Life In 19x19

illluck wrote:Apparently a Japanese team mainly comprised of young players may soon join the B-league in China.

ez4u wrote:The players were announced last week:
Cho Chikun, 9p
Murakawa Daisuke, 7p
Ida Atsushi, 3p
Ichiriki Ryo, 2p

I like how Cho Chikun is considered young. lol

lemmata, your assumptions are of course, flawed. (intellectual exercise )

"•All of the best players in China and Korea are participating in international tournaments and almost no Japanese players show up for international tournaments."

Plenty of Japanese players show up. It's just that the vast majority are beaten in the preliminaries and so it may seem that none show up.

"•The strength of the player pool in China, Japan, and Korea are equal."

It seems to me that the only measure we have, are won games, semi-final and final appearances etc. By this measure, Japanese professionals are simply weaker.

"•It is twice as hard to win an international title than it is to win a domestic title because twice as many top players compete."

This certainly seems to have a sizeable amount of truth to it.

"•Players believe that their chance of winning a given domestic tournament is double that of winning an international tournament. Therefore, when considering the decision to participate in international tournaments, players halve the prize money in their heads."

I don't know about this. I think that this is too simplistic. In fact, the more I think about it, the more the conclusion appears unjustified. If their chance of winning an international tournament is half that of a domestic one; surely they would just halve their expectations.

"Is it any wonder that the top Chinese pros are so fierce in international competition? Winning the BC Card Cup could earn a player as much money as he would by winning the Tianyuan (a major title) 50 years in a row. Is it any wonder that the top Korean pros focus on international competition? Even accounting for the reduced probability of winning, international titles yield much greater expected prize money than domestic titles do."

Although this statement is rational and may even be true in almost all cases. I think it is clear that this is not necessarily the factor which most motivates. The Chinese and Korean youngesters are both in systems in which rank is 'everything'. Their entire day, everyday, is devoted to improving their rank amongst their peers. To ignore the power of social status is a mistake. Look at your own life: your hairstyle, your clothing, the car you drive, who you spend your time with. All this and more will depend in a big way on the social status(rank) associated with them. Why you imagine these people to be any different, I don't know.

"I get the feeling that top Chinese pros and top Korean pros are slightly stronger than top Japanese pros (for pros a "slight" difference in strength makes a huge difference in results). However, I believe that the reason for the difference is not because either country has a superior system or natural talent."

I don't think there is anyone reason...

"My personal theory is that top Chinese pros are stronger because they get to play top Korean pros often in international tournaments (and top Korean pros are stronger because they get to play top Chinese pros often in international tournaments). They simply get to play serious games more often (perhaps twice as often) against top level competition than Japanese pros do."


... but it appears that the current crop of Chinese and Korean Pros are "naturally" more talented. Possibly because the pool from which they choose is larger.

tchan001 wrote:I like how Cho Chikun is considered young. lol

Apparently a Japanese team mainly comprised of young players may soon join the B-league in China. :p

trout wrote:

tapir wrote:I fail to comprehend. So you say Koreans are competitive because they allow some amateurs to participate in preliminaries, who rarely make it to a main tournament. It is not that this option doesn't exist in Japan. (Agon Cup, Kansai Ki-in tournament all feature amateur players of some sorts as well) Or are you proposing to turn some domestic titles into international ones?

Yes, they should make it as international tournament.
They are complacent because they have domestic tournament locked up for themselves. So they do not have to compete in international tournament(very fierce).

How many major tournaments in Korea and China are closed to pros from other countries?

Thank you all for such an interesting discussion. This seems really good news! I enjoy the international tournaments tremendously, especially the team tournaments like Nongshim and Jeongganjang (replaced now by Huanglongshi). My model for great international competition is the LPGA, heh, where the Korean women were gladly accepted dispite crushing everyone. Also, the players make an effort (and there's a strong program to support them) to learn enough English to make build contact with the public. The U.S. market for go is probably pretty small (Americans are so anti-intellectual!), but I wish there was more outreach to the U.S.

gowan wrote:
How many major tournaments in Korea and China are closed to pros from other countries?

How about all of them, when you refer to the domestic majors. Think how long it took Rui Naiwei to be accepted as a pro in Korea. Neither the Chinese or Koreans are going to accept Yi Se-tol or Gu Li getting a free entry into their domestic events.

Best wishes.

Plenty of Japanese players show up. It's just that the vast majority are beaten in the preliminaries and so it may seem that none show up.

Joppon, you would know that this is wrong if you would bother to look at the actual tables of the preliminaries. Those who show up in preliminaries from Japan are mostly the very young (and often the better among them) players while the current top players on average only go when seeded to the main tournament. You simply don't see names like Iyama Yuta, Yuki Satoshi, Cho U, Hane Naoki in those preliminaries - that doesn't mean that they would automatically qualify if they go, surely not, but sadly they aren't even trying - but Lee Changho, Chen Yaoye, Kong Jie any many other top players from Korea and China go and play preliminaries when they aren't seeded. It is really hard to miss that fact if you look at a preliminary table once in a while.

TMark wrote:

gowan wrote:
How many major tournaments in Korea and China are closed to pros from other countries?

How about all of them, when you refer to the domestic majors. Think how long it took Rui Naiwei to be accepted as a pro in Korea. Neither the Chinese or Koreans are going to accept Yi Se-tol or Gu Li getting a free entry into their domestic events.

Best wishes.

That was my point, referring to whoever it was who said that the Japanese pros don't play in international tournaments because they have their own tournaments "locked up". Apparently the Chinese pros have the Chinese tournaments locked up and the Koreans have the Korean tournaments locked up. So whether the Japanese tournaments are closed to outsiders is not so significant.

gowan wrote:That was my point, referring to whoever it was who said that the Japanese pros don't play in international tournaments because they have their own tournaments "locked up". Apparently the Chinese pros have the Chinese tournaments locked up and the Koreans have the Korean tournaments locked up. So whether the Japanese tournaments are closed to outsiders is not so significant.

I don't think that's necessarily true, because the prizes are much higher for Japanese domestic tournaments. However, I do think it's more beneficial for the Japanese pros this way because it seems like the issue is in not having enough pro aspirants rather than not enough competition.

illluck wrote:However, I do think it's more beneficial for the Japanese pros this way because it seems like the issue is in not having enough pro aspirants rather than not enough competition.

That's an interesting point - especially given that in both Korea and China there seems to be a real problem with washed up ex-insei. Has anyone done a pipeline-analysis of the international go scene over time?

lemmata wrote:Let us attempt an informal intellectual exercise based on the following assumptions, which might be conservative.

*Snip long post*

I propose the following modest and economic solution for making the top Japanese pros competitive in international competition:

Cut the prize money for Japanese domestic titles by 50 percent or more.

If this happens, I bet the top Japanese pros would become competitive internationally within 2 or 3 years.

Another issue that often gets brought up in these sorts of discussions (further confounding the issue) is the time controls on domestic vs. international events. If you compare time controls of top domestic Chinese, Korean, and Japanese events with the international event time controls you find that one of those things is not like the other...

tapir wrote:

Quote:
Plenty of Japanese players show up. It's just that the vast majority are beaten in the preliminaries and so it may seem that none show up.

Joppon, you would know that this is wrong if you would bother to look at the actual tables of the preliminaries. Those who show up in preliminaries from Japan are mostly the very young (and often the better among them) players while the current top players on average only go when seeded to the main tournament. You simply don't see names like Iyama Yuta, Yuki Satoshi, Cho U, Hane Naoki in those preliminaries - that doesn't mean that they would automatically qualify if they go, surely not, but sadly they aren't even trying - but Lee Changho, Chen Yaoye, Kong Jie any many other top players from Korea and China go and play preliminaries when they aren't seeded. It is really hard to miss that fact if you look at a preliminary table once in a while.

Very young Japanese, are still Japanese. The statement, I think, still holds.

Getting back to the topic. I'm definately pleased to see this development (minus Cho Chikun). And I truly hope to see the Japanese resurgence but using their own styles since I really like the idea of individuals making their way to the top under their own will, their own understanding.

I just did a quick count of the preliminaries for the Most recent LG Cup: (http://igokisen.web.fc2.com/wr/lg.html) It looks like 241 from Korea, 55 from China, 44 from Japan, and 13 from Taiwan.

Although no Japanese players qualified, two made it to the last round: Murakawa Daisuke 7d and Yu Zhenqi (Yo Seiki) 3d. Also Hatanaka Hoshinobu 3d managed to Kim Jiseok 8d, currently ranked #6 in Korea.

But the real story of that tournament has to be China's performance: in spite of being only about 16% of the entrants, Chinese players won 12 of the 16 qualifying spots!

There are some other interesting things about the Japanese performance in the preliminaries for the LG Cup. Takemiya Yoko 5p defeated Jeong Soohyun 9p. Takemiya Yoko is the son of "Cosmic Style" Takemiya 9p and Jeong was the teacher of Janice Kim 3p. Oda Junya 6p(jp) also made it to the semifinals of the LG Cup prelims, defeating three Korean players, losing in the semifinal round to a Chinese player.

The younger members of the Japanese team all played in the preliminaries for the LG Cup and Murakawa made it to the semifinal round.

A number of well-known players were eliminated from the LG Cup in the preliminaries e.g. Kr: Kim Jiseok, Kim In, Cho Hunhyun, Yoo Changhyuk, Seo Bongsoo, Park Jieun, Park Yeounghun; Jp: Cho Sonjin, Oya Koichi, Cn: Qiu Jun, Chen Yaoye. When so many players of this caliber get eliminated it could happen to anybody