Most of the answers seem to guess their strength at "a few stones stronger than me", except for Magicwand (surprise...) and amnal. There are no guesses yet from really strong players, though.

I can't really judge what rank they are. But the game is full of (to me) really weird moves. I guess the players are definitely not my level, either way above me (because I don't understand the moves at all) or below me (because the moves are really that bad). It can't be a lot below my level though, there are just to many sensible moves in there. So if I had to guess, I'd take the "way above me" option.

Blitz might be a reason why the game is so weird. The result would support that, too

Mid dan level at least. The players play tenuki far more often than kyu players would, IMO. There are also no obvious blunders, nor are there any moves I would really feel comfortable in criticizing. There are several places where I would have played differently, but that would be a stylistic difference more than anything. It could be a pro game, or a game between players around my level. Maybe a little weaker, but not too much (at least 2 dan EGF, probably stronger).

The rules are Chinese, and the komi is 7.5, which makes a pro game more likely, as relatively few people play with those rules outside China. It could also be a top game from an EGC or Ing tournament. Ing rules and 8 komi could easily have been recorded as Chinese with 7.5, as Ing specifies that Black wins jigo.

I'll take a stab at it

How about black 35. With R6 and R15 there, the whole right side seems small. Or so they teach us westerners. C15 or R2 look bigger.

Also white's sequence 36-37-38 feels odd. If white wants to secure the corner in gote, why not just play 36 at R2 or Q2?

And why does black not attack white 40 directly?

None of the moves really stood out as extremely strong, though I could just be missing the subtlety.

Move 11 seems suboptimal, I can't see a reason for playing it, so I don't think it's a professional game. It just seems heavy.

The players either were reading far deeper than I did, or were missing moves for some other reason. Time trouble is a possibility, I could believe it was a 2d or 3d game if it were blitz or even just quite fast.

There were probably no moves that I would tell a 3k 'this is definitely wrong', so they are at least strong kyu.

Thinking about it more, they are very consistent, so maybe I guessed too low (especially if it was blitz or lightning).

Black's play includes joseki that I kave never seen before, so he is a bot or a pro. As the game gets past joseki, the play becomes iffy:

45: It is hard to see what this move accomplishes. If a pro were worried about the life of his group, I'd expect to see S7 or S8 or N3. If he is not, a tenuki to C10 or D11 is big.

63: Maybe I'm misreading, but G15 looks big here.

So, with dubious midgame flow but exotic joseki, I call black a bot.

White is much harder to read. He seems to be low/mid dan. Because Harlequin posted, I'll guess that white is Harlequin.


I've never thought seriously about programming go, but my quickie guess is that it is easier to do Chinese counting than Japanese. So a bot is still a possibility.

Black has to be in kyu ranks (3k-4k). Move 87 is just weird and the whole yose goes with white leading black around the board. Automatic playing and "sente" moves which gain nothing. I think white is couple of stones stronger dan.

I agree with magicwand - I'd even go further and say sdk. A lot of the moves really seem awkward - the sequence at bottom right I have never seen before, and feels quite inconsistent.

There's quite a few fairly subtle moves in this game. While some moves look strange, there are others that doesn't look like moves that will be played by kyus and probably even low dans. Two of these moves are W36 and W60.

both stronger than me probably, since all the moves seemed reasonable & simple. it's hard to obey fundamentals throughout a game. black's early peep on the lower right, to force white to connect the 1 space jump, is usually considered bad (or so i think), but stronger players will sometimes do it anyway.

i understood every move played, which could mean they are actually players of my own weak strength. p15 most of all seems too passive for this to be a game between really strong players. an amateur high dan would try something flashier, and i think most professionals would play something more active. i'll guess around 2d kgs, although i'll admit i could be very far from the truth.

edit: I just looked at other people's guesses, and i'm surprised that move 40 didn't jump out at me more. it's really the top right quadrant which gives this away for me as probably not being between really strong players - this area is where white should have been treated to some form of attack

Agree about the endgame. White 140 for example, this is supposedly a pro or high dan move?

heh, I'm gonna look silly if it is pro.

The bot theory has some merit. I didn't really think of that possibility, but it would explain a few things. Bots do play a lot of very reasonable moves, mingled with lots of strange or even completely wrong moves. It would explain the confusion.

But as I said in my guess, I can't really tell the difference if those moves are really wrong, or just too subtle for me to understand

This is the fourth game of the fourth FICGS Go Championship between Yang Huayong and Svante Carl von Erichsen. It is a correspondence game server, and the time limits are 30 days + 1 day/move (Bonus time). The challenge match consists of 5 parallel games.

As for the ranks, the FICGS rating system puts them at 4d and 6d.

Huayong won the preliminary 9 player round-robin tournament for the challenge with a clean record against some EGF 1 dan to 4 dan players.

Svante is the current title holder, having won the first title tournament and defended it twice against Lu Ke. His EGF rank seems to be 2 dan.

Not really blitz then

So the guy who guessed that you're one of them was right
And it also confirms you're Svante on SO which I guessed from the avatar

It seemed like a plausible possibility. The others framed the rank somewhat. The rest was psychology.