The Asian New Stars Match has started--China and Korea will play Tuesday to determine the winning team. http://igokisen.web.fc2.com/an.html

Taiwan lost badly so far, (1-7, 1-7). Japan did ok against China (3-5) but lost badly against Korea (1-7).

Murakawa Daisuke, who's we've mentioned before, won against Gu Lingyi. That's quite a good win for him.

I don't actually know the cutoff for participation. Several 9 dans are playing, and Anzai Nobuaki is 25, so that suggests it might be an under 25 tournament, but that's just a guess.

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Occupy Babel!

Does anyone know how participants were selected? I recognize that Japan changed almost the whole team after last years debacle. (With clear losses against Korea and China, and a loss against Taiwan as well.)

PS This is a question, I don't know the reason for the changed team composition.

Tapir: is that conjecture, or do you know that the team was changed because of the results? I just ask because I all but one of Japan's 2009 wins came from players who are not competing this year, and you wouldn't want to drop Iyama Yuta.

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Occupy Babel!

The Go News page at senseis says Korea beat China 5-3, but I don't have full results.

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Occupy Babel!

According to Tom.com (http://post.weiqi.tom.com/s/1B0009042823.html), this year's competition featured teams representing 4 cities: Hangzhou, Seoul, Tokyo and Taipei. In the last round, Team Hangzhou split the 8 games with Team Seol, but lost the match as the result of the team captain losing to Team Seoul's. Team Taipei took the third, after beating Team Tokyo 5-3.

I don't know what the deal is with the cities. Looking at Japan, Murakawa is a Kansai Ki-In player--no obvious Tokyo affiliation, and the list just looks like more or less the under-25 players you'd want to pick to make a team.

Losing to Taiwan these past two years is a new development for Japan, but doing poorly in youth matches isn't an isolated phenomenon. By chance, I looked at the Ing World Youth Goe Championship a few days ago, and found that in 27 years, the Japanese have never won either the junior or senior divisions. That's really remarkable: while the Japanese trail the Chinese and Koreans in general, they at least do sometimes win international titles, or the WAGC. In contrast, they're constantly behind in the youth competitions.

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Occupy Babel!

that 3 of 5 lost games against taiwan were 0.5 wins probably doesn't help. the ambition is probably not to be close to taiwan but to succeed against china and korea. what a pity.