My (soon to be) wife and I will be moving to Korea in November. Maybe we'll have a kid or two, stay quite a while, and you'll have your first non-oriental world champ?

The World Amateur, probably. There have already been some high finishing Europeans.

_________________
"Those who calculate greatly will win; those who calculate only a little will lose, but what of those who don't make any calculations at all!? This is why everything must be calculated, in order to foresee victory and defeat."-The Art of War

According to her SL page she has alternated between representing Taiwan and Australia. This surprises me because I thought that in most sports you had to declare an affiliation to one country at the representative level and could not switch back and forth.

_________________
Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

Dr. Straw, it's a relatively common occurrence here: sometimes the issue is representing a professional association, sometimes it's citizenship. Cho U has represented Taiwan, Rui Naiwei recently was going to represent China, and so on. I believe it just depends on personal preference, public pressure, and the rules instituted by the tournament sponsor.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

born :26 May 1994 Brisbane, Australia
At age of 4 moved to Twaian with family.
At age of 6 learned how to play go. 2 years later 1 Dan amature
2005 Moved to Sandigo, California with family
2008 Moved to Tenjin, China.
2008 07.20 became pro (second place)
2008 Mind olympic top 8 player and lost to Park jieun.
2009 October entered Kawangjew Asian game representing Twian
2010 Entered representing Austrlia.

this is her background.
she currently hold dual citizenship.
i am not sure but i think twian didnt let her represent so she choose to enter representing Austrlia.

_________________
"The more we think we know about
The greater the unknown"
Words by neil peart, music by geddy lee and alex lifeson

This was being bandied about as an amateur playing in a tournament, but she's a pro.

-

That's why it is in the professionals forum?

It is more about the exciting games and success of a player to whom people from the Southern part of the globe, or in Southern California may refer as one of them and may be encouraged to start playing.

Baduk.or.kr seems to provide an article about her. But I can't read hanggul so if anyone could be so kind to translate it for us, I'll be really thankful.

http://baduk.or.kr/news/homenews_view.a ... 13&frpg=MN

_________________
My personal go blog. Covering tournaments, tsumegos, and interesting games http://unlimitedgo.blogspot.com

Technicalities? Are there no age requirements for "pro" status?

Didn't Cho Chikun turn pro at like 10?

_________________
Tactics yes, Tact no...

There is, i think, that you can not be older than certain age to become a 'pro'. The line was 18 years old in China, but then they give 2 places to under-25 every year for those who missed 18 yo requirement.

_________________
长考出臭棋.

It pretty much depends on the country. 18 is often quoted as the cutoff, but I don't think it is that hard of a limit.

_________________
Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

One thing I am curious about in this thread is the name "Missingham". She is obviously ethnic Chinese, as is shown by the way the tournament was reported. But most ethnic Chinese do not have names like "Missingham". Can some explain this anomaly?

_________________
Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

Her father is a caucasian Australian.

_________________
"Those who calculate greatly will win; those who calculate only a little will lose, but what of those who don't make any calculations at all!? This is why everything must be calculated, in order to foresee victory and defeat."-The Art of War

Then where does her Chinese name come from?

_________________
Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

It's not uncommon for mixed western/chinese children to be given both a western and chinese name, though one is usually unofficial and may never see any use. It's also not uncommon for chinese living in western countries to adopt a western name (and for their children to have two names).

_________________
19/02/2011: this grumpy person takes a voluntary holiday from L19.

Yes, unfortunately, because people are too lazy to learn to pronounce anything.

_________________
"Those who calculate greatly will win; those who calculate only a little will lose, but what of those who don't make any calculations at all!? This is why everything must be calculated, in order to foresee victory and defeat."-The Art of War

Yes. Because it sure is easy to pronounce chinese characters you've never seen, and the proper accents in an accent based language that you've never encountered, and sounds that your language lacks.

We should all just learn to pronounce all writen languages, just like you, to avoid being lazy.

I think this attack is totally uncalled for.

_________________
Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

Perhaps my smiley at the end didn't make it clear, but I was being rediculous. You know, overstating something, for humourous purposes.

However, failing at that, I'll endeavor to come up with a more constructive way to state this.

I find it odd when people automatically assume westerners are lazy because they don't learn to pronounce things in other languages, jargon from other languages, etc. I understand, yes, we Americans in general do put too little effort into understanding the linguistics of cultures we're interacting with. On the other hand, assuming that the reason Chinese residents of english speaking countries have alternate westernized names is because people are too lazy to learn to pronounce their language/name/whathave you, smacks of an unfair assumption.

It was to this unfair, 'westerners are bad people' assumption to which I aimed my comment.

I don't know. Maybe our fair nagano is a master of several languages, and truly feels that all us mere mortals who become tongue tied when looking at old english pronunciations, let alone languages which have letters which have no english equivilant sound, or, are constructed of vowel sounds that are often merely accents of the same vowel sound, should stop being lazy.

Of course, I appologize if I offended anyone.