Some notes on the new Kisei tournament format, I will write something formal for Go4Go later.

Since term 40, the Kisei tournament will have the following stages:

preliminary: open to all professionals and even some top amateurs. 16 players will be promoted to upper level,

C stage: 32 players, playing 5 rounds of Swiss, selecting top 6 to promote the upper level.

B leagues: 16 players divided in 2 8-player leagues B1 and B2, top two of each league are promoted to the upper level.

A league: 8 players, top 2 of league promoted to the upper level.

S league: 6 players.

playoff stage: the top 2 of S league (S1 and S2), the winner of A league (A), the winner of B1 vs B2 (B), the top player of C stage (C), are qualified for the playoff. They then play in the following order, C plays B, the winner plays A, the winner then plays S2, the winner then plays with S1 (S1 only needs one win to become Kisei challenger, his opponents needs to beat him twice to be challenger).

Titlematch: best-of-7 between the challenger and title holder.

For this year only, the various leagues will be populated based on players' past performance.

These major changes means:

- good players can play more game against strong opponents because of the existence of multiple leagues
- young talents can make more impact. In the past, assume there is a very strong player just turns professional, he needs to win all the preliminary games to make any impact. If for example, he loses one game at the final preliminary (which is a great achievement for a new player to get that far), he needs to start over and pass all the preliminary stages again next year. Under the new rule, he might be able to secure a position at a higher level league so his job next year is much easier.
- more competitive games. More stages mean more games, and less game fees given a fixed budget. So strong players get richer and weak poorer.

About damn time.

Other than the Kisei, are all the other major Japanese tourneys (still) so blatantly protective of old(er) pros and so rigged against new(er) pros ?

Compare and contrast this aspect with the major pro tourneys in China and Korea.
Discuss among yourselves.

No, Kisei, Meijin, and Honinbo have leagues where it takes effort to get into. I wouldn't say it's rigged against newer pros when 17 year olds have been making it in. 20 year old Ida won his way into the Honinbo league and then won it outright to challenge for the title.

The rest of the tournaments use single elimination preliminary tournaments from larger pools.

Perhaps they made it despite the system.

Seems unnecessarily snide (rigged? - really? as well as ill informed.

The Japanese preliminaries system was reformed as long ago as 2003. The basis of it now is that if you lose in Round 1 you drop down a section the following year, irrespective of grade. Game fees were also revised so that players get a fee appropriate to how far they get in the tournament. In the past fees varied by grade. But the system was never entirely biased against young players anyway, if you recall the success of the likes of Rin, Ishida, Cho, Kato and others in their early twenties.

But the more important point is that each country's system reflects other country-specific cultural or social factors. In the case of Japan, the apparent bias against young players has been compensated for by longevity of one's career. In contrast, just recall how many young shooting stars there have been in Korea and Chinese (who also have seeding arrangements anyway) who have disappeared from the firmament already. You can even argue the oldies are discriminated against in China and Korea. In China you are put out to pasture as a coach. In Korea you get a few scraps from veteran tournaments. In Japan you can keep paying your mortgage.

Of course it may be that the Japanese system has worked against their success at international level, and my reading of the Kisei reforms is that they are more to do with that than with helping ALL young players.

Even after the reform of 2003, there was several transitional years when older/senior players got significant advantages. For example, have a look at http://www.nihonkiin.or.jp/match/kisei/028.htm showing the preliminary groups set up based on ranks during the transitional period. While 64 9-dans got 8 positions in the final preliminary, 72 1d-dan to 4-dan players got only 2. Wasn't that significantly biased?

That was only temporary and because the system was being phased in, in the sense that it all began at current settings. Phasing-in is perfectly normal in any organisation. It was especially sensible to do it this way here because the oldies at the same time (and this was not phased in) lost pension and game fee perks and had their promotion tracks slowed down considerably (effectively cut off in many cases), whereas for ALL the youngsters promotions were speeded up - though it has to be said promotions are no longer worth what they used to be, and I've considered dropping grades in sgf files for modern games.

Yes, guilty as charged. It's only my gut feeling. Based on anecdotal evidence , (quoted in post 2).
Which is more anecdotal evidence. Not rigorous analysis, one way or the other.

If I recall correctly, in HNG, they showed the pro qualifying exam process as every candidate playing every other candidate exactly once.
In other words, if there were N pro candidates that year, then they played exactly N(N - 1)/2 games.
The top X candidates with the highest scores would become the new pros that year -- I think X = 3 in HNG ?

I don't know if they still have the same process in Japan today, for the pro qualification.

But I'm pretty sure they don't do it that way in China.
In recent years, the number of candidates taking the pro qualifying tourney in China is something like 400 each year.
If they were to follow the same process in HNG, that would mean 400 x 399 / 2 = 79,800 games,
which is clearly not practical. So they have some kind of lucky draw to determine the pairings.
And the actual number of games played is much less than 79 thousand.
Again, the top Y candidates with the highest scores make pro for the year -- Y is something like 20, currently, in China ?

So, luck is involved -- not every candidate plays every other candidate.
Even if N(N-1)/2 happens, luck is still there: between any two particular candidates, A and B,
maybe in 100 games, A can beat B 75 times. But in the pro qualifying tourney, A and B only play each other once,
and B could get "lucky" -- the 25% chance -- and B beats A in this tourney.
Food poisoning. The common cold. Traffic congestion so you miss a tourney game (auto forfeit ?).
Hey, life is tough.

Do we know for sure the 20 new pros in China each year are the "best" among the ~400 candidates ?
We don't. But we recognize them as the new pros from the current system.

Luck is always an element. That's one thing.

But we also figure that in the long run, on average,
the people who are really "better" at this will eventually "move ahead". That's another.

For the same practical reasons, I don't think any pro tourney does the N(N-1)/2 -- do they ?
So they must come up with some kind of lucky draw system, seeding system, preliminary rounds, etc.
I'm guessing this also happens in pro chess tourneys, and in other pro sports, like tennis, etc.

To really demonstrate whether a particular tourney system favors or hinders certain people,
we need rigorous analysis.⁽¹⁾ And even if such analysis is published, I'm probably not qualified
to read and understand it in its original form -- I'll probably need someone else who can digest it
and explain it in a way more accessible to the general public.Indeed it would be informative to see some census data of the income distributions of the pros --
from tourney prizes, from teaching games, from publishing, etc., by age, by country (Japan, China, Korea), over the years.
Has anyone actually collected such data ? The Chinese Go magazine WeiQiTianDi used to publish some annual charts about certain pros in China,
including their tourney prize winnings (maybe they still do) -- a partial picture of their finances.

_________
⁽¹⁾ Example: statistical evaluation of basketball .

Actually the comment by Mace that a player who loses in the final preliminary has to start over at the bottom (which if I recall is taken from the announcement of the new structure) is an exaggeration anyway. ALL the preliminaries have a seed structure based on where people lost in the previous tournament. This can be easily seen in the preliminary tournament charts on the Nihon Kiin web site. A person who loses in the final preliminary will be seeded highest in the ABC preliminary and only has to play and win two games to re-enter the final preliminary the following year. This compares to the six games that someone starting at the bottom requires (in the case of the former Kisei structure).

_________________
Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

Thanks, Dave.

This statement that the C tournament would be a Swiss also appeared on SL, but I do not see it in the announcement in Japanese. I expect that it will be something different. As far as I can tell, it will be a 5-round, triple-knockout tournament. This will result in one player with five straight wins, who will enter the playoff stage. In addition there will be five players with 4-1 records. They will go up to the B leagues next term together with the champ. The ten players with 3-2 records will remain in the C tournament. The sixteen players with 3 losses will drop back into the preliminary tournament. The players will drop out as soon as they record 3 losses. Should the C winner go all the way up to challenge the title holder, then one additional person will fall out of the S and A leagues to make room for the new star (or the deposed title holder if Mr./Ms. C goes all the way!).

This structure will require a total of 73 games per year.

_________________
Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

ez4u thanks for your explanation. At the begging of my original post I say this is just some notes taken from various sources. The C stage arrangement is indeed not very clear, and it is a bit strange that they call it a 'league'. We only need to be patient - when the games are actually played we can surely have more information.

Shukan Go called C league a Swiss-like system.

They may consider it 'Swiss-like' in that players with the same record will be paired in each round. This is straight forward in a 32-player 5-round event since there are always sufficient players with equal records in each round.

_________________
Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

Wrote a formal article to record information available here

http://www.go4go.net/go/tournaments/kisei

A professional competitive league should have the aim of promoting the best talent. If the old players want to compete at the most prestigious open tournaments, they should do so on their own merit and not with the aid of an infrastructure that strongly favors the status quo.

As a fan, I want to watch the best. I want to see Nadal vs Federer, Spieth vs McIlroy, Barcelona vs Real Madrid, Mayweather vs Pacquiao, etc. These are the matches that are pinnacle of each respective sport because it is a showcase of the best talent there is. A match between the 80th and 100th ranked tennis players in the world that used to be good years ago during their prime is of much less interest.

When I browse recent games on g04g0, I'm looking for Ke Jie, Park Junghwan, Shi Yue and Lee Sedol matches. I'm looking for international tournaments or the Chinese City League. And the recent Awaji Shuzo-Yamada Kimio Kisei League match? Sorry, but I had no interest, Awaji Shuzo's mortgage notwithstanding.

There are various ways that Go Associations can provide for older go players. For example, a pension that provides a small monthly lifetime stipend would be a nice safety net. However, creating a system that favors established (usually older) players at the expense of newcomers that may be more skilled does a huge disservice to the fan base and to the very quality of the professional league itself. That is why Seniors tournaments exist for almost every professional competition - to allow for exposure and participation of the veterans while ensuring that the primary leagues are filled with the most talented players.

The recent changes are a step in the right direction for Japanese Go. I understand change is difficult when there is so much history but everyone has to adapt to the times. Chinese and Korean go are basically starting with a clean slate but Japan has a long legacy that is undoubtedly rich but also is weighing them down to outdated customs. At the risk of offending John Fairbairn, I believe the next change that Japanese Go must implement is to shorten the time limits. 8 hours thinking time make watching live go virtually impossible for me.

Correct me if I am wrong here, but the way I read this new setup (and the old setup as well, by the way) that the system is not skewed to benfit OLD players but towards benefiting players who did well last time around, right? So if a bunch of young players do well and take some top spots, the system will then benefit THEM against the other - some of them OLDER - players.

So the idea is: play well enough, and even if you don't win, next time you might get a perk.

Or am I out to lunch? I have to admit I am not very current on all this anymore...

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

I haven't bothered to read about the new system, but judging by the last reform in 2000 I think it's safe to assume that the whole situation is much more nuanced than you are allowing for.

The 2000 reform was headlined as helping young players meet the overseas challenge, but the following strands were also being woven into the fabric. (1) There was concern that there were far too many 9-dans and the desired pyramid structure had been lost. This was having major repercussions on game fees and seeding. (2) There was a desire to move away from game fees (tied to grades) and to load the money onto prize money (tied to results). This was in turn tied in with an urgent need to reform the pension structure. (3) The sponsor (Yomiuri) was keen to promote go in the Kansai area, which was a hotbed of talent at that time. But the existing tournament structure heavily favoured the Tokyo-based Nihon Ki-in. (4) Obviously all this involved opposition from players who feared the gravy boat might sail past them, so the end result reflected various concessions, compromises and dilutions.

These factors probably all still apply to some degree even now (e.g. players like Iyama and Yamashita are from the Kansai), but we can add (5) the impact of the internet on the Yomiuri readership, and of course the problem of meeting the foreign challenge has not just not gone away but has become much more intense.

The Yomiuri, like other newspapers, doesn't get much out of sponsoring go nowadays (although the emergence of a Japanese superstar could change that). What really drives them now is fear, a director of Mainichi once told me: fear of the negative reaction of readers if they ever abandoned one of the "national" arts.

I liked Mimura's write up about the results.

http://mimura15.jp/2816.html

I don't see the new system helping old or young very much. Young players had already been able to play their way into the kisei league before fairly early.

After this round the main tournament is
S1 - Yamashita Keigo (37)
S2 - Murakawa Daisuke (24)
A - Kono Rin (34)
B1 - Awaji Shuzo (66)
B2 - Yamada Kimio (43)
C - Kyo Kagen (17)

Awaji Shuzo winning out of a fairly strong group was a surprise.

Interesting. But I was talking more about actual tournament and not so much about fees, pensions, or how to curb the number of 9 dans. Not sure that what I say is completely right, but here is what I was thinking:

Looking at the new Kisei system, I see nothing in it which would benefit old players vs young players. What I do see is that the old system had provisions which benefited those who did well in the last cycle vs those who did not (or did not play.) The new system has slightly less of these benefits, possibly.

But it is all about how you placed last time around, and not about the age. Those two factors might coincide, but they might not.

Even under the old system(s), I remember the many successful attacks of young players on the old titles - the 70s/80s come to mind, when the olys old-timers able to hold against such youngsters Rin and Otake... and then the whirlwind of Kato, Ishida, Takemiya, Cho... And you can see the same thing happening since. They were all strong enohgh to win the leagues, enter tournaments, place well, and be seeded the next year.

I am saying all this because personally - I like the idea that the whole system is slightly "entrenched", and that it is harder to get in than to stay in. This makes getting into the tournament more of a challenge and whoever does is - by definition - more than strong enough to do well in it. I think it allows for upward mobility on one side, for those strong enough, while also providing more stability to the structure and rewards those who do well. To me, this is a whole idea behind "title match" - the old champion vs the new challenger - rather than a round-robin with winner takes title.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!