No one was called 9dan except the Meijin until well after 1940.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

Well, I don't think that the original note was very specific. The thread is about modern professionals, not just the top players, and how they are rated. My point was that the 9 dan rating has been inflated. OTOH, I don't think that the pro shodan has been inflated. It may even have been deflated.

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The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

I come up with an analogy: Newton doesn't know various progress in math and physics (e.g. the theory of relativity) and might not be able to achieve a higher score than a math/physics student in college nowadays, but he is still a great physicist and mathematician (and regarded like a saint).

Ah, I think that's where our different interpretations come from. I read "underrated" in the thread title not to mean is their rating (9d) too low, but as in under appreciated for the level of their skill. (I don't think the OP is a native speaker).

Yes, I think Bill has taken the title of the thread rather than the content of the OP, which certainly was questioning the ability of top modern players to compete with the greats of the past.

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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

Cho Chikun published an essay "昔より現代が強い" (roughly: Compared to the past, modern [players] are strong). Although historical players were strong and worthy of study (Cho liked Shuwa's Go as a young student), they lacked sufficient high-level competition to push them to their limits. This idea of the smaller pool of players has already been mentioned by others in this thread. Cho wrote that this can be seen when studying their games, but I will have take his word on that.

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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

The larger size of the pool does not necessarily translates into a higher level of top performers. It might be that larger pool induced more top level players per generation, but can it account for the level of those few who rose to the top?

Remember, we are not talking here about the spread within a random sample of people, but about a highly selected and dedicated group.

What are the limiting factors for a top level player? Here is how I see it:

• Natural talent. Today it is probably easier for talent to be recognized, but there is no reason to believe that no top talen was ever recognized in the old days. So I would assume that the top players of the past were every bit as talented as the top players today. There might have been some talent that went unrecognized, but such is life.
• Human ability. I would assume this has not changed.
• Dedication and motivation. I would also assume this has not changed.
• Accessible knowledge. This has changed, so you might have a point. But this is why Bill stipulated to give the old-timers a year or two to catch up.
• Level of available competition. This too has changed. But this too might be balanced by a few years of catching up.

The only other factor I can see, all else being equal, is how early one started to seriously learn and train. This might make a difference, but it is hard to tell to what extent. Can one say that today's pros start playing substantially earlier than in the old days? Or, maybe better - can one see a correlation between how early one starts learning and what level one reaches among today's pros?

All in all, personally, I see no forcing reason to assume today's pros are substantially stronger than the past masters. Both groups raeched he abolute top of human abilities in the field, and since this ability probably did not change, the comparative level probably did not change neither. "Comparative" means taking into account and correcting for the difference in overall development of knowledge and general theory.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Actually, all other things being equal, I believe a larger size of pool translates into a higher level when you are talking about absolute numbers. To give a simple example of this, let's consider math ability. To be the best mathematician in my hometown might not be that hard - the population is small. But to be the best mathematician out of all of China is a different story. With so many people, there's a much greater chance that someone is better than you.

So generally speaking, if you are talking in absolute numbers (top 1 person, top 5 people, etc.), larger population translates to higher level.

Percentages are a different story. If you want to be in the top 10% of a distribution, it might be similar difficulty to be in the top 10% between populations of different sizes.

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be immersed

It has already been mentioned that Fujisawa Hideyuki had a high opinion of Shuei's go. Here's a quote from SL (and Go World):

"In Go World issue 24 (March-April 1981) Fujisawa Shuko stated that:

...[Shuei] was the strongest of the Meijins and Honinbos. There were many strong players, like Shusaku and Shusai, but I definitely think that he was stronger than those two.

and

He had superb positional judgement. There's nothing unnatural in the flow of his moves... I always have the feeling that I'd be no match for him... I'm far below his level, but I like his go. The brilliance of his play from the fuseki to the middle game is outstanding.

These appear to be Fujisawa's true feelings and not just modesty since after two more questions he also says that no Japanese player is currently a match for him and that his go is on a higher level than that of his potential challengers for the Kisei title."

In 1981 Fujisawa was in the middle of his domination of the Kisei title and could arguably have been the strongest player in the world, certainly in a class with the Korean Cho Hun Hyun and the strongest Chinese players at that time.

This only holds if the pool size is small enough to be the limited factor. I don't think this applies in this case. I think that the limiting factors are the ones I mentioned in my previous post - and I have explained why they do or do not matter in the present context.

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Let me explain some more, if you are interested.

While you might be able to say what you just did, you cannot say, for example, that the best mathematician in your city today is better (in sense of talent, since knowledge grew independently, and we do not talk about that) than all the past mathematicians from your city, just because more kids go to school there. Just like you cannot say that there never was (or is) somebody in your city as talented as the most talented Chinese, in any field.

When you think about it, history is full of countrexamples to what you say... To give just a few:

- Albert Einstein was born in Ulm. Ulm is today bigger than when he was born. Do you think this translates that Ulm produced more and bether theoretical physicists since Einstein's birth?

- Has Vinci (in Florence, Italy) produced more and better geniuses than Leonardo DaVinci in the past few centuries since DaVinci's death? Has the whole Province of Florence? The population grew by many multiples. And so on...

Anyways... The pool size only translates into higher level of top performers if you assume that larger pool size affects including or not including the absolutely most talented people - because this is what we talk about, the tops of the tops. My assumption is that, over the years and even centuries, some of the most talented people simply must have made it into the pool of Go players.

In this sense, larger pool size only accounst for more of the top talents being included today (or less being missed), but not necessarily for the fact that the most talented players today are more talented than the most talented players in the past.

The only way what you say would be true is that throughout history the pool size was so small that *none* of the top talents learned Go, they were *all* missed because of the small pool size. If even *one* of the most talented people of the past became a Go player, your statement is wrong. For this reason I do not see how you can support such statement.

I hope my point is clear now.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Actually, the pool size is much larger for the past players than for today players, I think. You compare one generation - today's generation - with many past generations combined. And while today's generation is larger than any single past generation, it is not larger than the combination of all past generations. And this is the cumulative pool we are talking about.

(My apologies, it just occured to me. Maybe should have added it to the previous post instead.)

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

I think you should read what I wrote before arguing against it.

I am saying, "All other things being equal" a larger pool leads to greater chance that the best players will be a part of that pool.
So for your "counterexamples":

- Albert Einstein was born in Ulm. Ulm is today bigger than when he was born. Do you think this translates that Ulm produced more and bether theoretical physicists since Einstein's birth?
> Einstein was born in 1879. All other things being equal, if Ulm has a greater population in 2015 than in 1879, there is a greater chance that "the best theoretical physicist" is born in 2015 than 1879.

- Has Vinci (in Florence, Italy) produced more and better geniuses than Leonardo DaVinci in the past few centuries since DaVinci's death? Has the whole Province of Florence? The population grew by many multiples. And so on...
> All other things being equal, there is greater chance that the smartest "genius" is born at a time when the population is the greatest.

Anyways... The pool size only translates into higher level of top performers if you assume that larger pool size affects including or not including the absolutely most talented people - because this is what we talk about, the tops of the tops.
> All other things being equal, greater population is more likely to include the "top of the top".

---

Maybe I am being pessimistic, and maybe you really did read my post when I wrote all other things being equal. Then let's simplify things and talk about something less abstract than talent.

Suppose you have 1000 marbles, each a different shade of red. You split the marbles into two piles - one has 10 marbles, and the other has 980 marbles.

You want to find the marble that has the darkest shade of red. Which pile gives you the best chance of finding the darkest marble?

All other things being equal, the pile with 980 marbles naturally has the best chance of including the darkest marble.

OK?

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be immersed

Maybe so. But again, that is not what I am replying to. Please read what I write. I am responding only to the idea that a "larger size of pool does not necessarily translates into a higher level of top performers."

I have already said in this thread that I think the question has too many unknowns.

Therefore, I am not arguing for or against modern professionals.

It doesn't matter to me if you don't read what I write, but if you are trying to argue with it, please read it.

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be immersed

It's a completely hypothetical situation so everyone's answers can be different. I personally would pick Park Junghwan or Ke Jie right now over Shuei in his prime. This is not a question we can ever get an answer to.

If it has been proven that modern pros would be stronger than historical ones simply because they are ahead of the learning curve, then would it not be of more benefit for the current amateur to study games by the pros of our time than to study games of historical pros? Of what benefit would it be to study Dosaku, Shusaku, Yasui Chitoku, or even Shuei? Even the Chinese masters Huang Longshi, Fan Xiping, and Shi Xiangxia would be considered optional rather than mandatory for aspiring Go players.

The Go-playing population in China, Japan, or Korea is substantially larger than the current combined number of Go players in Western countries. Therefore in those East Asian countries the likelihood of finding top Go talent is greater.

I have never been someone interested in those bar-room conversations based on picking the best ever teams from past players in a given sport, or arguing about whether player X is better than player Y. But I do think there is great value in studying the past, and possibly even more than in studying the present.

The point about stories of pros saying they study a certain old player is that the player is someone considered worth studying, not that he is an old player. Pros say they study Dosaku, Shuei or Huang Longshi. They don't say they study Honinbo Tetsugen or Cheng Lanru. They very rarely even say they study Shusai, Shuwa (or Zhou Xiaosong, the "Chinese Shuwa"), Jowa, Shuho or Fan Xiping, even though large collections of their games exist.

The players who are deemed worth studying are those who have made a significant and discernible contribution to the theory of the game. At the time they made their discoveries, they thus stood out from their peers. This means their contributions can be more easily seen against a backdrop of weaker players. More recent players may have absorbed these contributions, but they have all absorbed them and it is now next to impossible to detect them in games between modern players.

That is why the list of studiable players is both small and fairly fixed: Dosaku, Shuei, Go Seigen, Huang Longshi, with Shusaku maybe edging a place.

There are occasional reasons to study other players. For example, when a student plays well but passively his teacher may recommend a purgative course of Jowa, say. A too-low player may be advised to study Senkaku. Or some pros like to go back to the ancients in the hope of finding new ideas.

But for the most part D, S, G and H are the main curriculum, and whether any of them could beat Gu Li or Yi Se-tol today is beside the point. As psychologically interesting as their games or as innovative as their josekis may be, Gu and Yi have seemingly made no contributions to go theory worth studying yet. As far as I can see, the only modern player whose games will be worthy of study in theory terms when the dust settles 50 years from now will be Yi Ch'ang-ho, because he seems to be the only one mentioned as a player whose games have already been studied extensively by pros in such terms.

In the meantime, D, S, G and H are pick of the crop, and of those Shuei does seem to garner most votes from pros who do study the past.

Btw, I've asked a few young Korean pros if they studied old Japanese players like Shusaka. The answer was no. They did study Go Seigen's games though.

From what I've read from articles, Japanese young pros have stopped studying the old famous players for the more modern games. I think the big reason is more books of modern player in the last 20 years and then follow that up with same day game records of the biggest matches going on.

One book I like is "Shikou no Ketsudan". It's a Japanese book where Komatsu Hideki finds opening positions from various famous games in the past and asks Iyama, Yamashita, and Yoda what moves they would play from that position and why. For this discussion, Yoda knew many of the games, since that is what he studied. Iyama and Yamashita did not recognize the games.

As a side note, I know that some old joseki have been refuted and are no longer joseki. So one potential disadvantage of studying older games is that they might use some of these suboptimal joseki.

OTOH, it can be instructive to study the evolution of style over time, perhaps.

If 200 years ago, everyone played X, and later people started playing Y,mit gives you something to think about.

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be immersed

this question was clearly answered when Sai came back to haunt Hikaru, and then proceeded to defeat the strongest modern player of all, Meijin Touya.

Why are we all still talking about it. Just watch that documentary Hikaru no go if you want all the details.