So I see somebody updated senseis to say that she made pro last year - anyone know if it is true? The Ukranian Go Fed. website didn't show anything on it...

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North Lecale

The Hanguk Giwon site has her as 1-dan from 27 December 2012. I haven't checked but I have a sneaking feeling that makes her the youngest ever western pro (born 1995-02-16), depending of course on how you view the status Joanne Missingham.

But a caveat is that she is listed apart from the other 1-dans under the heading of "guest professional", so maybe she got an honorary award.

Thanks John. It sounds like an honorary title then, but nice news all the same. I wonder why it wasn't announced more widely? (Or did I just miss it?)

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North Lecale

A Ukrainian news source has an interview with Mariya: http://uago.org/2012/12/%D0%BC%D0%B0%D1 ... %BD%D0%B0/

It says that she was indeed awarded 1p on special conditions, for being a foreigner. However, the demands were more stringent than ever. To get the diploma, she had to get into the strongest group of the female insei, i.e. become one of the 6 strongest female insei in Korea. No European woman has achieved this before.

Go Ukraine!

Here's an article on it: http://baduk.netmarble.net/News/News/Bb ... &cateid=42

Basically if you translate what it says, Mariya was 5th kenkyusei in the top group (which is very good).

So a committee in the Hankuk Kiwon met up (12 out of the 14 people), and decided that she could be a special foreign pro. This makes her the 5th such pro after Janice Kim, Alexander Dinerchtein, Svetlana Shikshina, and Diana Koszegi.

The committee also decided to combine the genders of groups in the kenkyusei. Before they were separated by gender, and now they have 5 groups of 32 with mixed gender.

Great job, Mariya (not from the text, but my comment).

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be immersed