Iyama Yuuta is the indisputable Japanese No. 1 player at the moment, holding 6 out of 7 major titles, and already in the semi-final of the remaining 1. But I am still quite surprised to see that he has winning percentages of 50% or better against ALL Japanese opponents, as shown in this page:

http://www.go4go.net/go/games/opponent/601

However, he still has a long way to go in international tournaments. In fact the same page also shows that against foreign opponents, his winning rate were never better than 50%.

Note the statistics is not official. But because Iyama is relatively young and his game collection at go4go is quite complete, the figures should not be far from the official ones.

BTW, I just put online a new statistical page about top pairs of players:

http://www.go4go.net/go/games/pairs

Wow, that's amazing.

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Slava Ukraini!

This is a really neat feature, thank you for putting it together! What an amazing achievement that is. Wow. I'll cross my fingers that he'll be able to improve his statistics in international games in the future (and, of course, improve his statistics in domestic tornaments as well). But I guess he'll have to stop declining to play in the international tournaments first. Although I understand him. With all those title games he has to play in close succession I'm amazed at his stamina to keep on winning and keeping those titles. Hopefully, he can keep it up!

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With Iyama's position now, I think team Japan will always keep a seed place for him in international tournament if he's willing to play. Maybe after completing the "all 7" he will be able to show up more in international tournament.

I think the only way for Japan to get better in international tournament is to form a team of "Iyama + young 9x gun" (e.g Murakawa, Ichikiri Ryo, Ida Atsushi, Fujita Akihiko...), maybe in 4-5 years they can get better result.

The other current top 10 players of Japan are just too old compared to other countries. They're about the same age at Lee Chang Ho, Chang Hao or Kong Jie. Even in their best time, they couldn't surpass their China & Korea counterparts, I think now there's not much chance for them to compete with Park Junghwan or Chen Yaoye. So it's time to let's the young gun move on, together with Iyama.

Actually, there already has formed such a study group team in Japan called "Go Go Japan" (the second "Go being the Kanji for the game). I'm not sure about the exact members, but if I remember correctly, it includes Japan's top players at the moment. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any real information right now, but maybe someone else can?

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Here I think: http://www.nihonkiin.or.jp/english/topi ... tm#130531c

"Japan National Team"

Yeah, that might be them, thanks for the info! At least, that would also explain the really good results young players like Ichiriki Ryo and Fujita Akihiko get at the moment. I hope they can keep up the good work.

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Maybe not much, but at least some - Cho U did beat Chen in the last few days.