I have, for some time, been a trifle bothered about the alarming speed at which Korea and Chinese players are being promoted in recent years. Some players have had three promotions in one year, and two a year is becoming almost the norm for the best players. Even before that, I had pondered omitting dan grades in the GoGoD database because they seem so meaningless now.

But I hadn't given much thought to the reasons behind the hyperinflation - until now.

I haven't got all the answers yet, but some digging into the Korean go scene throws up some pointers.

The main one may be number of games played per year. It was considered astonishing way back in 1989 when Yi Ch'ang-ho played 111 games. Cho Hun-hyeon got close with 110 in 1996. But the norm was around 70 games a year for a top player. Number of games was long considered the main criterion for evaluating the quality of a player in both Japan and Korea, because the bulk of the tournaments were run on a knockout basis, so that the more you progressed through the KO rounds, the more games you played - and of course the closer you got to the titles and the more you played the most successful players. That's changed to a significant degree with the popularity of leagues, in both individual and team formats. Allied to that is the increasing demand for quick-play and Mickey Mouse tournaments.

The result is that we now have a remarkable new record of 160 games in one year by young prodigy Kim Eun-chi. She has only just turned 17. Despite a blip caused by an allegation of cheating by using AI and losing a year of playing time, she has progressed from 1-dan in January 2020 to 9-dan in December 2023. She did not skip any grades. Although a couple of promotions came through winning titles, she has earned each dan grade one by one.

How is this possible? The main factor seems to be the sheer number of games she has played. In 2023 she set a new record of 160 games (and the score in these was 109-51, or 68%). She was far ahead of Kim Seung-chin 5-dan in second place with 129 wins (85-44; to 5-dan in just three years, incidentally). But if you take the top 10 in the games-played list, even the tenth place person in 2023 has played 111 games - Yi Ch'ang-ho's old record. The current top player, by the way, Sin Chin-seo (who got to 9-dan in just six years, but he has won over 30 titles!) played 127 games.

The large number of games obviously reflects a large number of tournaments. There are currently 39 running in Korea. Of these, 6 are international, but they have have domestic qualifier tournaments as well. Most of the tournaments are open to all players, but several are limited to either females or seniors (and one to just both!), and a few are age-limited to young players. This has obviously benefited Kim Eun-chi. She has three titles but two are female and one was age-limited. She also has 7 runner-up placings, six female-only and one young-age only. Is this enough for 9-dan? She's not even in the top 30 in the ranking list.

This ability to play a huge number of games may be the factor that most influenced Nakamura Sumire to go to Korea.

The huge number of games played is also given as the cause of the constant huge fluctuations in the ranking list. The latest list I have seen (end May 2024; which incidentally has just one female in it, and that is Ch'oe Cheong at #22) spans 10,389 to 9,457 points, which suggests to me that rankings can be changed rather easily by small gains or losses. But I also look with some suspicion at a list that tells me Sin Chin-seo is #1 with 10,389, Pak Cheong-hwan is #2 with 10,019 and Pyeon Sang-il is #3 with 9,895.

I have no problem in accepting these may be the best three players currently. My suspicions relate to the gaps between them. If you look at a different table (admittedly for 2023 and so not quite up to date), these were the top three money earners. But the order was Sin, Pyeon then Pak in that case. No big deal in that. But what is a big deal is that Sin's earnings were about US1.1 million (low by Japanese standards, but still tasty). But that was more than twice the earnings of Pyeon and nearly three times those of Pak. As extra benchmarks, you may care to note that Ch'oe was the only female in the top ten with $330,000 (placed 4th) and the tenth-placed player (An Seung-chun) came away with a measly $101,000 pay packet. Yet the latest intake of new pros numbered 17. Are they all chasing fool's gold?

The biggest travesty here is that Kim Eunji is still a pro.

Anyway, personally, I don't really care what rank a pro has. There are many cases where it does not correlate to actual strength. It's nice to get a title, just like in other fields, but it doesn't guarantee anything. There are plenty of "CEOs" and "Principle Engineers" on LinkedIn who probably aren't as skilled as those having junior titles.

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be immersed

And numerous Senior Vice Presidents!

She got her penalty. Do people not deserve new chances in their life?! If something is to be discussed, it is the duration of the penalty in relation to her age at that time. Was it appropriate or too short or - I do not think so - too long?

I don't follow the Korean scene, and I don't know how promotions are earned. I am surprised to see some really young 9d (like Kim Eunji). Not because they are skilled or not, I have no idea, but because they have had the time or not to get all those promotions.

Now that I follow Sumire's adventures in Korea, I see that she has to make a certain amount of points to get promoted. The system seems to be similar to Japan's. Win enough small games, or enough big games, and there you go. Sumire is playing a lot, and winning a decent amount of times, but her promotion to 4d will still have to wait. Of course, she was a new 3d in Korea.

With this single example, I can't still understand how some players make it so far (ranking wise) in such a small amount of time. I could understand it if you win a big title and skip some steps. But, to reach 9d and not skipping a single one... I should know the system in more detail.

The big difference between Korean and Japanese promotion system is in Japan wins in female-only tournaments do not count. In Korea they count, but they seem to be worth 1/4 of a win in general tournaments. They get 4 points for wins in mixed tournaments and 1 point/win in mixed tournaments. https://gorisenri.livedoor.blog/archives/nakamura-sumire-all.html has an explanation. There might be better pages that explain their ranking system, but this is good enough to get a feel.

Another difference is that Japan has promotion by prize money.

I think there are many differences between Korea and Japan. The topic doesn't interest me enough to go into carefully, but the impression I have gleaned while reading about other topics is that in Korea the base system is that you get promotions for accumulating points to reach a specified threshold. This is ostensibly similar to Japan, but in Japan it's simply the number of wins that counts. In Korea, it seems that you get a certain number of points for each win, which varies (between 5 and 15 points) according to the quality of the tournament, and you get extra if you actually reach the finals or do something special like beating a high-dan player (a bonus of 10 points). Winning a title also scores a lot of points (50 or 100). In a few cases of especially prestigious tournaments, winning the event gives an automatic promotion (as in some Japanese and Chinese events).

I think you need 100 points to get from 1-dan to 2-dan, which equates to a maximum of roughly 20 wins (which is a lot easier than the minimum of 30 in Japan, especially if you are playing 3 games a week instead of one). To go from 4-dan to 5-dan needs 300 points. That would equate to a maximum of 60 wins, but a minimum of 90 wins in Japan).

However, I believe Korea imposes points deductions for cases such as a long run of losses or a long period of inactivity. I am not aware of anything like that in Japan.

I think it's true that women in Korea have an advantage, but as their tournaments are usually rated as minor, the advantage is perhaps not quite as big as it may seems at first glance.

In China, the system is entirely different and still seems to be centred almost exclusively on an annual (mixed) promotion tournament.