Why no World Championship?

[Pippen]

Whenever the professional chessplayers try to find their new champ - as right now - I aks myself: Why isn't Go able to create a tournament to find the best player in the world? Isn't that easy? Isn't there a big company that would be willing to promote the world's most complex game? I was never in Asia, so to those of you with better inside: Is there a reason for all those many tournaments and not one ultimative one or are they just sleeping in Asialand concerning the marketing possibilities such an event could have?

[snorri]

Insufficiently large egos. Go needs a Kirsan Ilyumzhinov to make things more interesting...

[DrStraw]

Since when did a world championship determine the world's best player?

[EdLee]

What do you mean? There are multiple world championship tourneys.

[DrStraw]

Ed, perhaps he means a metachampionship.

[EdLee]

DrStraw, perhaps. Isn't there an upcoming (or on-going?) 10-game match between GuLi and LeeSedol ?

[Pippen]

I mean a world championship like chess had from 1900-1990. Instead we have several main tournaments in Go and nobody knows who's the real "King Kong Go".

[ez4u]

I mean a world championship like chess had from 1900-1990. Instead we have several main tournaments in Go and nobody knows who's the real "King Kong Go".

Do you mean unlike what they have now?

[logan]

The main problems is that unlike chess there isn't a precise international rating system that all countries follow for organizing tournaments. Back when the first two international events started in 1988 -- the Fujitsu Cup and Ing Cup -- the results were widely reported as "So-and-so has won the Go World Championship so can now be declared the World Champion." But as more international events popped up and more winners appeared this way of talking went away. There was a short time when we had world championships and champions, but the terms became vacuous and were put into disuse.

Other issues exist, but they again stem from the lack of a precise international rating system. For example, one problem is the sponsorship of the event. Some sponsors fill the field with the majority of their countrymen, making the results questionable. This way of inviting happens when there's a lack of international standards to objectively say who should and shouldn't be invited. Therefore, the organizers ultimately choose whoever they want.

A more interesting question is: Why has such a international rating system not been established? That gets into politics, nature of go and regional tensions.

[Pippen]

In Chess - before 1995 - there was a playoff-tournament and the winner could challenge the world champion. So let's play around: Every Go organisation will send 2 of its best players to a tournament and the two best will play out a championship later. The bait is 5 Mio. $ for the winner, 500K for the second and 10K for every participant, sponsored all by Microsoft. I think every good go player or professional would take that chance. Such an event would raise worldwide attention for Go and Microsoft, because Go is superior to any other board game. If planned properly everybody could win: the board game and the firm sponsoring it and I wonder why nobody ever came to this idea.

[oren]

You can always just view it similar to tennis. There are a bunch of opens and you figure out who did best in the international tournaments if you want to pick one. Honestly, I've never cared whether there was a system to pick a number 1. All the top players are very close.

[Uberdude]

Anand has been world chess champion since 2007, but Carlsen and Topolov have topped the rating list more than him since then.

[Javaness2]

Go has various World Amateur Championships because of the IGF. There is no such body for the multiple professional associations, therefore there is no World Championship. I don't believe that the rating list has the same status as the title of World Champion.

[tapir]

Such an event would raise worldwide attention for Go and Microsoft, because Go is superior to any other board game.

Nothing against sponsorship, but I fail to understand what benefit exclusively associating with a single commercial enterprise (with frequent malpractices) would bring to Go.

[Uberdude]

I don't believe that the rating list has the same status as the title of World Champion.

Really? I don't follow chess much but my impression was that Carlsen was usually regarded as the strongest player of the last few years.