Life In 19x19

And it turns out China will go with Fan Tingyu first.

The first game is live now on wbaduk. In a rather amusing psychological ploy Ichiriki played AlphaGo game 5 opening and Lee happily went along with it, so he must disagree with Nie Weiping's tewari argument and think the big corner is not bad for him.

this game is cool . Lee sedol seems to like the opening . I think both of them studied hard the 5th game of LEE-AlphaGO .

1st game;
Ichiriki Ryo defeated Lee Sedol by 0.5.

Korea: Park Junghwan, Kim Jiseok, Lee Donghoon(through selection tournament), Kang Dongyoon(seeded), Lee Sedol(wild card)
China: Ke Jie, Tuo Jiaxi, Lian Xiao, Fan Tingyu, Fan Yunrou
Japan: Iyama Yuuta, Cho U, Kono Rin, Murakawa Daisuke, Ichiriki Ryo

Bold case - alive

The first game is live now on wbaduk. In a rather amusing psychological ploy Ichiriki played AlphaGo game 5 opening and Lee happily went along with it, so he must disagree with Nie Weiping's tewari argument and think the big corner is not bad for him.

Seems like the psycho ploy worked, or just that opening is not good for black?

Also, I think Ichikiri didn't plan all of this from the beginning, as he played a 3-4 instead of the Alpha Go star point on the upper left, then it was Lee Sedol who insisted in using his favorite shimari fuseki, and then decide to go with the invasion.

I think that opening is not good for black, and when Ichiriki grew the centre and offered Lee to make an even bigger lower right corner in exchange for a monster centre but he declined with that attachment on the left hoshi it looked hard for Lee. He made nice use of the aji to reduce the centre though, but not enough. A nice win for Ichiriki and Japan: goratings.org put his (#83, 3332) chances vs Lee (#4, 3543) at 23%. He started with 3 wins last year, but that was not against top opposition like Lee; next up Fan Tingyu (#29 3437, 35%).

I await by78 telling us how weak and overrated Japanese players are...

(#83, 3332) chances vs Lee (#4, 3543) at 23%

What's the formula to derive such percentages?

John Fairbairn wrote:

(#83, 3332) chances vs Lee (#4, 3543) at 23%

What's the formula to derive such percentages?

The standard Elo one at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_ratin ... al_details, a handy online calculator is http://www.bobnewell.net/nucleus/bnewell.php?itemid=279

I bet in other ranking method that apply Japanese bias he'll have less than 5% chance against lee sedol.

The game:


More fodder for analysis of the popular AlphaGo game 5 opening (though here top left is 3-4). Lee Sedol didn't play Mi Yuting's s10 attachment. I wonder why, that looks like an improvement to me, though as Ichiriki didn't do that sacrifice it didn't end up being relevant. Lee playing n8 seems to be an admission that AlphaGo was correct that pressing here is the key point of the board, but even though black played first in this area white still pressed for the centre, and made black feel overconcentrated on the lower side with the classic k3 sacrifice and subsequent blockade. e10 attach was interesting: I think if black simply plays h5 he can capture j5 to complete a big lower right corner, but then white ends up with a super-thick outside ending with g8 ladder, which is why Ichiriki didn't answer the attachment as then there is no clean ladder to fix.

The current (2016-09) list by mamumamu0413 have world #3 versus world #129 with a 14% chance for Ichiriki. But Ichiriki might also gain a few points for beating Iyama in the final of the Ryusei (game televised 9/26).

Iyama seems to be in a big slump. But it's good that young Japanese players are getting better. Japan just made a tie with both Korea and China (too bad they can't overcome Taiwan) in the Asian New Star Match few days before. They didn't even send their best team to that tournament, no Ichikiri, no Kyo Kagen, and no Fujisawa Rina for the female spot, probably because of schedule conflict as usual.

kimidori wrote:Iyama seems to be in a big slump. But it's good that young Japanese players are getting better. Japan just made a tie with both Korea and China (too bad they can't overcome Taiwan) in the Asian New Star Match few days before. They didn't even send their best team to that tournament, no Ichikiri, no Kyo Kagen, and no Fujisawa Rina for the female spot, probably because of schedule conflict as usual.

Fujisawa Rina was supposed to attend, but then had the female meijin or honinbo (or whatever it was), so couldn't. So she requested to become a game recorder for the first match.

Korea didn't send out their best team either, so can't really say much there. But the Chinese team was really strong, so that was pretty impressive.

@Uberdude: But Ichiriki is around Ke Jie's age, and I don't think you would argue against my assertion that Ke Jie is a little bit stronger. Even Shin Jinseo, who is like 2 years younger, is probably a bit stronger than Ichiriki Ryo.

Personally I'm an Ichiriki Ryo fan, and I think he could become competitive on the international stage (especially since his family is already rich, maybe he won't care about earning money from domestic titles as much), but I think the fact that so many people are pleasantly surprised that a Japanese player beat lee sedol is proof that Japan is not doing as well as they could be, more than anything else.


I am of the type of thinking that people are just people, no one choose where they were born, so we shouldn't group them by where they were born. However, a lot of people do care about the country vs country match ups, and if Japan would become competitive, it would drive a lot more interest in the game, and would potentially get us more sponsors for big tournaments. So I definitely hope that Japan can do better on the international stage.

Another interesting note about Ichiriki is that he chose to graduate his high school commuting far distance while insei. Now he is attending Waseda, a prestigious university, while being pro. I've never heard of a top pro doing that.

Following game 2 right now. It seems to me that Ichiriki doesn't have enough points if white's lower area turns into territory, so he is now trying to make something happen there.

If so, why play the 101-102 exchange before invading? It seems to make things harder for black.

Edit. Ichiriki resigned, here is the game and a few thoughts. I can't help but think that something went awfully wrong for black if he had to invade so deeply.

I find very interesting because instead of living easily in the corner, white sacrificed in order to get a perfect outside wall. Not sure I would have dared to (if I could even have found the sequence, that is ).

Could black have tried something else to approach/reduce white? A contact play on the komoku or playing at 62?

It looks like black didn't get anything there. Was playing a point below better? I guess he wanted to keep sente?