The thing with the new stars tournament is that, by the time China played Japan, their win was already guaranteed so they didn't really try.

That said, it's impressive beating those guys even if they weren't trying their best.

If the top Japanese prospects play in the Chinese A-league and international tournaments, of course they'll be very promising, after all it's not like Japanese people are inherently stupid or anything like that.

The problem is that they don't have such a good opportunity to train. Ichiriki Ryo is the one exception, because his family is rich, so he's not restrained by financial factors, which are very big. However, it seems that being a Go pro is probably just a stage in Ichiriki Ryo's career, unlike most other pros, where go is like their life.

I say this because he's going to a prestigious University at the same time, probably preparing to take over the family business eventually.

What does Ichiriki's family do? What line of business?

Iyama's doing well so far, beating Ichiriki today (interesting fighting with miai building and busting and variations with double ladder breakers) and Yu a few days ago (I was impressed how much Iyama reduced the centre).

I was just watching the NHK cup on youtube, and they said that Iyama's record (before this game) was 5-5 against Kobayashi Satoru...

Would Kobayashi Satoru be able to win 5 games against ANY top Chinese or Korean player in 10 games? Somehow that does not seem likely to me...

Now I'm not normally an Iyama hater, at least not in the sense of doubting his strength. But this was a pretty surprising stat to me.

And yeah sure, sometimes you just have opponents you are weak against, like Chen Yaoye against Zhou ruiyang.

But Kobayashi Satoru? ...

Two of Kobayashi's 5 wins were in 2014, but the other 3 were in 2005/6. I don't think it's fair to hold it against Iyama that he wasn't as strong 10 years ago when he was an up and coming 16-year old. You can probably find some weaker pro from a previous generation who has a good record against any current top pro because they played mostly in the past when the current top pro was not so strong yet. You can see the same thing with Dinerstein's record against Ilya Shiskin for example. Should we mock Lee Sedol because he only has 1 win and 4 loses against An Younggil?

I remember KIm Myung Wan also said that he has a positive record against Lee Sedol.

Only counting games in the go4go database (which is where I got the An Younggil statistic), Lee leads Kim 2-1. Kim is 5 years older than Lee, An 3 years. Of course my question was rhetorical, though I do think it should make us appreciate An Younggil is very strong and was a talented young pro of top calibre, even though he didn't blossom into the same success as Lee (I think military service might have had something to do with it).

And Kobayashi was also a very good player at one time: he was runner-up in two international tournaments, though he got swept by Cho Hunhyeon and Lee Changho in the finals. He was beginning to decline by the time of 2005-2006, but he was still a good player.

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Occupy Babel!

According to goratings History page (I use that because I don't know any other ranking that has a history page), Kobayashi Satoru highest rank was 6-7th in 1993-1996 (thought Lee Chang Ho dominated the Go world at that moment, neither Korea nor China had the thickness they now have, so many Japanese pros were still in top 50).

In 2004-2006, his rank was around 40-50th in the world, about the same as Iyama's.

Besides the fact that Iyama plays too few games against top players to really judge his skills, his style is known to be a bit "extreme" (An Younggil once described it as "unique"), so perhaps it can give him some impressive wins (like the game against Gu Li in the Fujitsu Cup, or the one against Park JH in the Asian TV Cup), but also some bitter losses (like some of his games against Zhou Ruiyang and Chen Yaoye).

Iyama beat Takao in game 6 of the Meijin, so we go to a decisive final game on 2nd/3rd November.

Takao won the final game by 2.5 points so Iyama loses the 7 crowns. Iyama played what seemed like overly slow in the opening to me (see http://eidogo.com/#2N2TOY9xD), allowing Takao to build a large moyo on the left. There was some exciting ko and trades and moyos, but Takao managed the situation well and it felt like a pretty comfortable win for him in the end despite Iyama's best efforts at making a mess.

Ahem, no way Iyama is in the world top 10. Just no way.

Just like there's no way Lee Sedol is in the top 10 because he lost to Ichiriki Ryo?

Did Lee lose to Ichiriki in a seven game match?

@Uberdude, would you agree that the ko offered by Iyama in the upper left early on, which Takao simply steamrolled right through, put Iyama behind for the rest of the game? It seemed he slowly dug himself out of that hole, especially in the very end, but it was an awfully deep hole!

No. But top Korean and Chinese pros have never beaten Takao in a seven game match with 8 hours each either. So whilst they are considerable favourites in the shorter international matches, I could well believe Takao might do somewhat better against them in such a format. It's worth pointing out that Gu Li was reluctant to the 4 hour time limits of his jubango against Lee Sedol because he saw it as a disadvantage.

I see, logic is not your strong suit.

by78, your logic seems to be:
1) Iyama lost to Takao in a long match
2) Therefore Iyama cannot be among the world top 10

Is this really a persuasive logical argument?
Maybe logic is not your strong suit.

While I agree Iyama might not be in top 10 at the moment (I don't like his fuseki in all the 7 games in this Meijin final), it definitely doesn't mean that he never has the potential to hold a top-10 position.

For example, I can also say that the moment he beat Park Junghwan and Mi Yuting (both games are like 1-side games to me), he was definitely in top 5, if not top 3.

Disclaimer: I just try to use the same logic as by78, I don't really believe Iyama has ever been in top-3.

I thought Iyama was behind from even earlier, when he spent 2 moves to capture the 3 stones at the top right. If you look at other pro games with that opening (with white double 4-4s is most simular but maybe they don't have p4 peep or with some 3-4 does make quite a difference) black doesn't play there before making a presence on the left half of the board. Judging the ko trade was harder as 1) even if Takao answered the threat and then connected Iyama's result there wasn't amazing, 2) Maybe some other choices in the threat fight, 3) hard to judge the result where Iyama netted the 3 stones but seemed not bad for Takao.