Age & Improvement

[petri]

That's my point as well. We have no theory of the brain sufficient to say "yes, you need to start as a young child to really excel". We've got no way to control people's lives enough to test this idea. We've got no good statistical way of approaching the question, because the confounding factors are huge. An 8 year old dedicating 10 years to becoming a go professional would fail in time to go to college with his peers. A 20 year old would be 30 with no degree, career experience or savings. The opportunity costs are so drastically different as to be sufficient to explain the difference on their own.

There is evidence on age affecting learning abilities. Please have a look stuff call myelin which is needed in learning skills. Age affects in two ways:
- amount of myelin creation is age dependent. At the age 50 one strat loseit about same rate as one gains it. So you need train stuff just not to lose skills.
- learning only myelinizes new tracks. It does not remove old erroneous ones ==> re-learning something is hard as you don really forget the old stuff, but you just have to learn new one better than the old. Older you get more stuff you have in your head already. Also if one plays around for a year before serious study that can also harm learning.

Also ar soft limits as discussed above. 23 year old is far less likely to find time/motivation needed to go around 1p strengt. I do doubt that EGF 6 dan is really within reach. It just might but I don't think so

Nature never heard about equality of all men

[HermanHiddema]

What about Sakai Hideyuki? He was a doctor (completed medical school and all) before turning pro although he was Fujisawa Shuko's student long before that. He may have started early for all I know, but he must have taken a huge break from go while he was in med school and while he was working.

If anything, the fact that a player who started young can spend the huge amounts of time necessary to get a medical degree and still become pro after that would support the notion that starting young is very important.

[gowan]

What about Sakai Hideyuki? He was a doctor (completed medical school and all) before turning pro although he was Fujisawa Shuko's student long before that. He may have started early for all I know, but he must have taken a huge break from go while he was in med school and while he was working.

If anything, the fact that a player who started young can spend the huge amounts of time necessary to get a medical degree and still become pro after that would support the notion that starting young is very important.

Sakai was professional strength before he finished medical training. He won several amateur national championships in Japan and was considered the strongest amateur in Japan for a period. In 2000 he won the world amateur championship . He became an official pro by defeating pros in even test games, winning two against a pro 5-D and one against a pro 7-D, and entered the pro ranks as a pro 5-D.

[HermanHiddema]

Sakai was professional strength before he finished medical training. He won several amateur national championships in Japan and was considered the strongest amateur in Japan for a period. In 2000 he won the world amateur championship . He became an official pro by defeating pros in even test games, winning two against a pro 5-D and one against a pro 7-D, and entered the pro ranks as a pro 5-D.

Yes, I know. What I am addressing is the argument that kids just have loads of time, and that that is the real reason they get as far as they do. IMO, you don't get a medical degree without spending quite some time on it. Not just in college, but also in school. There is no way Sakai Hideyuki just spent all his time on go.

[drmwc]

When I did my PhD, Alex Abercrombie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Abercrombie) was a couple of years' ahead of me. He taught himself maths, and applied to do an undergraduate degree. He had taught hmiself so much maths that he was directly accepted onto a PhD bypassing undergraduate courses. He did pioneering research in his PhD, and I believe he published 17 articles in 3 years.

He got his doctorate in 1996 at the age of 47, taking 3 years. Prior to studying maths, he was a concert pianist. He is now a concert pianist again.

[gowan]

Sakai was professional strength before he finished medical training. He won several amateur national championships in Japan and was considered the strongest amateur in Japan for a period. In 2000 he won the world amateur championship . He became an official pro by defeating pros in even test games, winning two against a pro 5-D and one against a pro 7-D, and entered the pro ranks as a pro 5-D.

Yes, I know. What I am addressing is the argument that kids just have loads of time, and that that is the real reason they get as far as they do. IMO, you don't get a medical degree without spending quite some time on it. Not just in college, but also in school. There is no way Sakai Hideyuki just spent all his time on go.

I agree. My point was that Sakai was probably of professional strength before he began the onerous part of his medical studies. I think he took a break from go to finish his medical qualification but resumed after qualifying as a physician. Undoubtedly he began playing (and studying) at a young age. It's a bit off topic but there are other prominent pros who abandoned promising careers to become pros. One such is Ishikura Noboru who was a graduate of Tokyo University and had embarked on a career at one of the most prestigious banks before deciding that he preferred go. Another point worth mentioning is that in Japan most insei have to go to school and they pursue their go studies after school and on weekends so the young pro-trainees can't be totally devoted to their go studies.