In order to explain to someone your level, an easy way to express what 12k or 6k is, would be to convert it into "belts" like in judo, which people are more familiar with.

If we assume that dan level is "black belt", how would you choose to convert go rank into belts from white to brown?

Whilst everyone is likely to associate 'black belt' with 'really good', I'm sure I'm not alone in having no idea about the others!

I don't think that people are anymore familiar with the chromatic scale of judo (lower down than black belt) than they are with kyu ranks. It seems easiest to me to say that 1d is like a black belt, and he give 9H to a 9k, and a 9k gives 9H to an 18k, and an 18k gives 9H to a complete beginner.

AFAIK belts represent being able to do certain techniques, and are not about fighting strength. Go ranks on the other hand are all about strength. So I'm not sure how useful that comparison is.

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Sanity is for the weak.

Well, some management techniques involve a logic of belts in the same way as Judo (green, black and sometimes yellow):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma
So, I would tend to believe this is somehow something which is quite well-known. Maybe it does depend from country to country.

Depends, not in Brazilian jiu-jitsu for example.

When I was practicing judo as a kid, you didn't go from one belt colour to the next, but you'd get "stripes" added to your belt. Those were in the colour of the next belt (e.g. a white belt with three yellow stripes meant you were about to get promoted to the yellow belt). I however have no idea if that is commonly done so or if that was just something my local judo school did back in the late 70s. Using a system like this would allow for the white belt to be equaled to 25kyu (or whatever you want to use as "knows the very basics of how to play a legal game").

I always assumed that "black belt" would be pro level -- in the spirit of the book First Kyu, where there are no amateur dan ranks.

I guess the colours aren't universal across martial arts? Though I guess it seems judo is the default. My memory suggested the sequence as red white yellow green blue purple brown black.

Also, I'm sure I've heard of teachers "awarding" go ranks based on knowledge as well as game results ; also I am under the impression many martial arts gradings have sparring components for at least some levels.

Ultimately; a pretty good analogy?

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Revisiting Go - Study Journal
My Programming Blog - About the evolution of my go bot.

Yea, this might be true in the past when dan meant pro dan. But now we have amateur dans.

Possible analogy:
amateur 1-dan = shodan = beginning dan = accepted to university
kyu = warm-ups = getting ready = pre-university education

In this analogy, to make black belt 1-dan means exactly: accepted to a university (which is not bad, but not great, yet )
If one does not continue to study after reaching 1-dan, it's like declining a university education.In this analogy, therefore, people who think black belt 1-dan as 'really good' are, shall we say, slightly misinformed.

just as a side note, are you all aware that belts in martial arts actually represent kyus and dans? not much converting needed. only go has more kyu grades

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Spilling gasoline feels good.

I might be wrong, but probably not.

I've never done martial arts, but knew some people who had, and I "knew" that it went white, yellow, orange ...stuff...brown, black. I don't study jeopardy or trivial pursuit or anything, so I think it's pretty common knowledge.

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Occupy Babel!

Make it 3 ranks per belt and I completely agree with this.

I guess there must be variation between different martial arts and probably also between different countries, but my impression was always that there was a huge variation within the realm of black belts, so that an "ordinary" black belt was simply incomparable to an advanced one, in the same way that an amateur low dan is simply incomparable to a professional 1 dan. Unlike an ordinary professional 1 dan, who is a huge underdog against a top pro, but still has a faint hope if they play.

Shorter version: there are < 2k go professionals (and not many more amateurs who are their equal). There are a lot more than 2k black belt martial artists, right?

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Occupy Babel!

Did you notice you inadvertently overload the meaning of "2k"?
Correct. That's why (meaningful) dan rankings are, well, meaningful/useful.

Not until this morning when I read you quoting me, and I thought "2 kyu professionals?!"

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Occupy Babel!

There's two points in regards to martial arts belts. There are often degrees of black belt in many Korean and Japanese systems that are referred to as "dan". So you could look at a 1st degree black belt (often called shodan in Japanese systems and ildan in Korean systems) and compare that person to, say, a fifth degree black belt. Naturally, one would expect the 5th degree to be more advanced in terms of skill and knowledge. This is not the say that the 5th degree is better able to apply whatever art that's being looked at, since there are many other factors other than just rank that would figure into that.

However, in some arts that have large competitions, there also tends to be a difference between a person who competes at a high level and one who does not, even if they have the same rank. I know that in Taekwondo and Brazilian Jiu-jitsu (the two martial arts I am most familiar with), there's often a distinction made between a competitor belt rank and a hobbyist belt rank. In BJJ, it's often said that a top competitor purple belt is about equal in skill to a hobbyist black belt. Of course, this is a generalization and simplification, but I feel like there's something similar in regards to the difference between amateur and pro dan ranks.

My experience with martial arts is limited, and I have the dubious honor of being one of the few people to ever break a bone practicing aikido. One thing I recall however, is that when one got a new belt, one got to keep it. If go ranks were like that, it would remove a good deal of the anxiety. Someone will probably want to remind me that rank anxiety is immature contraproductive, but my kgs rank just squeaked past 5k for the first time in 9 months and I'd be quite happy with a belt.

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Patience, grasshopper.

I agree with the first statement, but why is judo the default? I simply thought that color schemes varied across different martial arts, and that there was no default.

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be immersed

Probably because it was the first to adopt the dan-kyu system from go, the first to have colored belts to reflect those grades, the first to achieve wide international recognition (is there another martial art in the Olympics?), etc. I assume that's what Loons meant.