On the day 4 game cast of the Mindgames there was an amusing exchange between commenters Chris Garlock and Michael Redmond, 9P. Chris, alluding to the strength of one of the Chinese players, referred to him as a "nine dan" and Michael immediately inserted/corrected "world champion" implying that there was a significant difference. And, of course there is. There are many active 9 dan professionals, but only a small percentage of them have won an international title. Clearly, Michael holds that achievement in great regard. Nice to see, really.

Chris's retort at being corrected was to laugh and say something along the lines of, "Well, you're 9 dan, so we'll give this one to you." A funny, telling exchange, in its small way.

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- Brady
Want to see videos of low-dan mistakes and what to learn from them? Brady's Blunders

I remember seeing a commentary by Michael Redmond at a go congress where he mentioned that there were "Class A" 9-dans like Cho Chikun and "Class B" players like himself. Even at the top they still have a pecking order.

In some ways, the two have gotten a lot closer in recent years, at least in Japan: most 9 dans will be those who won a big 7 title, challenged for a big 3 title or reached second place in an international tournament. The Chinese and Korean systems are even more stringent (http://senseis.xmp.net/?KoreanPromotionSystem, http://senseis.xmp.net/?ChinesePromotionSystem)

As you can see from the new rules (http://senseis.xmp.net/?NihonKiInNewPromotionSystem), there are other paths, but if you don't make one of those marks, you have to reach 7 dan and then accumulate an additional 350 wins.

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Sorry, I just noticed that I posted this to the wrong sub-forum. If an admin desires, please feel free to move it to General Go Chat. Thanks.

[Admin] done (tchan001)

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- Brady
Want to see videos of low-dan mistakes and what to learn from them? Brady's Blunders

I'd say you could even split them further just thinking about Japan. A player like Yamashiro Hiroshi 9p has never won a big title but came close (e.g. 4-3 against Kobayashi Koichi in 1992 Kisei) and has played in the leagues of the big 3 titles many times and challenged for them, whereas Michael Redmond has never made it into the leagues (though got close in the last few years and when he visited the UK said getting into the leagues was his aim now). So that'd put Yamashiro as a B-class 9p and Redmond as C-class.

Clearly, there is a difference between these "Uber 9d pros" and "regular 9d pros", and we can further break the grouping down into "A-level", "B-level", and "C-level". But to me, it seems somewhat arbitrary. If you want to be that specific about things, develop some ranking system, rank all of the pros from 1 to N, with one pro per rank. Then, the person at rank 1 is a "1st class pro", person at rank 2 is "2nd class pro", ..., person at rank N is "N class pro".

I think it's admirable that Redmond admires pros that have had a lot of success, but being pro in itself is an achievement, and being 9d in itself is an achievement beyond that, not to mention the titles that pros can earn. We could create different categories for "World Champion" and the like, but I don't see the purpose. To give an analogy, you could say someone has made an achievement in obtaining a PhD. Then you might say, there are those that have gotten PhDs, and then there are those PhDs that have many widely cited publications. Then you could say, "Well, this guy not only has publications, but he's also won the nobel prize!"

I think it's good to respect and honor the achievements that these guys have made, but I don't see the point in drawing lines in the sand to say that "these guys are good, but these guys are awesome!"

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In China, the magazine Weiqi Tiandi seems to have a ranking for all the Chinese pros with scoring which seems to be based on their cumulative performance. With this ranking, you know which ones are the current top pros and which ones are not doing quite so well.

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This makes sense given that there are several routes to 9p. Each is respectable in its own way, but it's easy to see how they might differentiated from each other in practice. Yamashita's 9p (a 3 grade promotion granted because he was reigning kisei) might be seen as different from Redmond's (who fought his way up through the Oteai), which may be different still from a pro who had accumulated many total wins over the years. Each way is an accomplishment, but each way may symbolize something different.

Indeed Weiqi Tiandi has such an annual ranking list.

A different angle: if we look at the annual income of each of the pros, that would make another ranking list,
and this list may or may not coincide with the former.

For example, Japan may have the fewest international titles in the past decade,
but if we look at the annual incomes, maybe the top Japanese pros would still come out on top.

Another angle: if we do a survey and ask the current pros who in their opinion
are the "top level" pros, we likely will come up with yet another list.
(For example, before Fujisawa Shuko passed away, his name and Go Seigen's
might have been included near the top of this list if we surveyed the current Japanese pros,
even though neither Go Seigen nor Fujisawa had been fighting in recent tournaments.
Thus, "top" pros like Takemiya Sensei and Takao Shinji were still attending
Fujisawa's Go special training sessions.
Similarly, in China, Nie Wei Ping and other "older" pros could still be on a "top" list,
if we surveyed the current Chinese pros.)

Analogous to ranking the current top pro tennis players,
versus the current "top" pro tennis coaches --
To reach the top as a pro tournament tennis player, that's one level of understanding (and one set of skills).
To help someone get there, that's another set of level and skills all together.
To help many people get there, not just one or two isolated cases, yet another level.

So it really depends on what exactly we're trying to compare and rank.
"Top pros" can have different meanings depending on who we ask.

Fujisawa documentary

I guess my original point was more about respect than deriving alternate rating systems. If one person told another that I had just received a lesson from a pro, I could see myself jumping in and exclaiming, "9 dan" to clarify the pro's strength. It was nice to see a strong pro do effectively the same thing with respect to a world champion.

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- Brady
Want to see videos of low-dan mistakes and what to learn from them? Brady's Blunders