Life In 19x19

I think Wu as a starter of modern go. And so many players decorated our game since then.
Sakata, Fujisawa, Otake, Rin Kaiho, Kato, Takemiya, Kobayashi, Nei Weiping, Two Cho, Lee Changho, Lee sedol, Guli and more players to mention worth.
I cannot think these players losing to old players(especially more recent players like Lee and Guli etc).
Aside Dosaku, Shusaku who are regarded like a saint, is there any honinbo who can actually beat current players?

Fujisawa Hideyuki once mentioned that he would not have liked to fight Inoue Dôsetsu Inseki across the board.

In his Shuei books, John Fairbairn also mentions that modern players have a lot of respect for Shuei.

Shusaku's popularity seems to stem more from Hikaru no Go and the fact that he has an untarnished Castle Games record. Though John Fairbairn - again in his Shuei books - casts a shadow of doubt on this accomplishment as it seems that Shusaku only played when he was sure he could win.

Two more top notch all time greats would be
Huang Longshi 黃龍士 (1651/54 - ca. 1700) and
Yasui Senchi 安井仙知 (1764-1837) [a.k.a. Yasui Senchi Senkaku 安井仙知仙角, Sakaguchi Senchi, O-Senchi]

Transport them from the past, give them a year or two to assimilate modern go knowledge, and I'll bet that the 9 dans of yore could take White vs. most 9 dans of today.

Bill Spight wrote:Transport them from the past, give them a year or two to assimilate modern go knowledge, and I'll bet that the 9 dans of yore could take White vs. most 9 dans of today.

Why? In the past the talent pool and knowledge spreading was significantly less. I would expect the current strongest players to be stronger than the legends of the past.

oren wrote:

Bill Spight wrote:Transport them from the past, give them a year or two to assimilate modern go knowledge, and I'll bet that the 9 dans of yore could take White vs. most 9 dans of today.

Why? In the past the talent pool and knowledge spreading was significantly less. I would expect the current strongest players to be stronger than the legends of the past.

Yes, but there has been significant rank inflation since WWII. Some 40 years ago Richard Dolen observed that you could throw a rock in the Nihon Kiin and hit a 9 dan.

IMO, the question is too hypothetical. What is possible for an individual depends on their environment, along with the actions they choose to take. Given the amount of time that I've known about Go, had I selected different choices, could I be 5d by now? Maybe if I made different choices and worked harder it would have been possible.

But I didn't make those choices, and I am where I am today.

If you took some strong professional from the past, and bring him to the present, would he be strong today?

It really depends on several factors:
* His/her ambition
* The effort they'd put into being the best
* Environmental factors
* ...

Anyway, the question is too hypothetical, but it's fun to think about, I guess.

Bill Spight wrote:Yes, but there has been significant rank inflation since WWII. Some 40 years ago Richard Dolen observed that you could throw a rock in the Nihon Kiin and hit a 9 dan.

Rank inflation is different than strength, isn't it?

Bill Spight wrote:Yes, but there has been significant rank inflation since WWII. Some 40 years ago Richard Dolen observed that you could throw a rock in the Nihon Kiin and hit a 9 dan.

I'm not talking about 9 dan ratings but just the pure number of people playing and studying Go on a professional level is significantly higher than in the past. My expectation would be the best of today would be better than the best of previous years due to that. Not blah blah dan rankings which are meaningless for comparison.

Modern pros are better because they start younger and are more serious about it.

Kirby wrote:

Bill Spight wrote:Yes, but there has been significant rank inflation since WWII. Some 40 years ago Richard Dolen observed that you could throw a rock in the Nihon Kiin and hit a 9 dan.

Rank inflation is different than strength, isn't it?

Rank inflation means that people of a given strength have a higher rank.

Bill Spight wrote:Rank inflation means that people of a given strength have a higher rank.

Okay. I just didn't get how rank inflation was related to oren's comment:

oren wrote:In the past the talent pool and knowledge spreading was significantly less. I would expect the current strongest players to be stronger than the legends of the past.

Anyway, my personal opinion remains that the question is too hypothetical.

Modern pros play fast timed games whereas the ancient go players had all the time in the world to finish their games. Hence there is more stress for a modern pro to win the game within the time allotted rather than to play the best move possible after considerable thought in a timeless manner.

tchan001 wrote:Modern pros play fast timed games whereas the ancient go players had all the time in the world to finish their games. Hence there is more stress for a modern pro to win the game within the time allotted rather than to play the best move possible after considerable thought in a timeless manner.

It's a possible theory, though it could be argued that the time put into training before playing the game is more important than the time you spend during the game. Give a 30k 5 hours to play a move, and it's quite possible that the result won't be as good as what a 5k sees in 10 seconds.

Bill Spight wrote:Transport them from the past, give them a year or two to assimilate modern go knowledge, and I'll bet that the 9 dans of yore could take White vs. most 9 dans of today.

I had a similar idea that it would be unfair to simply have a match between a player of today with one of their predecessors from the past.

Just because the modern pros securely have analysed the games of their ancient opponent. But the players from the past would have been stuck to their knowledge that they had at that time.

I strongly suppose that you are right with your statement.