What I would love is to have an international tournament with a rather large purse, and 8 hours main time for each. That, I would love to see what would happen.

Please don't get upset. Living in Tokyo, I do not think that this is an unreasonable comment (despite being factually incorrect). I personally do not know any Japanese pros who still feel that Japanese Go is competitive on the international stage. The old excuses of too short time limits, etc. have gone by the wayside. The issue is what, if anything, can/will be done about it. Currently it seems the answer is - very little. The Nihon Kiin at least seems to be unable to shake itself loose from the idea of doing everything it can to protect its current members. This means no steps to reduce the '9-dan bloat' or in general to make the level of play among pros more competitive. Certainly part of the problem is the relative lack of interest in Go in Japan versus its popularity in Korea and China. There is no big group of popular youngsters demanding better access to the professional circuit. My feeling about Iyama is that he may well be one of the great talents to ever play the game, but that he may never realize his true potential because too much of the time he does not face top-class competition.

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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

Right, it would be interesting to see him in Chinese City League, but with all the title matches and preliminaries in Japan, how would you be able to make that happen? I would like to see that.

Do you have any insight into the strategy the Nihon Kiin took in selecting the Nongshim reps this year?

Well, hailthorn's question was about best ever in Japan, and the riposte was "that's meaningless, Japanese pros can't compete internationally." But clearly he does compete internationally, and does fine; if he would rather try to win the Kisei than spend all his time schlepping to the mainland to rack up wins in the preliminary rounds of blitz tournaments, I don't blame him.

It would be great if we could get more games between Japanese and strong Chinese and Korean players. It would also be great if we could get best-of-seven, two day matches between top Chinese and Korean stars. While we're at it, I wish Go Seigen had never gotten thwacked by a motorcycle. What else should be on the list?

Nice sidestep! I won't bother you anymore. My apologies for mistaking this thread for an interesting question. Bye!

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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

"Fastest to 9 dan" is a meaningless record because the Oteai has been eliminated. It used to be quite a chore to go up a rank in the old days. That said, if they were born in recent times, I have a gut feeling that Sakata Eio or Fujisawa Shuko would wipe the floor with young Iyama. Among young Japanese players, some say that Murakawa Daisuke of the Kansai Kiin might be the most talented. There might be a few talented unknown youngsters in the pipeline. Let's see what Iyama does for the next few years. It is very premature to have this discussion.

I do think that Iyama can be competitive in the international scene. It wouldn't be surprising to see him win one major international title although it is hard to imagine him winning more. After all, Cho U and Zhou Junxun have won the LG Cup. No one thinks that Iyama is inferior to those two players. Speaking of Cho U, don't write him off in the Kisei title yet. He comes from the Go Seigen-Rin Kaiho line. He will put up a fight against Iyama.

Iyama and Murakawa are very close in age, and I would say Iyama's results are far greater. I don't see how he could be more talented.

Talent is not the only factor in the equation.

What are the other factors?

The key word is "some", as in "some people think". Iyama is superior by most objective measures and most people would say that Iyama is more talented. Personally, I would agree with those people, because I do not have the strength to judge talent by anything other than results.

Talent is a mysterious thing though. Kim Jiseok is considered by many to be the most naturally talented active Korean pro other than Lee Sedol. When Kim was a child, Cho Hunhyun was so enamored with Kim's talent that he came very close to taking Kim as a live-in student. However, Kim's results in major tournaments lag far behind those of Park Junghwan or even Kang Dongyun. Of course, it is also said that Park Junghwan works on his game more than any other player. Kim has mainly excelled in blitz matches.

That doesn't mean that we can write off Kim. Some people realize their true potential later than others.

Character (=

I think this could be an interesting discussion, but if you don't mind I'd like to semantically reframe it from "Best ever" to "Greatest". "Best" could be described something to the effect of "makes the fewest deviations / least total deviation from perfect play" and would be hard to measure without more or less solving go. Greatest you can use a number of factors to try and judge players, and personally I think it is more relevant (for example, if you are thinking about "greatest" track and field athletes, you may consider Carl Lewis. Even though Carl Lewis was great however, his 9.86 second world record sprint would have barely cracked the top 5 at Olympic games in London. Carl Lewis is objectively slower than Tyson Gay, but I don't think anyone is going to claim that Tyson Gay is a greater Olympian). So with that out of the way, what makes a player great? I'll try to throw some out a handful of criteria a player may have, though perhaps not need all of, to be considered great:

- Dominance: A great player generally needs to show superiority over his or her peers. Ex: Shuei taking white (and often 2 stones) against all comers.
- Brilliance: A player who has an single exceptional performance that is difficult to match. Ex: Shusaku going undefeated at the castle games.
- Longevity: A great players needs to have success over an extended period of time. Ex: Sakata sustaining a long-enough, winning enough career to be first to amass 1000 wins.
- Innovation: A player who fundamentally changes how the game is played. Ex: Go Seigen and the coming of Shin Fuseki.
- Legacy: A player who has a large impact on the game for years to come. Ex: Kitani Minoru who, while strong in his own right, led a dojo that spawned generations of Japanese title winners for decades to come.

So now with all that said, where were we...

Ah right Iyama Yuta!

As many have claimed, dominance is a tough one for him with the international scene being as it is. In the event he wins all 7 titles at one time, that would be a truly brilliant achievement, so we can mark that down in the plus column. Innovation I won't claim to be strong enough to judge. Longevity and legacy I will have to wait and see before making a claim. I guess to wrap everything up with a completely unsatisfying conclusion...Maybe he will be, maybe he won't, it all depends on his career from this point on.

It is quite sad that no-one about Iyama's age is competitive to him in Japan, unlike China or Korea. His challengers are all 10~20 years older than him, which looks odd.

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Amsterdam, soon.

Hard work

Which is the most important talent.

I was watching Go Focus from last week which had a section interviewing Iyama. He did make a point to say he is focusing on international results, but not what that means to him.

One of the events that shaped his go was winning the children's meijin and then being invited to China to play there. He only placed somewhere around 20th, and it was the first time he experienced losing to someone younger than him. That gave him a lot of drive to get stronger and realize just how much stronger other countries were.