Life In 19x19

As of the end of 2010 there were 440 pros in Japan, of which a (?ridiculous) 25% were 9-dan. The Nihon Ki-in has 321 pros and the Kansai Ki-in 119.

The declining finances of the go world over the past couple of decades are in contrast to the increasing number of pros sitting round the dining table. In 1984, which was close to a financial high point, there were only 364 pros (NK 269, KK 95, 60 9-dans). Yet even a decade before that, influential pro Shimamura Toshihiro was arguing that (a) there were too many pros - he wanted them cut by a third, (b) pros should be reclassified as playing pros and teaching pros, and (c) there were too many games at the lower levels.

His last point is interesting. The ultimate goal of a pro event then was to produce the best games for readers (newspapers had almost a 100% lock on sposnorship). Shimamura was of the school that believed that only experienced pros who took a lot of time over their games were in a position to produce high quality games. He therefore argued for a very radical change in tournament structure. He wanted the preliminaries of all tournaments to be combined into one event, so that if there were, say, ten titles, instead of ten preliminaries there would be one, and those who were successful there would qualify for the later stages of all ten titles. Game fees would be combined, so that each game would become ten times more important. The young pros would therefore be no worse off but would be likely to spend much more time on their fewer games and so would become more likely to produce the quality of games the fans wanted.

That idea was clearly too radical in its own day, and is even less likely to appeal nowadays when there is so much hunger for a young pro who can match the Chinese and Korean youngsters. All recent changes in Japan, except the ending of the Oteai and thus the end of minimum salaries, can be viewed as designed to bolster the chances of international success. Some longer time limits survive in Japan but are being inexorably driven down.

In a nutshell, the trend now is for pros now to seek gold medals rather than the perfect game: never mind the quality, feel the width. In line with celeb culture worldwide, fans want top pros rather than top games, and the quick fix rather than the slow burn. Whether that is good for the health of the game long term remains to be seen. Whether there really are too many pros is also an open question (but if there are, that does not bode well for the chances of westerners to reach the heights).

Maybe we can hope that 2011 will bring forth a thinker of the stature of Shimamura, so that at least all these questions are properly considered by the pro go world.

The number of 9 dans should decline under the new promotion system, but not precipitously. Since a player can move from 7 dan to 9 dan solely based on wins, most players who reach 7 dan by age 30 will probably make 9 dan. Twenty 18 win years would do it, as would adding a few less substantial years.

The winners of any big title, challengers for the top three, snd winners of the Agon or Ryusei all earn 70 dan, as do the winners of the Kansai championship. Another route that adds several players is entrance to the Kisei, Meijin or Honibo leagues, which gets a player to 7 dan.

I'd be surprised if the number of 9 dans dropped below 70, though I'm speculating wildly because I don't have a clue how many players enter the leagues but never win a title that would give them an automatic promotion.

John Fairbairn wrote:fans want top pros rather than top games

A very perceptive comment.

However, it tells against the idea of reducing the number of pros. The more pros, the greater the chances of having a top pro in their midst. (Assuming that the qualifications for being a pro remain the same, OC. )

Also, within limits, the more (teaching) pros, the more fans. Everything rests upon the fan base.

Isn't it true that the lower dan players are de facto teaching pros for the most part? Given the situation with game fees and the abolishment of the oteai, unless players rise rapidly through the ranks most of their income must be earned from teaching.

As for top games vs. top pros, am I correct in inferring an implication that the quality of games is not what it once was? This begs the question of just what constitutes a high quality game and I think there might be some disagreement there.

hyperpape wrote:The number of 9 dans should decline under the new promotion system, but not precipitously. Since a player can move from 7 dan to 9 dan solely based on wins, most players who reach 7 dan by age 30 will probably make 9 dan. Twenty 18 win years would do it, as would adding a few less substantial years.

The winners of any big title, challengers for the top three, snd winners of the Agon or Ryusei all earn 7 dan, as do the winners of the Kansai championship. Another route that adds several players is entrance to the Kisei, Meijin or Honibo leagues, which gets a player to 7 dan.

I'd be surprised if the number of 9 dans dropped below 70, though I'm speculating wildly because I don't have a clue how many players enter the leagues but never win a title that would give them an automatic promotion.

18 wins doesn't sound much, but in fact only the current top50 have 18 wins in 2010 (http://valeriosampieri.wordpress.com/st ... pponesi-3/). Michael Redmond has 13, Kobayashi Koichi 14. And if you can stay in the top50 for 20 years continuously after reaching a league for the first time, a 9 dan rank isn't too much to ask for. As far as I understand gaining the promotion by winning a major title / defending a smaller title is "easier" than by acquiring the wins (750 in total if you have to go up by wins only.)

My impression is, that the current system will be much less top heavy than the old one. It just needs some time to adapt, we will see in ten years

Looking at demographics it seems that the rate of Go professionals in the Japanese population has stayed pretty steady.

1984 - 364 pros, 120,305,000 Japanese = 1 pro per 330k
2010 - 440 pros, 127,510,000 Japanese = 1 pro per 290k

But even that comparison isn't quite right, since children can't be pros and the Japanese population in 1984 had many more children. So if we assume that 20-80 is the productive life of a pro, and look at the rate of pros relative to Japanese men, aged 20-80;

1985 - 40,732,539 /364 = 1 pro per 112 k
2005 - 47,678,599 /440 = 1 pro per 108 k

So over time the frequency of pros in the pool of Japanese people who could conceivably be pros has stayed almost constant. (That's a 0.18% annual rate of growth, relative to the pool of potential pros.)

(I use men rather than men and women, start at 20 rather than 18, and compare 2010 pros to 2005 population data because of the way the data at stat.go.jp is set up. If you think this is changing something, I encourage someone to find a better set of numbers.)

The changing finances of the Nihon Kiin might justify changing the nature of the pro system. And even if the Nihon Kiin were flush with cash, a new goal for the association might also justify a new pro system. But the increasing (absolute) number of pros is exactly what you'd expect, given Japan's demographics.

But the increasing (absolute) number of pros is exactly what you'd expect, given Japan's demographics.

Why? Increasing population here in the UK may mean more doctors, dustbin men etc, but it doesn't mean more Queens, more prime ministers, or more football teams.

In the US, there was an artificial expansion of Major League baseball teams which could at a pinch be claimed to be connected with population growth, but general opinion, backed by sabermetrics I gather, suggests the average quality of teams suffered. There was still the same amount of cream in the cup, just more coffee.

You might intuitively assume there was more call for teaching pros in Japan to match a growing population, but that seems to be confounded by the sharply decreasing number of amateur go players over the past couple of decades.

John Fairbairn wrote:

But the increasing (absolute) number of pros is exactly what you'd expect, given Japan's demographics.

Why? Increasing population here in the UK may mean more doctors, dustbin men etc, but it doesn't mean more Queens, more prime ministers, or more football teams.

In the US, there was an artificial expansion of Major League baseball teams which could at a pinch be claimed to be connected with population growth, but general opinion, backed by sabermetrics I gather, suggests the average quality of teams suffered. There was still the same amount of cream in the cup, just more coffee.

You might intuitively assume there was more call for teaching pros in Japan to match a growing population, but that seems to be confounded by the sharply decreasing number of amateur go players over the past couple of decades.

Pro sports team over-expansion is epitomized by the pro hockey situation where, originally there were only around 10 teams but now it seems that there is a professional hockey team in every city with population over 100000 and it is impossible to follow the sport. The baseball situation is not as bad but still there are too many major league teams. We'll soon be having the world series in November and Reggie Jackson's nickname, Mr. Ocober, will have to have a footnote explaining the meaning.

But as for the excess of Go pros in Japan, I agree with Bill Spight who wrote earlier that everything depends on the base of amateur fans. The number of new pros created every year seems small enough, though not as small as in Korea. It is hard to imagine a viable system in which only one new player per year is admitted.

gowan wrote:Pro sports team over-expansion is epitomized by the pro hockey situation where, originally there were only around 10 teams but now it seems that there is a professional hockey team in every city with population over 100000 and it is impossible to follow the sport.

Except for Seattle where I would love to get a home team.

What small markets have a hockey team? Columbus, Tampa Bay, and Charlotte are the smallest I can think of, but they're not tiny cities.

Hartford, Winnipeg, and other small cities have lost their teams. In Philly they sell out all the NHL games and the minor league hockey games.

Tapir, I think that's not really contrary to what I wrote. The professional needs only average 17.5 games per year over 20 years. 17 wins puts them in the top 50, but we're not talking about that many players. Note that over 25 years, they need average only 14 games which is the roughly the cutoff for the top 100.

If a player is the 50th best in Japan measured over the course of two decades, they will have many years when they perform better than 50th (when they're lucky or at their peak), many when they perform worse than 50th. In terms of wins, it will probably be a wash, because close to 50, you don't change many wins either way.

There are 88 or a handful more Japanese players with 500 wins, but that number is heavily biased towards contemporary players, since the number of games has increased over time (compare Sakata to Cho Chikun).

That said, maybe the estimate was too high. I don't know of a way to do it more rigorously, but maybe someone has an idea.

Question:

John Fairbairn wrote:Why?

Answer:

John Fairbairn wrote:Increasing population here in the UK may mean more doctors, dustbin men etc, but it doesn't mean more Queens, more prime ministers

Explanation:
(don't focus on rows but on columns)

Jobs ........................................................................ Titles and others
(depend more or less on the population increase/decrease)..... (don't depend on population increase/decrease)

doctors................................................................. Queen
dustbin men............................................................ Prime Minister
......................................................................................
pro go players........................................................... Kisei (Meijin, etc)

Do you really think that the demographics are irrelevant, John? I don't want to be that guy who writes up a painstakingly long explanation of why England has one prime minister and why legal sports monopolies don't like to expand, only to find that you're making fun of me.

jts wrote:Do you really think that the demographics are irrelevant, John? I don't want to be that guy who writes up a painstakingly long explanation of why England has one prime minister and why legal sports monopolies don't like to expand, only to find that you're making fun of me.

I think the point is that for sports or games it should follow the population of the people following it. The demographics of Japan are irrelevant, but the go playing population would be more relevant. They're needed to support the system.

Where do you guys get these stats?

don't focus on rows but on columns)

No, both are irrelevant really. I suspect the proper scientific approach would be along the lines used in epidemiology, but even at a "man on the Clapham omnibus" level it's obvious go and population have no sensible correlation. As the general population in Japan has been going up, so the amateur go population has been declining - but this is usually attributed to factors such as increasing leisure and disposable income, meaning people try new things and look further afield. If a 50-dan computer program emerged tomorrow, you might decimate the go population almost overnight (think smallpox vaccine), and that would even more obviously have nothing to do with population.

Furthermore, the go pro population might be bigger for reasons such as pros living longer, retiring later (economic necessity).