Hello colleagues,

Any ideas who is the current world champion of Go and where the next fight for the tittle will take place? I have been searching a lot in Google and couldn't find a thing

Thank you very much!
Best Regards
Stefany

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Stefany, web programmer

This is a great site to see the current state of all the titles: http://igo-kisen.hp.infoseek.co.jp/news.html

There is no single "world champion" title the way there is in chess.

Unlike chess, go doesn't really have official world champions.

Lee Changho, Lee Sedol, and Gu Li are all pretty strong, you could look them up.

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There is no single world championship tournament in go. SOmehow what I would call international tournaments have come to be called world championships but there are many of these tournaments.

Probably the closest thing to a world champion tournament is the new Super Meijin, in which the winners of the top national titles in Japan, China and South Korea compete. However, the tournament was set up unfairly, partly because there were an odd number of players. Admitting the winner of Taiwan's top tournament would have solved the problem, but no doubt China wouldn't have that. More useful would be a list of top players:

1. Lee Sedol
2. Kong Jie
3. Gu Li
4. Lee Changho

All of these have often been called #1, but it is far from certain which really is.

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"Those who calculate greatly will win; those who calculate only a little will lose, but what of those who don't make any calculations at all!? This is why everything must be calculated, in order to foresee victory and defeat."-The Art of War

Kong Jie deserves a lot of credit for having four international titles this year.

I like that there isnt a world championship go match. in chess world there is always some kind of dispute and even some injustice to have a world chess champion.

in go just follow who wins more tournaments and other players ... and that's your TOP player.

I prefer that.

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si no puedes triunfar, muere gloriosamente

What disputes are there in chess now? The title has been reunified since 2006.

My personal opinion is that a Go world champion is needed, since Go would advance in ways that would be better. All the people that aren't world champion would improve drastically in order to have a shot at the title. You could market the game more if you had one person that was world champion, rather than multiple people who are "strong".

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There isn't a unified Go Rules, not to say a world champion.

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长考出臭棋.

I too think it would be good to have a Go World Champion and that it could help promote the game. But if we can't have that, it would be nice to know who is the current top player by ranking at least. Some would say this is more meaningful then a world title anyway, as is sometimes the view with chess's Magnus Carlsen.

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There isn't a unified ranking either. At best you can evaluate different players' performance at international tournaments, but most matches are played outside of those.

There is a world amateur champion though: http://www.nihonkiin.or.jp/amakisen/wor ... esult.html

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actually i've thought about this not long ago. it would be possible to build up a database (my idea was based on european go database, as i am most familiar with that) where would be profesional games played in CKJT and internationaly and so all players would be rated and ranked.
it is very well possible someone already tried this.
there could be little trouble with a good supply for the games, but if there wouldn't be anything better, Mr. Kin's page could be sufficient at least for the top players.

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Spilling gasoline feels good.

I might be wrong, but probably not.

Yep - here's one from 2006 and one from 2008.

Unfortunately, the ProGoR always seemed suspect to me. I've spoken up for Japanese players many times, but I think it's clear that the results on the international stage don't justify the many high ranking Japanese players. I suspect that the number of international games is small enough that you'd need to tweak the algorithm to deal with these relatively self-contained cohorts. No idea how you'd do that, though.

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Thank you very much, guys. It is a pity that the Go world do not have a world champion, but things change, you know

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Stefany, web programmer

I just want to agree with nagano's list. The best go player in the world almost certainly one of those 4. I posted a somewhat similar thread here:

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=1377

Interesting... I looked at that other thread, and I see you put Chang Hao at #5, which I was going to do, but left it off because I was uncertain. For instance, some younger players, Park Junghwan in particular, are quite strong. Chang Hao probably deserves the spot at the moment, though somehow I think not for much longer.

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"Those who calculate greatly will win; those who calculate only a little will lose, but what of those who don't make any calculations at all!? This is why everything must be calculated, in order to foresee victory and defeat."-The Art of War