I have created a table of the winners of the various international Go tournaments, colouring players from Japan/Korea/China/Taiwan in similar shades. I think it rather nicely demonstrates the rise of Korean and then Chinese Go over the years.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.j.s ... Table.html

Really interesting. I never realized that the period of "Japanese dominance" was so heavily associated with Takemiya (especially since he never did quite so well in Japan).

Awesome stuff.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

"...never did quite so well"? He wasn't Cho or Kobayashi when it came to winning, but he was six times the Honinbo, and Judan thrice.

His Asian TV Cup record of four straight wins shouldn't be a surprise; in Japan he was one of the best hayago players, amassing five titles and five runners-up in the NHK Cup, NEC Cup and the Tokyo Cup.

Right, that's what I meant. Half of the Japanese titles during the period of "Japanese dominance" were his, and to this day 1/3 of Japanese international titles. He never came close to achieving that kind of prominence domestically.

One other thing this shows is Yoda's good spell in the era of Lee Changho. He is one of the few pros with a good record against Lee.

The table looks familiar

It very much looks like Japan fell behind only after 2000, but then very much so. The other surprise to me is to recognize that Cho Hun-hyeon won most of his international titles after the period of dominance of Yi Chang-ho.

This may be mere word choice, but I read the table differently: 1992 is the last year Japan wins as many titles as Korea, and after that, only 1994 and 1998 are close to even.

After 2000, there is a marked shift for the worse, but Japan fell behind earlier.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

Yeah, I wanted to do it on SL but couldn't add the colours.

Cho's achievements are impressive, especially given he was almost 50 when he was winning all those titles around 2001.

thats actually really cool

This may still be quibbling over word choice but...I think from 1995-1999 it might be more reasonable to say that instead of Japan falling behind Korea, it was that the entire rest of the world was falling behind Lee ChangHo. (=

There's a 4-4-3 split between Korea-Japan-China, once you remove the dominant Lee ChangHo who won as many titles as everyone else combined (=



Edit:

Just to add some detail for better comparison -

From 1995-1999, you have Lee ChangHo who is clearly doing better than everyone else with 11 titles, and a couple others who are competitive (Cho Hunhyun and Yu ChangHyeok) who are achieving similar results to Yoda Norimoto or O Rissei. To me this suggests that on the whole for international competition Korean go is competitive with Japanese go, and additionally has one stellar performer.

If you look at the early 2000s, you have a much stronger case for Korean go being a step ahead, instead of having an 11-2-2 split amongst their titles holders, you have 3 or people who all are consistently achieving good results with a 6-6-4-3 split (Cho Hunhyun, Lee ChangHo, Lee SeDol, Yu ChangHyeok). This seems to indicate that Korean go has as a whole moved up a level in international competition.

Similarly if you look at the recent Chinese title split in the last 5 years you have 6-6-2-1, which I would consider more likely to suggest an overall strong program (two consistently winning at the top level, and two others competitive at the top level) as opposed to one superstar rising to the top.

Edit #2: Fixed name error pointed out by TMark

I know of no Lee Changhyuk (or Yi) but there is Yu Ch'ang-hyeok who would count.

Best wishes.

_________________
No aji, keshi, kifu or kikashi has been harmed in the compiling of this post.
http://www.gogod.co.uk

Ah, so it would seem...Thanks for pointing that out, I've fixed the name in my post to avoid confusion (and next time I'll make sure to proofread any posts made before that second cup of coffee (= ).

I think there is some insight to be gained by looking at the performance without the distorting influence of such a dominant player, but I don't think your way of doing it (by ignoring his wins) makes sense.

Suppose we credit Korea with 3 wins for Lee Changho, the same as the second winningest player of that period, Yoda Norimoto. Then Korea is well ahead. Alternately, we could give him 2 wins just like Cho and Yu, and our score is 6-4-3. Or, if we lop off the top player from every country, we get 4-1-1.

Or we could just say that excepting Lee Changho, Korea's players were about comparable with the Japanese and Chinese in this period, but that he was absolutely dominant.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

This is precisely the point I was making: