Today my father asked me about go during lunch, and when he asked me about the competitive scene, I was pretty much stuck for an answer. I can name the seven major Japanese titles, and know the Fujitsu Cup and Samsung Cup are big international titles. I know that the winner's purse for some of the big titles can be quite large, but I had no idea how large that actually is. Apart from some well-known players, that's about the extent of my knowledge of professional go. So I decided to do some studying. What you can find below is my attempt to find a general structure in professional go, based mainly on tournaments (and their prize money), in order for me to understand it better, and enjoy it more. These are conjectures on my part, and I expect they might contain quite a few mistakes and misconceptions, which is why I'm posting it here. If you notice I'm way off on something, please correct me.

If you don't want to read the entire text, you can find some of my questions at the end of this post.

First off, there seem to be 4 countries that have professional go bodies, namely Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan. These countries each have their own domestic tournaments and titles. Apart from that, there's international competition, which consists of a few very large tournaments hosted in either of these 4 countries. I assume it's mostly in China, Korea or Japan, and almost never in Taiwan. I couldn't find statistics on that (or more precisely, I have no idea where to look for it), so am I correct in assuming that Taiwan is mostly left out of the hosting loop?

Japan
The second thing I noticed is that go tournaments either carry a traditional-sounding name like Meijin or Honinbo, or are named after sponsors like Samsung or Fujitsu. That's seems like a horribly unscientific way of dividing up tournaments, but it will serve my purpose for now, which is to learn more about professional go. For some of the big Japanese titles, these tournaments with "traditional-sounding names" evolved from a historical reality, like the Meijin being the title given to the strongest player in the land, or Honinbo being the name assumed by the head of the Honinbo house (one of the four go houses/schools/families that received financial support from the Japanese government). When the historical reality to which these titles referred faded, they eventually turned into tournaments. So here are the big seven Japanese titles, with the winner's purse added in US Dollars. That prize money will obviously be influenced by exchange rates, but my brain isn't wired to think in won, yuan and yen at the same time. Dollars also allow us to compare these prize pools to other competitive disciplines. The figures below are the result of comparing the winner's purse on sensei's library, wikipedia, go4go and gobase, and my subsequent butchering of the old Chinese maxim "If 3 people say there's a tiger in the market square, it must be true" to mean the exact opposite of what it was meant to. Anyway:
- Kisei 579,934.27 USD
- Meijin 463,947.42 USD
- Honinbo 412,397.71 USD
- Tengen 180,424.00 USD
- Oza 180,424.00 USD
- Judan 154,649.14 USD
- Gosei 99,233.20 USD

In Japan, much of these 'big seven' titles are sponsored by newspapers, that hope to improve their circulation because they include the game records of these title matches. There are a lot of other domestic Japanese tournaments as well, but the combination of their prize money being substantially lower (with the exception of comparing it to the Gosei title, which is the financially least attractive of the big seven) and their possible historical meaning makes people consider these seven titles as the most important ones in Japan.

There's also the NHK and NEC cups, which bring us to the second category: tournaments that obviously borrow there name from their main sponsor.

Korea
One thing that's immediately noticeable when comparing the domestic tournaments between the 4 go-playing countries, is that there's quite a few similarly named ones. Take for instance, the Myeongin title in Korea (or the Mingren in China): does this name equally corresponded to a historical reality, or was the name simply borrowed from the Japanese tournament? On the other hand, there appear to be different titles that refer to a historical reality not present in Japan, namely Kuksu (or Guoshuo for China), meaning something like 'national treasure', which I suspect was used in a similar way as Meijin was originally used in Japan, namely to denote someone of exceptional skill.

Also, while there seems to be a general agreement as to what the big domestic tournaments are in Japan, I found it much more difficult to identify the most important ones for Korea, China and Taiwan. I suspect the 6 candidates for Korea are the following:
- Myeongin 92,760.08 USD
- Kuksu 37,104.03 USD
- Chunwon 18,552.02 USD
- GS Caltex 46,380.04 USD
- Prices Information 18,552.02 USD
- Siptan 23,190.02 USD

China
For China, I found five possible candidates for major titles:
- Mingren 15,651.17 USD
- Tianyuan no idea : No single amount was repeated in two different sources. I found 20.000, 50.000, 150.000 and 200.000 Chinese Yuan as possible prizes. (So ranging between 3,130.38 USD and 31,303.80 USD)
- CCTV Cup 12,521.52 USD
- Chanqi Cup 62,607.61 USD
- Quzhou Lanke Cup: sources vary between 150.000 and 500.000 Yuan (so between 23,477.85 USD and 78,259.51 USD)

The question of what constitutes a big title for China was even more difficult for me to tackle. Because I suspect Mingren does not carry the same historical weight as its Japanese counterpart, and the prize money is abysmally low, I can't figure out why it would be included in the list of major titles. Of course one needs to include economic differences between the three countries mentioned so far. 1000 USD will get you much more in China, as compared to South Korea and Japan, which are considerably more expensive countries to live in. The discrepancy does seem somewhat too large to use that as an explanation for the low prize money of the Mingren. It also seems like some of the bigger tournament prize pools are reserved for games on very fast time settings. This might be the case for Korean go as well, and serve as some explanation for why games from Chinese or Korean players involve much more fighting.

Taiwan
Possible candidates for major titles include:
- Guoshuo 10,273.24 USD
- Tianyuan 27.3953 USD
- Wangzuo 13.6977 USD
- Mingren 10,273.27 USD
- Qiwang 34,244.23 USD
- Haifeng: 17,122.12 USD

International
The following are the prize pools for the big international titles:
- Ing Cup 400,000 USD (Big Title)
- LG Cup 231,900.19 USD (Big Title)
- Samsung Cup 231,900.19 USD (Big Title)
- Chunlan Cup 156,511.67 USD (Big Title)
- Fujitsu Cup 193,311.42 USD (Big Title)

Apart from the prestige of winning an international title, these winner's purses are much higher than for the Korean and Chinese domestic tournaments. One thing I've heard more than once, is that a combination of the still larger winner's purses for domestic Japanese titles, and the international titles using much shorter time limits to which Japanese professionals are less wel-adjusted, might make a Japanese professional less inclined to set his sights on an international title, and work harder for domestic wins. If that was the case, it seems like something I would like to know about. Also, while economic differences may explain some of the different prize pools between China and Japan, it doesn't really explain why the Japanese Meijin title has a winner's purse five times the size of its Korean equivalent.

Questions:
- Does Taiwan host international tournaments?
- Does Myeongin or Mingren refer to a historical reality in Korea or China?
- Is Kuksu in Korea, and Guoshuo in China used in the same way as Meijin was in Japan, namely to denote someone of exceptional skill?
- What constitues a major title?
- Is there agreement on what the big titles are for Korea, China and Taiwan? Who decides that?
- Especially in the case of China, why is the Mingren considered a major title?
- Is there a cultural preference for shorter time settings in China and Korea, and does this affect the playing style of their players ?
- Might higher winner's purses for domestic Japanese titles make Japanese professionals less inclined to focus on international titles?

I find professional go to be a fascinating subject, and I would be greatly indebted if you could help me improve my understanding of some of its inner workings.
Thank you very much for reading.

All of this and much more can be found on the GoGoD CD.

There's a distinction between the 3 major japanese titles (Kisei, Meijin, Honinbo) and the 4 smaller ones. For example winning one of the 3 major titles is an automatic 9-dan promotion, but winning one of the other for "only" promotes you to 8 dan: see Nihon Ki-in promotion system.

In the international tournaments, there is also the BC Card Cup, and the Asian TV Cup, which is blitz. Have you seen Mr. Kin's Go News? http://igokisen.web.fc2.com/news.html

Questions about players' motivations, style, etc. from country to country are going to be very hard to answer. I think if you search the L19 history you will find some discussions about this.

This question about motives is hard. What is clear is that top Japanese professionals are less likely to compete in international tournaments. Part of that is seeding--there are fewer seeds for Japanese players thanks to past performance, but you also see few of the top players in the preliminaries, compared to China and Korea.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

Most first-group and second-group Chinese players, about 60 people, are getting money from League-A.
If win a chief game (one chief game, two normal games, one blitz game in each round) the player can get around 50,000 Yuan, and other bonus.

What are the other grounds for a 9p promotion?

It was at that link, but you can win 200 games as an 8-dan or win the minor titles twice.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

Taiwan used to host an international competition, the short-lived JPMorgan Chase Zhonghuan Cup.

Also, an interesting tidbit: the Honinbo title was actually sold by Honinbo Shusai for personal profit, with none of the money going to the Ki-in. This scandalous act set off a famous tirade by Go Seigen against his rival Shusai.

I'm curious why you think this is "famous". The interview has only been reported to the online western go community.

It is, however, biased. Go didn't benefit because he remained outside the Nihon Ki-in, but the Nihon Ki-in and its players got enormous benefit from the tournaments run by the papers that bought the titles. Also a fair amount of the money paid for the titles went to Shusai's pupils to compensate them for loss of earnings they could have expected had the old system stayed in place. And it's not really clear that the Nihon Ki-in ever did anything much for Shusai.

See "The Meijin's Retirement Game" for a fuller (and, hopefully, balanced) account.

It's beyond doubt that Go Seigen is a Go genius. A common mistake is to believe that such genius stretches to moral or even intellectual superiority on all domains. Geniuses are not necessarily lunatics either, but we shouldn't deify a genius in any field but for his skills in the field.

Another common mistake is to make moral judgments on acts in a distant era both in place and time. First of all, we weren't there, so we don't know the sequence of events for sure, let alone the motives behind them. Secondly, our moral values reside in a culture and are not absolute (well, I know this can lead to quite an off topic rant, but let it then be my belief that systems of belief are ephemeral).

Labeling Shusai's decision as "scandalous" is at least ignorant of those aspects and at best a sign of sympathy with Go Seigen, which is, again forgivable given the man's tremendous accomplishments in the world of Go.

You will find many acts in different cultures or timeframes which seem horrible or scandalous, looked at by modern Western eyes, but which at the time were perfectly understandable to at least one party. John Fairbairn gives a few reasons why we should be cautious with such judgments. Perhaps Shusai saw modern times coming and made an incredible sacrifice of tradition in favour of a prospering world of Go. If the outcome has been benificial, we can give Shusai the benefit of the doubt that he had it all figured out. After all, he was a Go genius too.

I don't see the transfer of the Honinbo title to the Nihon Kiin as a bad thing at all. This gave the Nihon Kiin legitimacy in uniting the Japanese Go World, it allowed the sponsoring newspapers to sponsor tournaments through one entity, and it allowed younger players a better opportunity to shine.

For those who want to see a piece of history regarding the establishment of the Nihon Kiin, you can check my blog entry here.

_________________
http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

First off, sorry for the somewhat late reply. I'd like to thank all of you for your replies.

On the international and domestic titles
Of course. I recently purchased the summer 2011 edition of GoGoD, and I'm ashamed to confess that apart from the excellent onomasticon which I use quite frequently, I mainly thought of GoGoD as a lot of sgf files. There's a lot more there than just that though, as I've been discovering these past few days. The tournament info is quite helpful for some of my original questions.
It's one of the pages I visit daily, though I've recently started downloading pro games from go4go, because those have better name tags for their sgf files. Mr. Kin's site does remain my main source for Taiwanese go, and games played in preliminaries in all four countries, as go4go doesn't usually allow downloads for those.
Thank you for mentioning this tournament.

On players' sources of income
You make a valid point. In looking at prize money for professional tournaments and comparing these between countries I had totally overlooked these domestic leagues.

On players' motivation and style:
I was wondering if there are some general trends one can notice (of course there will always be individual exceptions). I read around on L19 and SL a bit more, but haven't gotten much wiser. There doesn't seem to be a straightforward answer to this one.
On Honinbo Shusai
As both John Fairbairn and Knotwilg pointed out, gaining a better understanding of these matters will take some serious intercultural and historical research. I have a copy of 'The Meijin's Retirement Game' waiting to be read, and should perhaps shift it to the top of the read-me-queu. Thank you very much for including a bibliography. Why other go-books choose not to include one is beyond me.
That was an interesting post. You mentioned that you haven't uploaded high-resolution scans to preserve bandwidth, any chance I could get my hands on those? Translating those documents would be very good exercise for my Japanese.

Except that none of them is in normal Japanese

They are in Chinese or bungo, and some are in squiggly - Japanese as written by a demented spider escaping from an inkwell. (At least none are in kanbun). Apart from very different grammars, the character set is much, much bigger, and standard dictionaries don't help (e.g. 馺 is not in the big Nelson; Morohashi of course has the character, but it doesn't give the go reading, which is hane - you'll see it in Meiji/Taisho-era commentaries). By all means give it a whirl, but do be aware that the experience most people have on an initial encounter is like driving into a brick wall.

Since players' incomes have been mentioned here, you may wish to note that there is some current controversy in China about international winnings. My reading of the situation is that dissatisfied players in traditionally feisty Shangai have fed a line to the press about how half their money is "stolen". The resulting stories have upset the powers that be. The players in fact get only 60% of their winnings. 25% seems to go to the general government body in charge of all games, while 15% is shared between local organisations and trainers (and since trainers are a big part of the Chinese international success, you can't argue with the latter slice). I don't think the Chinese players are actually quibbling with that, but I'm guessing that their international winnings are rather bigger than those of xiangqi, bridge and chess players, and so they may see themselves as subsidising those other games. Maybe someone the spot can shed more light?

This tiny example of almost western style democracy + free press reminds me of the funniest story of the week for me: Chinese officials appear to want to clamp down on one of their most successful tv shows ever, something like the X Factor or Simon Cowell's "talent" spotting shows, where the public decides the winner. It seems they've become alarmed that ordinary punters in China might this acquire a taste for being able to vote for something!

A very colourful description, I must say. I studied classical Japanese for two years at university, and we have a copy of the Morohashi (or as we affectionately refer to it: 'the Green Mile'), as well as various dictionaries of classical Japanese at the university library (which anyone can use during office hours). I figured that I will never get any good at reading Japanese texts (modern and classical), without actually picking one up and working my way through it. That being said, your description about brick walls was very similar to how I remember my first encounters with the Genji Monogatari or Taketori Monogatari.

Is there any chance for an amateur to be able to participate in the international tournaments?


Like I heard there are smaller tournaments that decide who goes up and plays the real thing.

Win the World Amateur Go Championship and perhaps you might get invited.

_________________
http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

What about LG cup? I saw that amateurs play there at the preliminary or what ever it is (I don't know how it works).

BC Card Cup, LG, and a few others all have big preliminary tournaments that amateurs have entered.

I find one of the most fascinating aspects to be the difference between Held Titles and Tournament Titles.

The Big 7 Japanese titles and most of their emulators are defended directly by the title-holder against the selected challenger.

Something like the Samsung Cup requires the previous year's winner to still play in the tournament. He or she could be eliminated in the first (non-preliminary) round and a new champion crowned who never sat across the board from last year's winner.

It's a vastly different system and style. In terms of style and culture you could also take a look at how time-limits are applied in the various matches.

- Marty Lund