Following Nakamura Sumire

[John Fairbairn]

I thought I could sleep in my tent in headquarters while the reconnaissance patrols did all the work. But it seems as if they've gone AWOL.

Anyway, it's left to me to announce that Sumire has indeed won her first title last week. It was the 3rd Discovery Cup. She defeated last year's winner in the final, Miura Taro.

This cup is for players up to 18, and up to 2-dan in strength.

Sausages desu.

[CDavis7M]

I thought I could sleep in my tent in headquarters while the reconnaissance patrols did all the work. But it seems as if they've gone AWOL. Anyway, it's left to me to announce that Sumire has indeed won her first title last week. It was the 3rd Discovery Cup. She defeated last year's winner in the final, Miura Taro.

She has been playing so many games lately that honestly I gave up on following them. In the last 2 weeks she must have been 7 or 8 games in Chinese Women's league (I believe she did well. Nyu Eiko played too), played in the the Go Seigen cup (maybe just 1 game?). And between all this surely there was no time for Sumire to play games not streamed on the Nihon Ki-ins YouTube channel...

https://www.nihonkiin.or.jp/match/discovery/003.html
The final rounds don't show up on the match page but they are in her profile.
Oh, here is the news: https://www.nihonkiin.or.jp/match_news/ ... y_cup.html
Oh... and she won 5 of 7 games in the Chinese League: https://twitter.com/Nihonkiin_pr/status ... 7701070848

Pay attention everyone. If you want to win a title, you must be easy going and simply ♥hang♥ in there.

Sausages desu.

Typo or not, I love this. Indeed, sasuga!

[John Fairbairn]

Deleted repetition.

[John Fairbairn]

Just looking at Sumire's result in the China League - bit of a curate's egg but overall I think she'll be pleased.

The Chinese threw in a couple of 1-dan nonentities and Sumire polished them off. They finally tossed in Cao Youyin, who has been a title holder, and Cao handed out a loss to Sumire.

Sumire beat Nyu Eiko, which bodes well for her domestic games in Japan (though she did lose to Ueno Asami in the Women's Honinbo semi).

There were three Korean opponents. She beat Kim Ta-yeong 4-dan (a former title holder) and O Cheong-a 4-dan. She lost to Ch'oe Cheong 9-dan - but who doesn't?!

[John Fairbairn]

I looked at Sumire China Weiqi League against Kim Ta-yeong from Korea. She won by 0.25 thanks to a final dame fight (Chinese rules).

It wasn't played in an entirely straightforward way, which may have been because there were subtleties I missed, or because neither girl was very familiar with final ko fights. Can anyone comment?

Either way, it seems like at least another inch up the cliff face for Sumire.

[John Fairbairn]

I can now answer my own question (indirectly), as it seems from the media coverage that Sumire did understand what she was doing when she won the dame battle against Kim. Also, her Fujian team won promotion to the A Division, and so she will get to play tougher opposition next time. Her part in this was significant because the teams have only three players each, and her score was 5-2. Nyu Eiko, in a different team, scored 3-4.

Asked about the new world record holder for becoming pro, Fujita Reo (he did it at age 9 years 4 months, beating Cho Hun-hyeon and Chang Hao by 3 months), Sumire said, "What a surprise. It will make me happy if I am able to play him." If that game comes off, it will (in media terms) be the game of century in Japan.

Reo qualified after his trial game against Seto Taiki, taking Black. He lost by 7.5 points. But think about this. He must be the first pro brought up entirely in the AI period. His play certainly showed heavy AI influence, though not in any fancy way. The AI way was clearly just the normal way for him. Seto on the other hand played like a poster boy for old-fashioned good shape, and early shoulder hit his one concession to AI.

Incidentally, Reo was a popular name for boys and girls about a decade ago and has a huge number of kanji variations. It does not actually represent Leo (obviously, being a unisex name, Britain's glorious Lionesses notwithstanding) but is part of a trend for names that Japanese parents think sound good internationally. Ken is the most obvious one for boys. Girls now often have names like Karen and Maya. In the case of unisex names, the kanji chosen normally indicate the sex difference. In Fujita Reo's case the main kanji denotes 'cleverness' (at least in Japanese; it has a somewhat different range in Chinese).

Maybe the next name to watch out for is Arata 新. With an underlying meaning of 'new' this has become one of the most popular boys' names recently, the idea being to reflect the new era of Reiwa. So, how old will the first pro of the Reiwa age be? Will nappy-changing facilities become normal at title matches soon? Will the sake bottle shape become the feeding bottle shape? Will... Better stop there, but more contributions to how a new-age vocabulary for go could look are welcome!

[Harleqin]

New age? More like new non-age, aye?

[John Fairbairn]

For those who like to watch out for interesting games on the Igo/Shogi Channel, Sumire is playing legend Otake Hideo in an exhibition game on 28 August (from 8pm). She's almost as tall as him already!

[John Fairbairn]

In the Women's Honinbo semi-finals against Ueno Asami, Sumire played a move, presumably inspired by AI study, that was interesting on several levels. It was the triangled move below.



It was claimed as a totally new move, although A, B, and C have already been tried so Sumire was fossicking in a known area. Obviously any such new move is interesting in its own right, but the interesting extra points here were:

1. It was called a kamae (construction move). Indeed, when White eventually connects at F16 it looks like a decent shape.

2. Ueno answered almost instantly, at Black D. As if she was either expecting White's new move, or knew about it. Sumire uses Fine Art for AI study. It's likely Asami uses the same package as this is what is available to the National Squad. However, Asami is known as normally a fast player. In any case, the package the Japanese were using seems to indicate White's move incurred no loss. But Sumire's answers to Asami's move in the lower right were a little less than optimum, perhaps indicating that in her preparation she had not looked at Black's move properly.

3. The game developed in to a seriai running fight battle. Which may have been Sumire's intention, as Asami made some uncharacteristic long ponders at that stage.

[pajaro]

Back from holidays, looks like the fort has been held.

I was aware that Sumire had played several games in a Chinese league (the complete name and system is beyond me), and her result of 5-2. As John said, losing to Choi 9-dan is more than normal, so she lost only one "regular" game. Sumire wanted to be able to fight in an international level, so this can't be bad.

About the Discovery Cup, is it really an official title? Although the winners are pros, some players are insei. So I wonder if it is more of a goodwill match, or what. Usually, in the NK website, you can see the photo of the winner (I am talking about all the other titles), but not in this case. This reminds me of the Young Lions Tournament, in HnG, where "not many pros are wearing a tie for this event".

My contribution today: Sumire just played Tsuneishi Takashi 5d in the Gosei. Sumire won, and has advanced to the A prelim of the tournament. For her, playing in the A prelims is becomming more common, which is a good sign.

[pajaro]

Today Sumire played in her qualifying group for the Hiroshima Aluminum Cup / Wakagoi (Young Carp) Cup, to be held in November, I think.

She won 3 games, and will be in the main event. The first game was against Suzukawa Natsumi 1-dan, the second against... someone else (sorry), and the last against Taguchi Misei 2-dan, from the Kansai Kiin. I happened to watch this game, because time conditions were faster than usual.

I thought it was more or less even. Sumire (white) had a big territory on the left, and when it looked like she was going to close it, she let black go inside, and even rescue a small group, dead for a long time. I didn't understand, what is she thinking... and short after I realized that white had cut off the whole group, and more. Black resigned without even trying to make life (desperate position). Really scary.

Someone said here that usually Sumire bullies her opponents (the ones in her rank range). Today it was like that.

[John Fairbairn]

Someone said here that usually Sumire bullies her opponents (the ones in her rank range). Today it was like that.

From what I've read, I don't think it's that so much as simply the fact that she reads deeply and is confident in her reading. But also, in this case, she was put in a special all-female group where she was the top seed. Takao Mari benefited from a similar arrangement and so, with Rina already through (I think), and Asami being the reigning titleholder, there will be at least four females in the finals. This effing alliteration makes one think of another well known phrase or saying of surprise But it seems appropriate that it is notoriously difficult to differentiate the sex of young carp in real life!

The player you couldn't read would be Cho Chen or Sakuramoto Ayako but I haven't checked the results yet.

[pajaro]

It's not that I couldn't read the names (NK website does this for me). It's that, as all games are played the same day, I still didn't know the results of the first round, so I didn't know Sumire's 2nd opponent. It was Cho Chien 2-dan. And yes, an all female group. The point, in the end, is to have a good group of finalists (16, btw). Veterans, rookies, male, female...

About the last game, my comment, and the "bullying":
I saw a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n03a7lUQaaI) with an analysis about the game. In Japanese, but only the tone of voice, the pointing of moves and variations are useful. Well, to the point: when I thought "the game is even", white was already quite ahead in winning chances. In my defense, even in these cases, the gap in points is usually not big (to an amateur eye). And when I thought "what is Sumire doing?", black was ahead (about 56%) for a brief moment. Then, Sumire followed her plan and game over, although black had some things to try. Things that Sumire had probably read out.

I understood (and used myself) "bullying" as playing better than the opponent and giving no chance to the opponent. Between pros, both sides always have a chance, even small, but in this forum I think we can accept this language.

Ah! and, crushing your opponent's spirit is also a requirement for "bullying".

[silviu22]

Does anybody know if these 3 preliminary games count towards promotion? The Nihon Kii-in page (https://www.nihonkiin.or.jp/player/rank.html) seems to indicate they count. But I have doubts that they should, since they are very fast games

[John Fairbairn]

Go Weekly gives an interesting table as of 2 September. It shows the top 9 or so players in each ten-year age group this year so far. Top is defined in the usual Japanese way as number of wins. Usually, winning lots of games means losing few, but there are exceptions. But still, winning tends also to mean advancing to the more prestigious and lucrative final staged of events.

What the table shows is the those in the group 20-29 win the most games. The range is 38 wins to 23, for the top 9, and top is Ueno Asami with 38 wins (and 14 losses). Ichiriki is next on 34-18.

The only players. All other age groups are, on average, noticeably below the level of this group (top in the 50-59 group for example is 17 wins, and the range for the top nine is 17 to 12 wins.

There are only two outliers. Both women. One is Suzuki Ayumi who tops the 30-39 group with 27 wins, next being a mere 21.

The other is Sumire, in the 10-19 group. She has 34 wins, just like Ichiriki, but only 16 losses. And is way out on top of this group, of course.

Rina is in the 20-29 group, and in third place behind Ichiriki with 29-12.

This post really belongs in the Amazonians thread, but Sumire seems to be the cynosure.