How do you think 9dan amateurs would hold up against pro players?

The same as amateur golfers against pros, or tennis players. The pros play for blood and money, amateurs for fun.

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Usually a 1 dan pro is just better than a 7-8 dan amateur. Most association amateur rankings don't go to 9 dan; that's only for online servers.

I think of the ranking system like this.

[30-21k] - Beginner
[20-11k] - Novice
[10-1k] - Intermediate
[1-7d] - Strong amateur
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[1-9p] - Professional

There is a gradient here. And then there is a gap. A professional is in a whole new class.

That is not to say that strong amateurs never pose a challenge for pros, but as TMark says the game is very different when you do it for a living.

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"You have to walk before you can run. Black 1 was a walking move.
I blushed inwardly to recall the ignorant thoughts that had gone through
my mind before, when I had not realized the true worth of Black 1."
-Kageyama Toshiro on proper moves

[30-1k] - Nothing
[1-3d] - Beginner
[4-5d] - Intermediate
[6d+] - Strong
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Professional Players.


On a more serious note, when you look at KGS: The 9-dan's there are all either professional players or korean ex-"inseis", as far as I know.
I don't have the link right now but in one European Go Congress, I think, Ilja Shikshin 7-dan EGF (8-dan KGS) played on 2 stones against a pro and lost, when I remember correctly.

Yes, they are really that strong =)

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Namii (Juri Kuronen, EGF 6d) and Tien (Antti Tormanen, recently minted EGF 7d) both have 9d accounts as of now, the latter recently got question-marked though. On another note, Juri mentioned me yesterday Sakai Hideyuki:



(emphasis mine)

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Well, winning although giving too much handicap in a 10 second blitz-game is an achievement, too, but I wouldn't put them on a level with other 9-dans, who play and win mainly against 7-9-dans.

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

Well, I think they just don't play that much non-blitz on KGS. So I can't really tell if they could play with longer time settings and still get their 9d, but to be fair most of the 6d+ games I've seen in KGS are blitz or almost-blitz.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

I'd be interested to hear why non-6d+s think that most 6d+s like to play blitz games.

Yes, 9 dan is quite vague, but you can get a lot of information just by looking at the AGA ratings. Strong ex-asian insei are often as good as the best (long-term) American amateur players (Bi Jang, Francis Meyer, Beomgun Cho vs. Jie Li, etc). There are few resident professionals that those players can beat, but if you look at active professionals, they are almost always stronger. In particular, Zi Yang Hu just qualified in China, and he's better than any non-professional in North America.

You can see similar phenomena in Europe (http://europeangodatabase.eu/EGD/create ... dgob=false).

This doesn't mean there are no competitive games between the top western amateurs and Asian professionals. There are, and the amateurs get their occasional win. But they are very much occasional (http://senseis.xmp.net/?AmateursVersusProfessionals).

In the East Asian countries, there is some overlap between the very best amateurs and new professionals--that's just intrinsic to the system, since there are many players competing for very limited spots. And there's a general belief that new professionals are better than the ordinary professionals of yesteryear in China and Korea, because the level of play has been rising recently.

Still, if you look at the best professionals and the best amateurs in Asian countries, the story is the same. The best professionals are far ahead. Here's some evidence from Japan http://senseis.xmp.net/?ProAmHoninboMatch.

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It's not that simple. In some cases what you have is a very strong amateur that made a choice, is doing something else for blood and money.

Thus were I grew up there was a very strong amateur theater company, all people who had made a choice, "am I going to be an actor or a doctor, or a lawyer, or whatever". More recently, near where I now live was somebody who had to choose "am I going to be a jazz musician or the CEO of my company" (but he got to sit in with any major groups appearing in town -- except when his workers were out on strike against him).

I think what you might mean is compared to top pro ranks (and the judgement that they were not going to get to those might have influenced their life choice). Thus in golf, amateurs that can challenge the top pros rare (though there have been a couple in golf history) but amateurs better than the average pro not uncommon. It's why golf holds some pro-am tournaments.

I hope you are not referring to me with this comment. I just said most games I have observed from 6d+s are blitz. It's not the same, at all.

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You or anyone -- preferably non 6d+s -- can respond

What do you think the reasons are for 6d+s often preferring blitz games over non-blitz games? For example, if you were a 6d+ choosing a game type, why would you decide on blitz most of the time?

Note that open tournaments occur in Go as well and some amateurs have a good record.

There are cases where amateurs did beat professionals. aguilar, 6d-kgs, did that, I think even more than once. So I think you cannot say across the board that pro's are stronger than amateurs. I think top amateurs can beat Lee Sedol with 2 HC stones quite regularly. I tend to believe that the whole seperate pro-ranking-system is just an act of promotion, because you wouldn't pay money for lectures or be "impressed" if you learned that Lee Sedol is just one degree better than the best amateurs in the world.

I'd be interested in a match-up "10 best amateurs vs. 10 best pro's" (no insei's or almost pro's allowed as amateurs) to find out if amateurs can win against pro's with 2 HC. That would clearify lot about the strength of pro's comapred to the amateur ranking system.

@pippen: there was this.
Iirc Lee Sedol got all the American pros down to 2HC and then the match suddenly stopped.

Anyway, I'd say top Korean amateurs are probably stronger than American pros (or European pros, once we'll have some).
And afaik the big tournaments don't require you to be pro, anyone can enter. (Not sure about this, but at least wiki page on Samsung cup says so.)
So in a way amateurs can already compete with pros on equal footing.

But in general I agree with the "pro rank stands for 'promotion'" idea. There's also the problem of "inactive pros". Afaik it's hard to lose your 9p rank, which doesn't make sense to me. (You should have to defend it regularly, otherwise it's meaningless as a measure of strength.)

But that is perhaps different than the the original question. The question isn't whether the top pros are better (and how much better) than the top amateurs but whether the typical pro is better (if at all) than the top amateurs.

Well, I can't be sure, since I'm neither 6d+ nor I like blitz games. An educated guess is that amateurs that are very good at something don't really enjoy stretching their abilities to the maximum unless absolutely needed. It's like... don't know, an amateur soccer player. While not in training or a match, they'd rather play a pick up game than play a tiring match that will deplete their energy (forget about injuries heh). Actually the same argument can be used for professional players.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

I don't think there is a gap between amateurs and pros. For example, Sakai Hideyuki has been mentioned already. He won the WAGC twice and then decided to become a pro go player. He was already a graduate of medical school and made a career choice in favor of go. The relevant thing here is that he started as 5p in the Kansai Ki-in by playing a match with a 9p player. He defended that ranking in tournaments afterwards so, essentially, he was 5p strength when he was still an amateur. Kikuchi Yasuro, also a winner of the WAGC, was widely considered to be of mid-level pro strength. He never became a pro though his go school has produced some Japanese big title holders. I think the winners of the WAGC are in general of pro strength, probably stronger than 1p. And the winners of the top Japanese, Korean, and Chinese amateur tournaments are probably all of professional strength and probably stronger than 1p. It is not unusual that people do reach professional playing strength as amateurs and choose not to become professionals. As has been discussed often on these message boards, it can be difficult to earn a good living as a professional player so it may well be a rational choice not to become a pro. It is difficult to make a general comparison of pro strength versus amateur strength. We've seen statements to the effect that Korean 1p players are stronger than many 9p players. I think that is probably an exaggeration but it is certainly true that the playing strength of pros of the same rank varies considerably. In any case there is no sizable gap between amateur high rank players and pro 1p players.

One place it has been discussed before:

http://www.361points.com/blog/2010/03/2 ... l-players/

Think of it as a Venn diagram where the edges barely touch. Sure, the very best amateurs can play with the pros, and no doubt there are current pros who would lose to current insei. But both of those are small groups, and basically the exceptions that prove the rule.

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