I'm fascinated by her progress and I want to thank John and everybody here for contributing news and games and achievements for those, who can't really get this information because of the language barrier.

I think both factors, age AND (unfortunately) gender are noteworthy aspects. Even though female pros in Japan are on a roll atm this nothing to take for granted. One day, I wish to experience the same thing in the west, too.


I'm actually not that surprised that attitude makes such a difference. Of course I can only imagine it, but since at the pro level every game is incredibly tightly played (amateur games especially in the kyu but probably in the low dan ranks as well tend to tend to tilt mostly because of some kind of larger mistake(s)), attitude must be an important factor.

Maybe I should replay some of her games from last year and from this year. I seem to be in a similar situation like Sumire in the last year (though much, MUCH weaker, of course!), and probably would benefit of trying to get a feeling of this change of hers. But I guess I'll start with the Doctor's video first. Thanks for linking it, @pajaro!

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This "attitude" reference seems to have struck a chord with some people, so it seems worth sharing another one, this time by Takao Shinji on Ueno Asami. The occasion was the handover, on 12 March 2021, of the winner's diploma and Docomo Cup to Asami as the Women's Kisei.

Takao is the national team coach and he remarked there that Asami has already shown her mettle on the go board but recently, in line with her character, she has been starting to play more peaceful go, and so her horizons have been able to expand. Despite the calmness Takao spotted, Asami herself revealed that the match (with Suzuki Ayumi) was really hard and on the eve of Game 2, already one down, she had a dream that she would lose, and so she was fretting and felt like giving up - but she got an upset victory.

It was on a different occasion but around the same time that Asami revealed another reason for her return to winning form. I don't believe Takao would have ever spotted it, nor 99.99% of people here, who are all male I imagine, but like most of the ladies she has been playing with a pony tail (I assume it's easier when you have to wear a mask), and there is now a phrase "ponytail go". But Asami noticed that she was losing when she had a pony tail and changed back to a bob. She started winning again.

So all you guys out there, stop "invading" and "punishing" of course, but above all, if you really want to improve, get rid of your pony tails.

Incidentally, some of you may have noticed from other threads that I've been working a lot on old Chinese go vocabulary recently. What is special about it is that it is the words of the masters themselves. It is not the literary gushings of an amanuensis nor the dumbing down of a journalist.

One of the dominant - and I mean VERY dominant - themes is safety, expressed by a handful of words that all, in a sense, amount to honte play but are expressed in an "attitude" way rather than a "shape" way. Some examples off the top of my head of recommended ways to play (often several times in each commentary): 稳 'for safety', 自在 'to set oneself at ease', 安逸 'to gain peace of mind'. There are others a little more "shapey" such as settling a group or moving out into open pastures, but fundamentally they too are about attitude. Very revealing, I think, Far from the usual image of old Chinese go as mad fights. But, if you think about it, if you FIRST get yourself into a safe position, you THEN fight very robustly simply because you are not risking much.

As far as I know they hadn't yet discovered the pony tail tesuji. But nor did DeepMind. One for humankind!

New win today in the prelims of the Judan against Mitsunari Horimoto 5p.

There is a risk to think "one more, what is new now?" for us, the public. But every step is a hard fight. I wonder, what thoughts must be in her head? I must win? It's just another one?
The next one is the last of the prelims. Then, comes Preliminary A. Even if she loses, at least next year she is going to be seeded higher.

I was just looking at Sumire's win in the Judan B/C Division. She beat Horimoto Mitsunari and so goes on to face Nakane Naoyuki 9-dan in the final of this division, in one of the "easy" sections in that it for the Osaka/Nagoya players. Sumire is now in the tougher Tokyo region but she still lived in the Kansai when this Judan term started.

So she is now on 24-2 for the year (92.3%) as of 13 May 2021, with a streak of 13 wins in official games.

All incredible, but what really caught my eye was that in her game with Horimoto, which was at 3 hours each, she used almost all her time (and Horimoto used all his). I instinctively assumed Sumire was a super-fast player, partly because she is just a kid and partly because she has played (successfully) quite a number of games with Mickey Mouse time limits.

I wish I'd paid more attention to her time usage before. Using the best part of her 3 hours or whatever could indicate both an ability and a willingness to spend time wisely (and suggest she is actually thinking as opposed to reading out intuitively), but this particular game was said to have swung back and forth more than once, even though she won handsomely by 5.5. Perhaps it was being a in predicament or two that made her play more slowly in this particular case. Has anyone kept tabs on her time usage?

I see she is still wearing my tartan for her face mask. What a canny lass!

I have not paid special attention to this, but I'd say that her time usage is the usual, according to the allowed time. Sometimes, I have thought more or less the same than you, it's hard for a kid to have patience, she's more likely to rush than an adult, and so on.

Now that you make me think about this... I don't know if the game with Yoshihara Yukari was her first one with 3 hours of time, but I think it was the first one I watched (when I say watch, I mean I have it in the background while I work) with this allowed time, and also with a time keeper. I was expecting her to play faster than Yukari, but she took her time to play. And also, she did what other players do: even when she is going to play the obvious move, she spent time reading the whole sequence that would come after, with the not obvious moves.

I like that suggestion, and it would fit her Kansai background - if you believe in stereotypes.

When I first started following go, long time limits were still the norm and there were countless comments or anecdotes about time usage. For example, Kada Katsuji was notorious for spending a lot of time in the opening, and 3 hours 54 minutes for one move was his record. That's far more than players normally get for a whole game nowadays!

Today, time is rarely mentioned at all. In the Mickey Mouse games a loss on time is only noted in the result. Once upon a time it would have been a major story.

But I suspect that, past or present time usage, is to some degree seen as a psychological too or weapon, either to psych yourself up (or down if you're too hyper) or to psych out the opponent, and so it still seems worth mentioning. However, the scope for making use of variations in time usage is probably not very great in the now usual games of 1 to 3 hours each.

There's hidden depths here: Making it difficult for your opponent to form good judgements is also an important skill.Tempting them to go wrong with their judgements is also a high level important skill.

All right, now I have to ask.

Say it once and I think "what? " But twice... What are these Mickey Mouse games? Games for new pros? First prelims? Some other slang that I don't get?
And what's the time limit for those games?

First I'll quote the Oxford English Dictionary on Mickey Mouse. "[as modifier] informal of inferior quality."

In Britain, at least, it is also connected with a phrase from Glasgow which describes systems that don't work, i.e. they are in Disnaeland (this disnae work, that disnae work; disnae = 'does not' in Scots).

In go I have applied it often to games that have ridiculously shortened time limits just to pander to tv (or, nowadays, YouTube type) audiences. I have not been alone. Many top pros have voiced their disapproval, most notably Cho Hun-hyeon. These games were especially common in Korea, which is why his disapproval counts for more than most. However, Japan and China also flirted with these MM games. But there has been a fairly large pushback against them. If anything, time limits are creeping back up even in the already slowish tournaments (e.g. 2 hours to 2.5 hours).

It's a subjective matter as to what constitutes ridiculously short, but as a rule of thumb if the players don't have time count properly at least a couple of times, they are unable to show the full range of their talents. Such games may be exciting for exhibitions and the like, but to award titles and promotions on the basis of such games has to be questionable.

The acceptable lower limit as far as I can judge is the old but still popular NHK format of 30 seconds a move plus 10 x 1 minute. The 1-minute sessions (which of course can be used consecutively) allow plenty of scope for counting. Such games tend to take about 2 hours. Games at 20 minutes each and 10 seconds byoyomi belong in Disnaeland as far as I'm concerned.

"Mickey Mouse" refers to fast games. A bit like Mc Donald's.

Thanks.

I come for the stones, I stay for the side dish.

Sumire went out of the 47th Meijin when losing to Komatsu Hideki 9-dan on 20 May 2021. That brought her score for the year to 24-3 (88.9%).

Komatsu is not one of the push-over 9-dans, and he said he had been looking forward to this first game with Sumire because he was friends with one of her teachers in Korea and had heard great things about her. At one stage AI put Sumire ahead but in the end she lost by 2.5 points. In a sense it was even closer than that, because, as Komatsu said, he won only because he had more ko threats at the end.

Everybody now: a big AAAAAHHhhhhhh.

Yes, finally, the winning streak came to an end. But still 24-3... no complains.

I read (meaning: used automatic translation + some other dictionaries) that she cried in the interview after the game. It has been discussed here before that she is still a child, and she really really likes winning. Takemiya said that she reminds him of Cho Chikun. Big words.

We also talked about her change in attitude, how her game is more balanced, and that led to a number of wins. This may be true, of course, but I think that this loss (and a few more) will help her too.
Her attitude in the game has improved, but probably her attitude in competition must improve too. When you win a lot (sometimes by pure luck) you tend to think that you can't lose. Or worse, that you shouldn't lose. The pressure increases. She has to learn this. When she became a pro, she lost a lot. But quite suddenly, she started winning a lot. No transition time when she wins some, loses some...

I think that at first she was overwhelmed. She was never an insei, she didn't pass the pro exam... probably, she was quite protected. But opponents show no mercy.

Don't worry. She will be tough as steel when she plays her first 2-day game.

She played Yu Yiming twice at the end of 2019 and lost. Yiming is of course two years older, which is a huge advantage at such a young age.

Today has played her first game in the Kisei C league.

She lost to Tomochika Mizokami 9p. From what I could understand, she didn't seem too upset to have lost, and she is more focused on playing well rather than winning or losing. Good attitude.
She will play at least two more games. I'd say that one win would be a success. Keeping the seat might be too much to expect.

I found this an interesting contrast to Osaka Naomi who is in the news today for refusing to talk to the press. In some ways I'd say Sumire is even more under media scrutiny than Naomi, and yet she sweetly answers the same trite over an over again. In this latest game the interviewer asked her about a powerful move she missed. I gather (from press reports) that Naomi's reaction o such a question would be to burst into tears and rush off her to sports psychologist. As I understand it, allowing any word equating with "loss" into the brain is seen as a trigger for actually losing. So she has to avoid anyone who may say the L word. This despite taking all the money given to her for a contract she has signed and obliges her to talk to the press. But she can afford to pay the fines. What an unhealthy attitude. I've noticed before, tennis seems to bring out the worst in people. I went to Wimbledon once. Never again.

Sumire's reaction to the L word, i.e. the move she apparently missed and caused her loss, was simply: "I noticed it but..." Doesn't seem to say much, yet we all instantly recognise the moment, which is usually 2 milliseconds after you've played the duff move. Such a simple way to relate to the fans.

For those who don't know, the C Division of the Kisei League operates on the principle of a maximum of 5 games but once you've lost three you drop out. Sumire was ahead against Mizokami 9-dan, a former title holder, so there's no reason yet to be pessimistic. Mizokami's first title was the Phoenix & Chicks Tournament. He said his appearance in this year's Kisei was his first league game for yonks (which meant he was really trying), so here he was playing the phoenix against Japan's most famous chick.

Is this chick in the youngster sense or the young lady sense?

When I see such strange names I always assume that it's just the sponsor's name. Might be a fast food chain selling fried chicken (just guessing wildly).

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A good system naturally covers all corner cases without further effort.

I'll answer this one, but it will be the last time. I'm sick of the self-flagellation that is required to try and keep some life in this dying forum, and so in future, unless there is some miraculous recovery of the patient, I will limit myself to announcements.

The P & C tournament was more fully the 仁風会鳳雛戦 or the Benevolent Wind Association's P&C Tournament. The BWA was the successor to Kitani Minoru's "Saturday Kitani Club." When he died, his wife continued it, but when she died in 1991 it was continued, in both their memories, as the BWA, the BW being from a Han Emperor's remark that "a benevolent wind has an effect for 1,000 years." It was a favourite phrase of Kitani Minoru, and he used to sign boards with it, including one of the boards used in the famous Kamakura games. He also gave BW an unofficial reading of jinfu, as the expected reading jinpu would normally be understood as 'squall'.

The P & C event ran from 1992 for 9 terms, and was won by the likes of Cho U. It had an unusual format. Proper pros up to 5-dan played each other and inseis, though pro-insei games were played at no komi, and between pros the lower-ranked always took Black. It was unusual also in that the final was a public exhibition held in the Takagi Bonsai Museum.

The phoenix was Kitani and the inseis were his chicks. As a way of nurturing young talent, it was replaced in 2004 by the Nakano Cup.

The Nakano Cup was the brainchild of the head of the Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Modern Literature, Nakano Koji. He had been playing a game with the poet and sumie artist Kajima Shozo, watched by Takagi Shoichi 9-dan and the go writer Akiyama Kenji. Kashima is a pupil of Takagi. In the bar afterwards, conversation turned to how Japan's youngsters could catch up with the Koreans. Nakano declared that Japan's best young players were not coming through soon enough, in their teens. He backed up his opinion with an offer to fund a small tournament for teenagers. Go Weekly backed him, and three months later the show was on the road, in April 2004.

Regrettably, just before the first event was won by Seto Taiki, Nakano died, on 16 July 2004. Looking back now, it may seem that his venture has failed, but the next three terms were won by the then unknown Iyama Yuta.

[You don't get this kind of information on reddit.]

Since this will also be the last time I post new about Sumire, I'll leave with an apposite photo:

Very sad to read this... I must admit I'm on the pretty much reader-only-side, too, but I love this forum as a reader and always highly enjoyed your posts as they gave insights into the history of this beautiful game and the Japanese culture I'm much interested in that I couldn't have gotten anywhere else because auf the language barrier. I thank you so much from the bottom of my heart for all the information you gave us over the years, I'll miss those stories... Maybe, if you're still willing to share, you could write something for the European Go Journal or in some other way that is not frustrating for you? It'd be sad if no one heard those stories again..

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