Life In 19x19

John Fairbairn wrote:It's a 2-day, 4-round Swiss for 16 players, not too fast, not too slow (NHK timing). The winner is the one with the most wins, obviously, but ranking of people with tied scores is done in a way that be old hat to the numbers guys, but is new to me, so I don't know the terminology.

The first tie-breaker is SOS - that one I know, Sum of Opponents' Scores (Okuda had the highest SOS, incidentally). But the tie-breaker after that is not SODOS (the only other one I know). It is the (?) SOSOS - Sum of Sums of Opponents' Scores.

Thanks for sharing, having more information on tournaments formats in use is interesting.

There is actually no need for these tie-breakers if they just want to choose a winner because a 4 round swiss with 16 players will have a unique winner because there are no draws.

I think (it is none of my business but still) that they'd do well to skip the tie-breakers and just share the prize money when there are ties. The final order in this tournament does depend on the third tie-breaker, for example 3rd and 4th place tie with 3 points and 8 sos points (if my calculations are correct) but it didn't matter if the third tie-breaker was SOSOS or SODOS.

From the point of view of the winner, a Swiss tournament (16 players) is like a knock-out tournament. Players who win play each other in the next round, and when you lose you can't win the tournament.

But SOS, SOSOS are not just tie-breakers to split a prize. Even if there is no prize, they serve a purpose: in the pairings of next round, you are going to play with somebody with similar results so far. Same number of victories (ie. points) and SOS as close as possible. The idea is to have a pairing as balanced as possible. That's why Okada, with 1 loss, had the best SOS: amongst the players with 3-1, she was the last one to lose, so she had the opponents with the best results.

Swiss or leagues allow players to play more games, even if losing one (*) means you are out of the fight. For players, depending on the format, it may mean to play once and good-bye till next year, or to play at least a few games. Fans, sometimes want blood, sometimes want to see their player play again.

(*) you can win a league with more than one loss, but many times the winner has (and needs) a perfect score

pajaro wrote:But SOS, SOSOS are not just tie-breakers to split a prize. Even if there is no prize, they serve a purpose: in the pairings of next round, you are going to play with somebody with similar results so far. Same number of victories (ie. points) and SOS as close as possible. The idea is to have a pairing as balanced as possible. That's why Okada, with 1 loss, had the best SOS: amongst the players with 3-1, she was the last one to lose, so she had the opponents with the best results.

There are different ways to do pairings for Swiss tournaments. This tournament is using a pairing rule called "Monrad". With Monrad the pairing is done as follows: the players are first ranked by their score and then by the initial seed number. Then the the pairing is done from the top of the list by finding the next unpaired player as the opponent of the highest ranked unpaired player and ignoring already paired players. You can tell that this tournament used Monrad by checking were paired together in each round, it is always the closest pair according to score and initial seed.

When using Monrad in this way the winner will play exactly the same player as with a knock-out tournament. It is a nice feature.

There are other systems, for example "Dutch" which pairs in groups based on score but matches the top player in the group with the bottom player and so on, and in McMahon tournaments we often seem to use a pairing rules that are similar to what you described.

This weekend, we had the Wakakoi Battle (Hiroshima Aluminum Cup). 16 young players, 11 male, 4 female, +1, Fujisawa Rina, as the winner of last year. She was the first player to win a mixed tournament. It's a typical knock-out tournament. 30 sec/move + 10*1 min. NHK style, I think.

Well... this year, Fujisawa lost pretty soon, to Nishi Takenobu. So the current champion wouldn't defend the title.

Buuut... Ueno Asami was playing. Ueno Risa was playing too, but they didn't play each other. Would it have been the first official game between the sisters?
Well, as I was saying, Asami won the tournament, using her fighting skills. I watched the 3rd game, against Mutsuura Yuta... crazy. At the beggining of the game AI gave him 98% chance of winning, Asami had 2-3 weak groups, but she was attacking all the time and when the fight stopped, the situation was completely the opposite. Yuta's body language was astonishingly clear to me."what's going on? how did this happen?" I didn't know him, but being young and 7 dan, I thought he is a league player. And yes, this year he played in the A league of the Kisei, he has played in the Meijin league too... not a bad player.

The final game was against Nishi Takenobu. You just read about him. Ueno took revenge and won the title. Also a fighting game, but a less interesting one. They had played not long ago in the semifinal of the Shinjin O, again with Ueno winning it. He's gonna dream with her, and not the good kind.

You can see the broadcasting here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma0qkDV8ql0 1st day
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qemADrGyp2o 2nd day

Luckily, Ueno Asami's games are followed.

Here's an unusual insight.

In the latest Nihon Ki-in published figures (which go up to 22 October), they as usual give the number of wins the prime spot.

In first place is Ueno Asami on 42 wins in 2021. In 2nd place is Sumire, on 36. In joint 4th place is Rina on 34 wins. In 8th place is Nyu Eiko (30), in 9th place is Xie Yimin (29), and in joint 12th place - sharing that spot with no less than Iyama Yuta, is Kato Chie (28).Six women in the top 13!

I could go on: Suzuki Ayumi in joint 15th place 26), Hoshiai Shiho in joint 23rd (22). Top male, incidentally, is Fukuoka Kotaro, 3rd on 35, and Kyo Kagen is joint 4th with Rina.

Clearly something is afoot.

It's probably something to do with women now getting more playing opportunities than men (discrimination!), and we have to explain why the pattern is certainly not reflected in the less-favoured winning percentages table. Nevertheless, the women do feature there, with Rina in 5th place (75.6%) and Sumire in 12th (72.2%).

In terms of winning streaks, Sumire features twice in the top ten (separate streaks of 13 and 10). Rina has 11. Top is Ichiriki Ryo on 14. But even there there is a sea-change. There are ten players with streaks of 10 or more. In the not-too-distant past, a winning streak of 10+ was enough to win you immortal fame (e.g, Kitani Minoru - remember him?).

The lesson for all those who want to improve is obvious: wear a skirt.

pajaro wrote: You can see the broadcasting here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma0qkDV8ql0 1st day
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qemADrGyp2o 2nd day

Oh wow. I'm watching that now, and they seem to be playing at least four boards in a room, with talking clocks, so there is a constant cacophony of „juubyou“ „nijuubyou“ etc. (»ten seconds«, »twenty seconds«). That's quite some noise.

The saga continues, with a new landmark.

Ueno Asami has won the 16th Young Carp Tournament, beating a male in every round, and so this is the first co-ed tournament won by a female in successive years. The fella she beat in the final was ranked higher than her at 5-dan but she also beat a 4-dan and two 6-dans (she is 4-dan). Her 1-dan sister was also in the event and got to Round 1. Sumire was absent - because of school work probably.

One thing the Japanese maybe need to work on is their hotel names. There seems to be a plethora of supposedly "cool" hotels that look flash but are really just jumped-up youth hostels with weird names. I stayed at one on my last visit to Tokyo with my grandson. Hated it. Full of young people.

The Young Carp was played in what appears to be a similar joint: the Hotel Mystays in Hiroshima Peace Park. I'm afraid the image that evoked in my mind, from the time I was very young - too young to be "cool" even - was aunts trying on their new corsets.

Incidentally, Asami has the nickname Hammer. I gather this comes from her (male) pals in her study group. She once had a style of seeking for a balance of territories while attacking judiciously. Now her colleagues have noticed an addition. She plays moves that makes them feel as if she has crept up behind them and hit them with a hammer.

So, with Christmas prezzies in mind, all those fellas out there who want to improve should tell Santa what go accessories they now need: a skirt and a claw hammer. Ideal for playing on the internet, I suppose.

John Fairbairn wrote:I stayed at one on my last visit to Tokyo with my grandson. Hated it. Full of young people.

Yeah, well, young people creep in everywhere. You keep find more and more of them little creeps.

How-ever... Did your grandkid enjoy it?

So, with Christmas prezzies in mind, all those fellas out there who want to improve should tell Santa what go accessories they now need: a skirt and a claw hammer. Ideal for playing on the internet, I suppose.

Nah... Claymores trump hammers any day. Specially with the right skirt.

Take care

John Fairbairn wrote:The saga continues, with a new landmark.

Ueno Asami has won the 16th Young Carp Tournament, beating a male in every round, and so this is the first co-ed tournament won by a female in successive years. The fella she beat in the final was ranked higher than her at 5-dan but she also beat a 4-dan and two 6-dans (she is 4-dan).

Mutsuura Yuta, the 3rd round victim, is 7 dan.

John Fairbairn wrote: Incidentally, Asami has the nickname Hammer.

So it's a real thing? I often see "hammer" in twitter (in Japanese). But I thought it was some kind of mistake with the automatic translation.
I can understand the nickname.

Speaking of hammering, I often see a hammer prop in NHK Go materials. Maybe it's some in-joke? There's Asami's "Hammer Punch" (ハンマーパンチ) also: https://twitter.com/nagoya_amigo/status ... 4791091206

Meanwhile, Shimojima Yohei uses the hammer to happily build a house in his Go course.

More about Ueno Asami:

A couple of days ago (Dec 2nd) she played Takemiya Masaki in the Tengen, prelim A. She won, with black.

I saw the game in go4go.net. I can't download it, so I can't attach the game. All I can do is give the link to it:

http://www.go4go.net/go/games/sgfview/100307

I repeat: she beat Takemiya Masaki with black. If you see the game, you might think that Takemiya is black. But no.

Access Denied.

You can find the game also on this page: https://gotoeveryone.k2ss.info/news/jp/tengen/48/

Thanks!

Here is the game:

The final game of the Female Kisei, to decide the challenger, was played between Kato Chie and Suzuki Ayumi. Suzuki won and for the 3rd year in a row, the title match (3 games) will be Ueno Asami vs. Suzuki Ayumi.

It was a good run for Kato Chie, but her opponent is still more experienced.

I missed that game between Ueno and Takemiya. Very exciting. Thanks for sharing.