Some highlights from the Japanese 2024 tournament earnings table:

1. Ichiriki was in first place with 121,814,066 yen (US$814,000)

2. Iyama was 2nd with 57,449,414 yen

3. Top lady (in 4th place overall) was Fujisawa Rina with 35,187,216 yen

4. Ueno Asami was 5th with 20,390,526

5. Sister Ueno Risa was 10th with 9,7770,000 yen but has exceeded that already this year with her winnings in the 7th Senko International.

6. Even though his name rarely comes up nowadays, Yamashita Keigo was in 7th place with 13,423,000 yen (US$ 89,700).

What does the 7th highest placed person in a typical company get?

Perhaps connected with these low numbers, the Nihon Ki-in's "Kido web" new site will no longer be updated after 31 March 2025 because subscriber numbers did not reach the desired mark.

This reminds me of a paper I read in grad school, which discussed how compensating people based on tournament results incentivizes performance. They evaluate golf scores in professional tournaments, which have a similar drop-off in prize money as go tournaments. Paper is here:

https://ecommons.cornell.edu/server/api ... 41/content

I don't think the "What does the 7th highest placed person in a typical company get?" question is relevant, mainly because most people don't view their jobs as being in competition with their colleagues. There are exceptions, of course.

I'll be very amused if LIV Go takes off!


My goodness, so many things wrong with that line of argument! I'm reminded of "Baumol's cost disease", which only illustrates Prof. Baumol's lack of knowledge of the classical music world. But we're getting off topic here.


I interpreted the question differently: how can go survive as a profession if only a handful of elite performers can get the same money that many thousands of people in the corporate world receive with much less effort or skill?

Surprised Yamashita is doing better than Shibano. No one is surprised that Ichiriki and Iyama are #1 and #2, but I would have guessed those two play Shibano more often than anyone else besides each other.

My guess is that Shibano was 3rd in the overall ranking.

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Sorin - 361points.com

Ah yes, I see now that I misread John's bullet points as a rank ordering

To put the earnings in perspective, here are the top ten in earnings on the Japanese pro golf circuit in 2024.

These are from https://www.jgto.org/en/stats/tour/money_ranking_all?year=2024. The tenth-ranked person is earning more than in Go, indicating a deeper overall money pool perhaps. However, the figures at the top are comparable.

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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