More about Ueno Asami:

A couple of days ago (Dec 2nd) she played Takemiya Masaki in the Tengen, prelim A. She won, with black.

I saw the game in go4go.net. I can't download it, so I can't attach the game. All I can do is give the link to it:

http://www.go4go.net/go/games/sgfview/100307

I repeat: she beat Takemiya Masaki with black. If you see the game, you might think that Takemiya is black. But no.

Access Denied.

You can find the game also on this page: https://gotoeveryone.k2ss.info/news/jp/tengen/48/

_________________
A good system naturally covers all corner cases without further effort.

Thanks!

Here is the game:

The final game of the Female Kisei, to decide the challenger, was played between Kato Chie and Suzuki Ayumi. Suzuki won and for the 3rd year in a row, the title match (3 games) will be Ueno Asami vs. Suzuki Ayumi.

It was a good run for Kato Chie, but her opponent is still more experienced.

I missed that game between Ueno and Takemiya. Very exciting. Thanks for sharing.

Good showing by Japanese women in the latest Japan-Taiwan Young Players Exchange (Dec 2021).

New pro Jo Bunen (Kin En's daughter) played two 3-dan males and beat one (Lin Yancheng). Suzuki Ayumi scored 2-0 but was undoubtedly, as a 7-dan, overmatched against a 3-dan and a 2-dan. Xie Yimin also notched up 2-0 score, but likewise against much lower dans. Japan won the overall match 8-4, so the female component of that was 5-1.

Young players?

This is going to sound... errr... Why are Suzuki Ayumi (38) and Xie Yimin (32) playing this?

What would I give to be able to put you in MMA cage with either of these young ladies and have a front-row seat! The bird's feathers will fly then.

There are two answers. The simple one is the definition of young. How long is a piece of string? The Young Bamboos Cup, which is a Nihon Ki-in Kansai Branch event going on at the same time, is for players of under 40. But the very first written mention of Japan in the Chinese dynastic records comments that the people in this unknown land live to extraordinary ages, and we all know that this has been the case ever since (at least until American fast food reached the country).

But the more subtle answer, in the case of the Jp-Tw exchange, is that this is an annual event between the respective national teams, which are not so much representative teams but training groups for developing young players, and the teams therefore include older trainers. It is good for the young youngsters of other team to play their foreign "elders," too.

A couple of extra "data points" for evaluating the female go world in Japan.

1. The Teikei Co. has introduced a new Female Legends, which is a much nicer way of describing the older women than some on L19 descend to (in this case women 45 to 60).Aoki Kikuyo has just won the first term, beating Kato Tomoko and taking home 2 million yen. The real significance of this new event is that it gives the older women more incentive to stay active and generally enhances the standing of the female players.

Incidentally, Aoki (born 1968) was a big star in her younger days. She was the fastest woman to 8-dan (in 2000) and also the youngest woman to reach 400 wins.

2. In another thread I introduced Iwasaki Haruto, the blind boy who is now, as an insei, on the path to pro-dom. Now a visually impaired schoolmate of his, Sato Misora, is making waves. At the start of 2020 she was 6-kyu, but in the past year she has shot up from 1-dan to 4-dan at age 13. She has just reached the final of the major tournament for blind people (a mixed event). Despite losing there (in a remarkably tactical long game in which she was ahead but then lost a big group), she too now has set her sights on becoming an insei.

I know I deserve some pain.

In my defense, both of them are still younger than me. So no disrespect intended.

Now, more seriously: when I read "exchange" I thought more or less about a goodwill match. So the result is not the most important thing. An event like this might have been a good chance for younger players (and by young, I mean new pros with little or no international experience). Jo Bunen is a good fit, and other new players that have appeared in this thread are, too. My opinion.

The explanation about national teams makes more sense to me. Not all players belong to it, so they can't go to such event, and having experienced players give the other side a chance to play these players. Taiwan might have done the same, but that was probably their choice.

Any links for more info about this "Japan-Taiwan Young Players Exchange"?

It's kind of hidden deep in the website (at least for me) but you can see the results here: https://www.nihonkiin.or.jp/player/nati ... ryu03.html

It was also covered in Weekly Go. If you sign up for "Kindle Unlimited" from Amazon you can browse the non-current issues of Go World and Weekly Go from the past year or two years, or so. This is the only "easy" way to get Weekly Go. I find it hard to use Kindle so I still order Go World from Amazon Japan. Though, for some reason, I can't figure out where to buy the January issue of Go World, which usually pops up in the 2nd half of the previous month...

I didn't read the article but you can see this screenshot. It was played online of course. The caption has 8 wins for Japan, 4 losses.

US: https://www.amazon.com/weeklygo20211220 ... 107&sr=1-3

Japan: https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/B09 ... e043b7aa52




By the way, someone on Twitter mentioned that Amazon might be losing their rights to the Nihon Kiin publications. Just FYI.

Another unusual sidelight that confirms progress in female go is not limited to just a few big names.

The annual Kurashiki City Go Festival is a major event (the city is in Okayama Prefecture, on the Inland Sea opposite Shikoku Island and between Osaka and Kyushu). Kansai pros get invited to hand out the prizes and play exhibition games. This year, just before Christmas 2021, no less than Iyama Yuta was on hand to give first prize, a Kibi no Makibi Cup* in the Lower Elementary School category of the Children's Kisei competitions to a 3rd grader, Nakano Yuki - the first girl ever to win the mixed-sex event. She came all the way from Saitama.

The Japanese report did not give her age but she beat a 5th grader boy in the final - and boys up to the final! She came all the way from Saitama City to do it. Her go grade was not given but you can judge it for yourself from the final game below. I was impressed. You can see that AI has made its way into the nursery (along with covid masks), though they thankfully eschewed Micky Mouse time limits.

*Kibi no Makibi was an 8th century scholar who visited China and traditionally brought go back to Japan. He almost certainly brought back up-to-date information, but it is now believed Japan knew go well before him. Kibi came from what is now Kurashiki. The modern city seems to be in one of those areas affected by climate change. There were major fatal floods a few years ago, and the Marby Fureai Centre, where the go event took place, was under 12 foot of water.

Not to distract from the good mood there was one set back for the amazonites over the holidays. This misadventure fell to Amazonite Tsuji Hana who lost to Michael Redmond in the Kisei preliminaries. We can thank him for the nice video review.

Btw Tsuji Hana is incredibly high rated for a 1 dan in the unofficial ratings and she is not far behind Michael Redmond in fact. This was certainly a hard fought game and it saw Michael Redmond pull on his very good preparation.

You can't enjoy victory if you never taste defeat.

In go and in life.

What you explain about Tsuji Hana is a good example of what I usually think when I see young players play veterans. Usually, you can predict the outcome just looking at the difference in rank or experience. Not always, because young doesn't mean not skilled, and after all the game has to be played. But: win or not, they fight and compete. That's what I want to see in any game, especially with young players. Even when A plays B, and I want A to win, I want B to put up a good fight too. That's why I think that some players, even if they lose, they are worth following.

Who doesn't lose very often is Ueno Asami 4 dan. Her record this year is 53-24 (69%), the most wins. Playing the female Meiin (a league) and the new Teikei Shunei (another league), helped with the number of played games. Also, she Hiroshima Aluminum Cup and Shinjin O. Winner and runner-up. Without the female only tournaments, her record would have been 35-15 (70%). Not the best, but not that bad either.

That would suggest to me either or both of two possibilities. 1. There is something badly wrong with the unofficial ratings algorithm. 2. There is something freakish about the performance of 1-dans and/or Redmond.

I'll leave it to the numbers guys to make more sense of it, but some pertinent first-pass data.

Tsuji's career score is 45-47, last year it was 12-14, this year it was 20-24, and in her last 10 games she has scored 1-10. (BTW She is a 1-dan by special recommendation, same as Sumire.)

I see nothing unusual about this year's 1-dan spectrum of scores - if anything they are generally positive.

Redmond's had a bad year so far (3-8), but was on 10-9 last year and in his career is 639-449. An algorithm that overweights the very, very few latest figures might be good in an A&E department but is surely suspect in a go context?

The 3rd possibility is that 'not far behind' is a stretch or that one can have different perspective as to how far is 'not far'.



That is statistic for the calendar year but if you take year-on-year it was very different at the end of November, that is for end of November her record was 23-21 for the last year. Anyway, she seems to be on a big losing streak, 8 games losing streak.



Playing 44 games as 1 dan is a sign of some success in the knock out preliminaries or not? I can't defend this player in any capacity but she seems to have the most games of any Nihon Kiin 1 dan this year and ended the year on a big losing streak. In the end it is not just about positive score but also who you are beating. I don't have this data but with this many games on record I'd bet on her place in the unofficial ratings being more accurate than most others.

What you said about algorithm over weighting recent result is something that is usually true because algorithm that over weights yesteryears results is likely to not reflect the present. Accuracy requires following recent data but generalization requires stability when new data is added. This is a tough trade off.

Nakamura Sumire has made another giant step for womankind. At age 12 she has just (2021-01-06) qualified for the final section of the 47th Shinjin-O (beating boys on the way), and Cho Kosumi has done likewise. With known seedings and likely results yet to come we can expect to see a whole phalanx of Amazonians in these finals. Maybe the event should be renamed to Shinjin-Joo. With Burns Night coming up soon, we will be able to have a real Toast to the Lassies! Get your drams ready.

Sumire beat Nishioka Masao (in one of the biggest furious kawaris you'll see all year) on the day he made 3-dan as a result of the annual rankings-based promotions. Other Amazonians made their mark in these promotions: Nyu Eiko went up to 4-dan and Tsuji Hana to 2-dan, so she clearly justified the faith in her as a special recommendee 1-dan. Another notable promotee here, to 2-dan, was Chang Fukang. He is from Malayasia, technically - he has a Malayasian father of Chinese heritage and a Chinese mother, plus he moved to China when he was 4. But still, it's nice to see the special Nihon Ki-in system for allowing foreigners from outside the usual countries special entry as inseis is paying off.

Chang's teacher is Hong Malk-eun Saem, who has already had tremendous success in getting his pupils into the pro ranks. His fellow pupil Osuka Seira happens to be another one of those females who have made it to the Shinjin-O finals.

2022 has started on an exciting note.

Update: Fujisawa Rina has just qualified for the main section of the Tengen, having defeated O Meien 9-dan.. This is the 18th time a female has entered the final stages of a Big 7 event. Rina is in the last 32. So far only Kobayashi Izumi has made it to a last 16 place in a Big 7. Cross your fingers!

The Nihon Kiin ranking comitee (if such thing exists) came and finished the little dispute regarding Tsuji Hana. Good for them, and good for her, of course.

Jan 6th was a good day for the army (*). Sadly, Lieutenant Ueno couldn't beat Yamashita Keigo 9 dan in the last game of the prelims of the Tengen, where Fujisawa is already waiting. And what's more, Kato Chie 2dan will have a change for another seat against Mutsuura Yuta 7 dan after beating Ishii Kunio 9dan (Iyama's teacher). Next 17th will be the day. It would be important to have more different names in the main tournaments.

BTW, Fujisawa Rina made it to the 8 best of the 60 Judan (in progress), so it already improves Kobayashi Izumi's performance.

(*) The games played that day will be remembered as the "Games of the Cold". It was snowing in Tokyo and the heating system was faulty that day. You could see Hane vs. Shibano with blankets, the record keeper with a coat, too, and the comentators with scarves, gloves,... Sumire, who always plays with her UK blanket, perhaps was thinking "who is laughing now?"

I found an interesting video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKsnGdzXYzc

It's about the child Meijin tournament, in 2016. 5 years ago. It's actually 2 tournaments. One for primary school (3316 children), and the other for junior high (1102 children).Why am I posting it here? Well, because the runner-up of the primary school one belongs to this thread, and has received some attention. I am talking about Jo Bunen 1-dan, a 6th grader by that time (she is very tall!).

Jo is the main star, but not the only pro in the video. You are not a fan of hers? No problem! You can also see another small child that was child Meijin, and regular Meijin too. The games are commented by Mannami Nao 3-dan and Ichiriki Ryo 7-dan (rankings in 2016), with child Ryo too. And if you look closely, you will see another interesting cameo in the first 2 minutes: a pro that was a child in that time and now... well...