oops, i made my post in an attempt to explain 'Mickey Mouse' term used by John Fairbairn. i think my explanation worked and everyone could understand what was the meaning behind the term. if i imagined that one short part of it will be quoted and directly opposed five times, i would be twice as careful with my formulation (and i am always pretty careful) or not post at all and let it to the asked one.

i have no intention to convince you that Korean go can't be taken seriously because that is not what i think. i think Koreans are damn strong players and play damn good go, but i still believe they would play even better if they had longer time for thinking.

if we speak about tournaments with really short time allowances (say with less than hour main time), it surely needs strong player to succeed and it can be fun to watch the pro sweating, making mistakes and still playing great (though i do not find it so much fun) but unless i can watch it in real time, which i can't, it only produces mediocre to low-quality kifus, which i am not interested in

for me, one question would matter in this discussion: can weaker Japanese player with longer time limit beat stronger Korean with shorter time? i believe Japanese would win and therefore i study Japanese games (if any) and agree with longer limits being more desirable

so much for me

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Spilling gasoline feels good.

I might be wrong, but probably not.

John isn't entirely speculating--note how frequently he mentions commentaries on the older games (even in Japan, time limits are substantially lower now).

Also, I believe I have heard even Korean pros say that the current time limits are too fast.

Edit: God only knows why I wrote "entirely". Misplaced weasel words will be the death of me.

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Occupy Babel!

I think I pretty much agree with your viewpoint (though, the answer to your last question is not clear to me, so I can't really put much forth on that). And also, again, I don't think that the difference between time settings is as huge as people make it out to be.

And when it comes to studying pro games, I doubt that many people study the amount of time that went into the game. I mean, assuming that the senseis library link from earlier is accurate, if you happen to study an "NHK Cup" game, for example, you are studying a game that had much lower time settings than a game from a "Kuksu" tournament.

So you can get into grabbing the games with the maximum time limit that you can find, if you'd like. But it's really speculation as to whether it has fewer mistakes.

The only concrete evidence that you can really have are commentaries and game results... And even those are subject to question.

Besides, when you study a game, I believe that you should do it analytically, anyway. Try to figure out reasoning behind the moves played. You can do this with any game record that you have, and I don't think that your time is wasted, or that the study material is not valuable.

One thing that I do disagree with, though, is the idea that these pro games are in any way "mediocre" or "low-quality" kifus. Even if a game record is played under very fast time settings, it is quite bold for us to say that a particular professional game is of low quality.

We can't even tell if the 5 hour game records that we have are truly of better quality. At least I can't. And I'd be very surprised if anyone in this discussion could with consistent accuracy. The way some people talk here, it sounds like these kifus are like KGS blitz games. And I definitely think that this is not the case.

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be immersed

Kirby, you have to learn to differenciate between comments about Korean professionals, for whom we all have the greatest admiration, and comments about the trend for televised "Mickey Mouse" tournaments, which just happen to occur mostly in Korea. The sponsors pay for these because they want the televised excitement, but that excitement does not necessarily translate into games which will be studied for 100 years or more. I should know, because I have been transcribing games for the past 18 years both ancient and modern. Anyone who has been here for more than 5 minutes knows that you will respond to any perceived criticism of things Korean, usually with an over-reaction. Please, the next time, take a second look at the comments; you will not see anything critical of the professionals, only that they are being treated badly by the sponsors and are not able to produce the best that they can.

Best wishes.

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No aji, keshi, kifu or kikashi has been harmed in the compiling of this post.
http://www.gogod.co.uk

Kirby said

No, there aren't. Unless you want to be silly and argue about how long is a piece of string. If you take the year 2000 as a benchmark, Japan had 31 events with time limits of 8, 5 or 4 hours ("event" means preliminaries in some cases as they sometimes had different limits).

They had 4 events of 1,2 or 3 hours. They had 10 events of 10 minutes or less. Common sense tells us that 3 hours or less should therefore be considered "short". Korea also more or less matched that sort of distribution at that time.

The current situation is that Korea has a maximum of 3 hours. But only three events open to men have this limit. This is not "many" and as we've just seen it's on the short side anyway. Eleven events have even shorter limits. Five of them (if three is "many", that's "very many") are Mickey Mouse 10 minute affairs or less. Even as (supposedly) prestigious an event as a world championship (the BC Card Cup) has only 1.5 hours. Most amateur events here seem to allow at least as much time as that. Many Korean pros - admittedly the older ones but big names like Cho Hun-hyeon - have denounced the shortening of time limits (for reasons that include them being a crapshoot), but they are spitting in the wind.

Now go back to 2000 again. At that time, Japan was certainly not inferior to Korea or China in international results. They may not have been markedly superior any longer, but they weren't inferior. The most distinctive characteristic of games at that time was that they mostly had long time limits in all countries. In other words, there was a level playing field. I repeat, under totally level conditions, Japanese was not inferior.

Now one way a team can improve its winning percentage is if the goalposts are changed at one end. Far from this being a deliberate tactic by the Koreans or the Chinese, it could be said that the Japanese shot themselves in the foot. It was the Fujitsu that first made 3 hours the norm for international events. This, of course, was driven by mostly economic considerations of bringing foreign players in from long distances. Any sponsor in any country is governed by the same constraints. But the success and growth of international go attracted television and the internet. Given also the special conditions in Korea and China, where sponsorship was not as entrenched among newspapers as in Japan and was dicey anyway, it was inevitable that the pro organisations there would be attracted by offers from television, or from sponsors who hoped to get on television. This led, rapidly, to a shortening of time limits in domestic events as well.

This produced the current situation where Korean players and Chinese players play at more or less the same time limits in both international and domestic events. They are playing under constant conditions all year round. But when a Japanese player goes to an international event, he is used to much longer time limits. For him it is not a level playing field.

In fact it is not a level playing field within Korea. You may think of some of the older players as dinosaur relics who should move over, but Yi Ch'ang-ho was brought up under the older time limits and achieved most of his success under them. Even when very young he regularly used most of his time allowance. The modern short games are probably a strain for him, and I for one am not convinced that Yi Se-tol, who came up under the new system and developed his style accordingly, is necessarily stronger than Ch'ang-ho.

It is not just a question of less time to think in each game. As I have suggested above, the shorter time limits have brought with them a change of style that is best suited to shorter time limits. Japanese players especially can hardly be expected to change styles in the space of a single international event, and it would be catastrophic for their main domestic careers to change styles permanently. Also, there are now no events (none!) where Chinese and Korean players get to play the top Japanese at 4 hours or more. We have to conclude, therefore, that lack of Japanese success in international events, wounding though it is to national pride, is not really a fair measure of relative strengths.

We cannot conclude, of course, that Japanese players are stronger just because they play more slowly. It's genuinely hard to say who is best. However, I am rather fond of relying on professional opinion. What I observe, for example, is that the Chinese magazine Weiqi Tiandi will often give 10 pages (i.e. about 10% of its entire space) to a commentary on a Japanese title match. Furthermore, the commentary will generally be done by a 9-dan or an 8-dan, whereas the Chinese title games often get assigned to 4-dans and 5-dans. In other words, the Chinese respect Japanese go. That tells me more than the result of the latest Samsung Cup. The fact that some western players disrespect Japanese go also tells me something about them, and it's not in their favour.

One thing the Japanese can claim is to have the strongest go-playing prime minister in the world. But, somewhat to my disappointment, they still crave "parity" with the Koreans and Chinese. Recognising that time limits are almost certainly the root of the apparent difference, they have reduced limits drastically. There are now just 15 events at 4 hours or more, and a whopping 25 at 3 hours. There are 12 with less, but only 4 (for men) at the 10-minute level or less. Until players also change their style successfully, we are not likely to see actual international success. And in the interim, if the Koreans continue the downward trend below even 3 hours in international events (Samsung 2h, Nongshim 1h - only the LG has 3h and that only in the late stages), that means the goalposts the Japanese are kicking into are narrowing all the time. They will probably need to find the equivalent of Harry Potter playing Malfoy at quidditch.

Are you thinking of titles here, or general competitiveness? From 1995-2000, the Koreans are way ahead in titles, but my impression had always been that the Japanese still were quite competitive with the Korean players at that time, if you looked at who advanced in to late rounds of the tournaments.

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Occupy Babel!

Well given that whatever I thought I would be posting after reading the first post of this thread is now either irrelevant, already said better or likely wrong....I guess I'll just do quick tallying here off of gobase...

1990-2000 internationally Japan had...

...1 finalist and champion in 4 LG cups
...6 finalists and 4 champions in 11 Fujitsu cups
...2 finalists in 3 Ing cups
...1 finalist and champion in 2 Chun-lan cups

so in 20 major event finals they have 10 representatives, 25% of the total spots...sounds pretty competitive to me...

I could do something like this, except I have only 3 games from 1865. Generally, to get enough games from Edo period, I'd have to include multiple years to get any reasonable statistics. I'd need some help selecting a reasonable range, but if it's too long, it may not be a fair comparison because one can assume changes in style and fashion within a long enough period of time.

10 modern years vs. 10 classical years might be fairer, but I'd still be wary of any conclusions drawn from it. (Actually, there is value in trying to keep the sample size similar in both sets as well.) I'd be willing to try if rational ranges can be suggested, however.

Mef: there's a stark before and after, at least as titles are concerned. From 1990-1995 the Japanese lead, in 1995-2000 they fall behind. Still, the Japanese win a lot of titles in that period, unlike 2000 onwards.

So John could mean that 20% of the titles is parity (against 60+ for Korea), or he could be thinking more broadly than just titles. That was my question.

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Occupy Babel!

It is an over-reaction in your opinion. I have made the same arguments more than once (also, I respond to a ton of things on this forum, not just things related to Korea). If we are going to go into the realm of making personal comments, anyone that's been here for more than 5 minutes can also tell that John's comments, for example, are never positive when talking about Korean go. From talking about their "Mickey Mouse time limits" to how "Batoo is not something they should be able to have credit for" to posts along the line of "Korean amateurs aren't as strong as they say they are", I have yet to see a really positive comment on the matter. *

So you may try to claim that I "over-react" to these types of posts, but I don't think it's fair to have only one side of the argument.

*If you'd really like for me to dig up examples, I'll take the time to do so, but I don't think that these topics are unfamiliar to you.

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be immersed

When we are talking about games from 1.5 to 3 hours, I don't think that it's fair to say that they are necessarily riddled with mistakes due to the time. This amount of time could still be perceived to be quite long. Pros spend a lot of time training offline. It's not during the game that most of your learning comes from. It's from the training that you spend away from the tournament.



I am skeptical that professionals have a unanimous opinion of who is stronger.



I disagree.
Playing games in international tournaments is the only real measurement that we have of relative strength of players. How can we measure the relative strength of two players without having them play one another? The result of a game is the only thing that you can have. Until go is solved, anything else is just speculation.

To your point, let's assume that Japanese players get more practice having longer time limits, and don't practice as much with the same time limits used internationally, and also that (for the sake of argument) they have a low success rate at international events.

From this we can conclude that, under the time settings at international events, the result of the game is the best measurement we have to determine the relative strength of players. A player played, and he won. Why shouldn't he get credit for it?

We can make arguments saying that, "This pro didn't practice under those time settings, so his strength is not portrayed". Well, the game that was played was a display of that pro's strength under the given time settings. Maybe he can play better under different time settings. Maybe not. The only way we can know is if we put forth a match between the two players under the new time settings.

Let's say that I lose a game online. Let's say that, whenever I practice in real life, I use pink stones instead of black ones. I can say that my opponent had an advantage because he would have lost against me were we using pink stones.

The only way to validate this statement is to actually play a game with pink stones. The only data we have are the results of games.

You can ignore the real game data we have if you'd like, but that's not very objective, IMHO.

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be immersed

I hope I'm not misquoting, but my memory has John saying the top Korean professionals are stronger than the top Japanese.

As for posts on Korean amateurs: does this really look dismissive and horrible? viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1490&hilit=thoughts+amateurs

We shouldn't look for unanimity.

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Occupy Babel!

Well, it does not seem like a positive data point.



If we use professional opinion as the basis of an argument, it seems natural that the opinion should be one held of professionals in general, and not a specific professional.

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be immersed

FWIW, and entirely anecdotally, I was playing a 4d I know well at my local club, and after the club, we went to the pub and were discussion the Go world generally. He's spent quite some time in China and Korea, including at clubs where professionals teach regularly. He was at one of these and the professional that ran the club (who he knew well, I forget his name, but I'd recognise it so I may have a look soon enough) introduced him to an amateur known as "Mr Han". Apparently he was an ex first class insei for 4-5 years, always in the top few, never quite in the top 2 to go professional. He's now winning a large number of their national amateur tournaments apparently, and the professional's opinion was that he was of "upper-middle professional strength". That's a sample size of one, but I bet he's not the only one.

Also from the same person, as someone who knew Benjamin Teuber, said that when he was training as an insei (European 6-dan at the time), some of the first class inseis routinely gave him 3 stones as competitive games. Assuming that they don't all become professional (the top para hints as it as a realistic possibility that more don't make it than those who do), I think it's safe to say that the top Korean amateurs will be very, very strong.

Bait and switch. It's obvious that professionals won't be unanimous. But why think there isn't substantial agreement about who is strong?

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Occupy Babel!

Because I haven't seen evidence of it.

In the argument given, we reference a 10-page commentary on a Japanese title match. This does not seem to lead to the conclusion that there is substantial agreement that Japanese pros are the strongest in the world.

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be immersed

I guess John will tell us what he meant, but I didn't think that paragraph was saying that Japanese professionals are stronger. At least it's not clearly saying that as far as I can see.

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Occupy Babel!

He doesn't say that directly:


But the last sentence suggests that, while it is "genuinely hard to say who is best", professional opinion may provide some insight into the matter. The subsequent argument is the 10-page commentary bit.

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be immersed

Kirby: It's a shame that they evidently don't teach explications de texte in your educational system, but surely there's some equivalent that teaches you actually to read what is written? For example, I wrote only that the 10/5-minute events are Mickey Mouse events, and this applies in China and Japan, too. It's just that Korea has many of them and is leading the way generally in shortening time limits. Similarly, I used the 10-page commentary simply to highlight that the Chinese Japanese titlematch go. And just like here, I underlined it to make sure people like you didn't miss it. Waste of time!

You're actually quite insulting when you say I don't write positive things about Korean go. New In Go shoots you down straight away. There are several things there, but I'll mention just a few. One item (39) describes Korea leading the way in making go accessible to disabled people, and Item 53 (on Korea's "first world champion") actually begins "Today is not the first time Koreans have dominated world go." Item 17 describes Chinese assessment of the top international players (Korean). Item 51 is another piece on sunjang baduk, which I essentially introduced to the western audience. I'm not aware that you've produced anything at all, let alone anything positive, on Korean go for the western community.

All you do present are opinions. You're entitled to opinions, of course, but so am I, and if mine are different from yours it doesn't make me a bad person. You think short games are a good test of go playing strength. I think slower games are better. That seems like just a difference of opinion, but actually there's a bigger difference. I try to give data or background, you just huff and puff. I read the Oriental magazines. You just say "I haven't seen..." which implies you don't read them, and so you've missed the many comments by pros on who's strongest and what they think of time limits. I add my own take on these things, but at least it's informed by stuff I've seen.

Also, presenting comments that try to correct bias is not being anti. Saying top Korean amateurs are very, very strong is fine (and accurate). Leaping from there to imply (as some people do) that Korean ex-inseis are Masters of the Universe is a little de trop, and my mentioning that Chinese amateurs and Japanese amateurs are often likewise very, very strong, or that pros are usually even stronger, is not pro-Chinese, not pro-Japanese and not anti-Korean and not anti-amateur. Pointing out that there is no satisfactory measure of relative international strength (your argument that there is only one measure does not make that measure satisfactory) is not anti-Korean or pro-Japanese. It's called various things, such as balance, moderation, common sense.

Saying that "I haven't seen" does not imply that I do not read oriental go material, and in fact, I do. I have subscriptions to two monthly go magazines from Asia, and I read from them whenever I get them.

My "huff and puff" is likely due to the fact that I get frustrated when the information presented appears so one-sided. This doesn't mean that I'm not informed.

The only real time that I can remember making a post on what I had read, though, was when I announced Lee Sedol's break from go, and in that thread I was quickly shot down, if you recall, by someone who said that the post was old news (albeit an article I translated from an Asian newspaper, the same day that it was published). Since that time, I haven't written as much about what I've read.

You are, though, correct that we are entitled to different opinions.


Well, I haven't read your personal website, but I don't recall having read anything like that here. I stand corrected.



It doesn't seem to me that this is what you were pointing out. I also agree that there is no satisfactory measure of relative international strength. I would not be frustrated if I felt that this was what you were trying to point out, and I actually welcome this idea.

I do believe, however, that the data that we do have - actual games - is the best measure of relative strength that we have.



Yes, I think short games are a good test of go playing strength. I also think slower games are a good test of go playing strength.

But I think that games should be a factor in determining playing strength.



Then, I am not being anti.

---

Still, I think that you do have a point in that, rather than getting too upset or frustrated over what I perceive as biased, it would be more proactive of me to translate material on my own, and bring my own contributions to the table (though, I'm sure you'll still be able to bait me in the future by using "Mickey Mouse" in your posts).

This is not to say that I'm not still frustrated. It's just true that it would be a more positive contribution to make my own posts about news that I read.

Point taken on that account.

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be immersed