For about 30 minutes now (Japanese time), 10 year old Nakamura Sumire [Wikipedia English, Japanese] has been the youngest professional Go player in the history of the game in Japan. I'm really looking forward to following her progress, but I guess it'll be quite hard to do so here in the west because after the initial hype there will probably be little information on her games (which are bound to be some pre-pre-pre-qualification tournaments which are usually not covered somewhere we westerners have access to). So I thought it would be a good idea to open this thread in the hope that all interested Go players can share their findings in one spot.

I'll start with a few links and videos from the inauguration last week on 26 March:

Asahi Shimbun [English language edition], 27 March 2019: License in hand, go prodigy Sumire turns pro at 10 years old
NHK News Web, 26 March 2019: 10歳でプロ入り 囲碁 仲邑菫さん「世界で戦える棋士に」
Mainichi Shimbun, 26 March 2019: 仲邑菫さん「世界で戦える棋士になりたい」新入段者に免状授与日本棋院

Youtube, 26 March 2019: short Video from the inauguration

I haven't yet found anything about her upcoming first games (date, opponent), but I guess it'll be published when the time has come.

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I see the Japanese page for Sumire is at https://www.nihonkiin.or.jp/player/htm/ki000496.html.
The google translation on that page says "Entering the year 2001". Huh? What does that mean?

It's just the machine translation being funky. The original Japanese is "平成31年入段。" which means "Became pro in 2019 (Heisei 31)." There's no mention of 2001.

If I understand this tweet correctly, then Sumire will play her 1st game on 22 April.

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Correct, but you might not get to see it then. This is the Ryusei, and the normal procedure there is to play in a tv studio (and the winner immediately plays a second game there as these are fast games), the game being broadcast only some weeks later. I expect an exception may be made in this case but we will need to wait and see. The fact that the game is unusually being played in Osaka (where Sumire lives) already suggests special provision is being made for Sumire so that she can go to school. This school issue will no doubt affect much of her scheduling.

Sumire's opponent will also be female, a 16-year-old likewise making her debut: Omori Ran, a Tokyo-ite.

When the game does happen, Sumire will break Fujisawa Rina's record of 11 years 8 months for the youngest player in a Japanese pro event.

Thanks for the additional information, John! It's sad we might never get to see the game, but I also guess that since her case is special, there might be a few differences. We will find out soon enough. Let'S see how much she grows until 22 April
(I found that information from the articles on the Shodan ceremony hilarious that stated she'd grown 1.5 centimeters or sth since they announced her promotion to pro on 5 January)

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This should be part of the preliminaries, which are not broadcast. Hopefully, the results and game can be published immediately. The timing is a little unusual. On the Nihon Ki'in site, we can see that the earliest preliminaries (at the bottom of the page) last year were played in the last week of May.

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Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

If I understand correctly the information given at the link below, the game will be broadcasted live, with commentators. It seems that it is necessary to pay to have access to the live feed though.

https://www.igoshogi.net/igopremium/liv ... ae627994a5

As ez4u pointed out this is a preliminary game and so is not usually broadcast. But there's an interesting other difference, the logic of which I've never understood. The main broadcast games are played at 30 seconds a move plus 10 x 1 minute, which gives a nice rhythm suitable for the audience's attention span. But the prelims (A and B incidentally, so Sumire, in B, has a long climb ahead of her) are at 1 hour each including 5 x 1m byoyomi.

The broadcast games are later posted on the Igo-Shogi Channel website in replay mode minus the commentary. But we have ubderdude!!!

The game finished a short time ago, Sumire-chan lost to Omori Ran, who consequently won her debut game after 174 moves by resignation.

Here's a (Japanese language) report on the game: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20190422/k10011892431000.html
And another one: https://www.sankei.com/west/news/190422/wst1904220021-n1.html

They also held a press conference after the game and the media attention was crazy (as had to be expected, still... ^^;): https://twitter.com/miyazaki_dragon/status/1120246631855583232

I haven't found a game record yet, but maybe someone can help out here.

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I uploaded my understanding of Mimura 9p's commentary (up to move 110 or so) here: http://eidogo.com/#1JTrcBN0w
First recorded comment is at move 26.

His original video commentary is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgBecHZ9zpU

(How to have a SGF embedded here? I think that should be part of the FAQ, but I couldn't find any explanation).

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Sorin - 361points.com

Put either the sgf file content itself or a url to it (which for eidogo is /sgf/<id>.sgf) inside sgf tags.

Thanks a lot, sorin! I only found a weird Yourube video where some guy (he already sounded a bit older) talked on Japanese with what sounded like a female computer voice. Apart from the fact that he judged Omori as strong, I cpuödn't understand a thing..

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Thank you Uberdude!



Mimura 9p also praised Omori's game, as she played steadily and won convincingly. He called her very talented.

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Sorin - 361points.com

Are they sure that Omori is only 1-dan? It felt like she played better than AlphaGo Zero! That or promoting Sumire to professional status is a rotten idea.

Nice to see Iyama is no longer the only target of your affection.

She's a newly mint pro so on paper 1-dan, but most likely that will change soon.

It is hard to draw big conclusions from only one game, though.

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Sorin - 361points.com

Nakamura Sumire was doing "opening ball ceremony" for Tokyo Giants before a baseball match.
Source: https://www.yomiuri.co.jp/kaigen/news/2 ... YT1T50221/
https://m.weibo.cn/status/4367164363948194#&video

I also see her name in the M'Lily Cup World Championship qualifiers match at the end of this month. M'Lily Cup is the tournament in which Ryan Li beat Chen Yaoye a year ago. Sumire was in one of the Female's Group and in the first round she will play Wang Chenxing, who just became a mother and semi-finalist in the Go Seigen Cup. The draw may not be so good, but I believe it will be Sumire's first international appearance and good practice opportunity for the future.

Sumire has won her first pro game.

In the 2nd Wakatake (Young Bamboos) Cup, which is for players under 40 in the Nihon Ki-in's Osaka Branch (where she is based), she beat Tanemura Sayuri 2-dan in Round 1.

In Round 2 she lost to co-pupil Muramatsu Hiroki 6-dan despite having briefly reached a position where AI said she had a 90% winning rate.

(The games in this event don't count as official career games BTW.)

The biggest unresolved question is how, as an Osakan, she came to be given a special Tokyo Giants uniform (number 15) and not one from Hanshin Tigers. But at least her presence at the ball game, tossing out the first pitch, meant millions more Japanese will be reminded of go. And she proved to be a good-luck charm, too - the Giants won 5-1. (She's a rightie and doesn't throw like a girl!)

It appears Nakamura Sumire played another game against Hideyuki Sakai.

https://twitter.com/yoshiro_kaba/status ... 3733928961

Looks like it's this one (from wbaduk broadcasts):



I didn't find much info about the game to crosscheck but should be correct.