Korean and Chinese titleholders and players have it much tougher.

I am not sure that I understand the relevance of this to his schedule over the last 4 weeks.
Certainly he has a tougher situation this year than last. In 2017 the Meiji was over quickly and then he had what amounted to an extended match against Ichiriki so challenger and title holder were equally pressured by the rash of title games. If anything, Ichiriki probably had a busier schedule. This year he is being "tag-teamed" by three different opponents who rotate in and out. We were laughing about the pro-wrestling analogy over our beers last Saturday after our weekly "study" group at the Nihon Ki'in.

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Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

Iyama played a mere eight games in the past four weeks, with his title defense games making up six of those. That's a pretty leisurely pace, especially considering the caliber of his domestic opponents, none of whom rank in the top 40. Should have been a walk in the park for someone of Iyama's caliber, considering he was ranked in the world's top 5 until recently by Goratings.

Let's see... two games a week times 52 weeks = 104 games per year pace. Now he is even busier than Shin Jinseo?

Apparently we now want to say that Go Ratings (actually past go ratings) is the 'truth' and what we actually see happening in the world around us should conform to that or be subject to criticism. However, the Go Ratings algorithm itself rejects this idea since AFAIK it retrospectively adjusts past ratings based on current results. In any case that sort of criticism is supposed to occur here viewtopic.php?f=13&t=13750 anyway. But you already know that, don't you?

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Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

To be precise, Iyama's playing pace in the past 30 days comes out to 97 games per year. And thanks for conveniently ignoring the point I made about the caliber of Iyama's opponents, which surely made his 'insane' schedule more bearable, especially when compared to that of Park or Ke or Shin. And please please leave your straw man at home, for I have never expressed or even remotely suggested that Goratings is the "truth". And no, Goratings does not retrospectively adjust past ratings based on current results. What a ridiculous thing to say! If that were the case, there would be no past ratings.

And finally, this IS the appropriate thread to discuss the strength of Iyama's opponent, because it's pertinent to debunking the view that somehow Iyama's schedule recently is out of the ordinary and whose demand is greater than what a player of his station is expected to reasonably bear; it is neither.

Well, first of all, I was referring to the pace of playing a 1- or 2-day title match, then having 2 days off and then playing the next title match which has been pretty much his schedule LATELY. This IS hard and I don't believe you can compare title matches in this sense to just any tournament game (which with the same schedule is already quite tough to handle, too). You forget the protocol and the media. As far as I know, a title game begins (at least) the afternoon before the game already, so in total you have maybe 24 hours to recover and process what happened before you jump in the next title match pre-happenings again: interviews, photo shootings, the banquet, whatever. You never get to really think about anything else for days and days on end without truly relaxing for a bit at some point. And you say that's not hard..? It may not be the only reason for the only recent slump, but I think it is a huge part of it.

And 2nd I thought that this thread was not about ratings... So I won't start on that (also because I honestly don't care about that at all ).

My argumentation may seem 1-sided but what do you expect? I'm a fan and I have been so for >10 years, so.. lol Of course it is. But saying that he's kinda going down the drains (that's what it sounds like here) just because he looses 4/6 title games lately to people who are not in the top 10 in the world is a little.. silly, too, IMHO. But that may only be my point of view as I don't care about world rankings at all and only try to enjoy each match as it comes.

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I never expressed he was going down the drain. However you got that impression, you didn't get it from me. My objection was merely your attributing Iyama's performance as of late to his 'insane' schedule, when his schedule has been anything but insane or even an anomaly by Iyama's own standards in the past few years. It's not as if title-defense games have suddenly been increased to two days recently or that media obligations have been freshly foisted upon Iyama. These are all old routines.

I have moved the posts solely about how WHR works to the appropriate thread, with an explanation for TheCannyOnion.

Iyama's leisurely schedule ambles into the deciding Meijin game against Cho U today and tomorrow. I think he has more chance to win if he doesn't try to play too much AI style.

The first day's play. Elf says white had a slight lead up to bottom right corner (suggests cool q6 instead of q4) and last dozen moves winrate has been bouncing around 50%. For Iyama's last move as 2nd line extension Elf wanted to play the same move as me at f6 (the black corner can manage when white jumps in, but Elf would have avoided all those problems by simply answering the d18 descend).

Cho was doing well for much of the 2nd day, but that all changed around move 123, see my Elf commentary.



Edit: I spoke too soon! Iyama just played an endgame blunder (-50%), a peep that wasn't sente enough when he owed a defensive move, and now Cho has a picnic ko to eat some stones and has a thicker position so more ko threats. That's a silly way to lose a Meijin title match.

At move 210, white is about 3 points ahead with only small yose left. It looks like we are getting a new Meijin.

Indeed, Cho won by 4.5 to become Meijin again, 10 years after he last won it (also beating Iyama 4-3 in 2008). What a surprising comeback, and Cho's first big title since his dominance of the pre-Iyama era 2003-2012. It's the player who makes the last mistake who loses the game...

The full game; 171 was the losing move, defend at p7/8 would win. I wonder was it an oversight, a failed timesuji to get time to decide on the best defence, an attempt to kikashi before defending?

Cho U's 40th title, and his 5th Meijin title. Quite amazingly, he won 4 of his 5 Meijin titles 4-3 in best-of-seven matches.

Just counting the big 7 titles, it's Cho U's 24th. Iyama remains on 4I so still just behind all-time leader Cho Chikun on 42 (Kobayashi Koichi has 35, Kato Masao 31, Rin Kaiho 21, Sakata Eio 22 though those last 2 were playing before all 7 existed). The generation before Iyama are doing as good a job as after at taking titles off him recently: Cho in 2018 Meijin, Takao in 2016 Meijin, whilst youngster Kyo Kagen in 2018 Gosei. (older) Yamashita is 1-1 in Tengen this year and (younger) Ichirki Ryo 1-0 in Oza (after losing 10 in a row in title matches last year).