I hope he plays too and I believe that there is considerable pressure on him domestically to show the flag for Japan. However, from a professional point of view, it would be foolish to upset a domestic sponsor or even spend the time on a once every four years event where the structure of the tournament gives him little chance of winning and no better chance of repeating four years hence. That is assuming that he has conflicting claims on his time from domestic events.

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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

Iyama vs Yu Zhengqi broadcasting on wbaduk now. Complicated ko going on but I feel he could be behind atm.

Must technically be the biggest games he's played so far... the potential.

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On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

It seems Iyama won by resignation to become challenger. The first game will be in March.

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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

I was puzzled by Yu's solid connection at j12, giving Iyama a chance to attack the eyeshape of his group. Was the safer j10 instead really so bad? It does give black slightly better endgame at the top side, or the peep at k12, but the move he played gave Iyama a chance to engineer an attack which exploited the weaknesses of his right side formation.

It's not as exciting as the upcoming AlphaGo match, and perhaps loses a little bit of shine with Iyama's recent loss in the Nongshim Cup, but he did win the first match of the Judan:

Hard to count territories that big!

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- Brady
Want to see videos of low-dan mistakes and what to learn from them? Brady's Blunders

It's unfortunate that such a momentous event has lined up with another. But the second game is well after tomorrows AlhpaGo match at least. I wouldn't be sure of setting the 14th of april as a date; Ida 8p knows he's the last stronghold right now and the pride of all the Japanese pros (and the Kansai Kiin) lies on his shoulders (probably exaggerating, but almost every of the few title match interviews I remember seeing recently mention something relating to the need to stop Iyama Yuuta!).

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On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

I actually replayed that first game for the title when it came out and still somewhat remember it. It was a pretty amazing moyo game for Iyama. He was white and still built the better moyo in the beginning. Ida seemed to play a couple slow moves at the beginning allowing Iyama to build a larger moyo and Ida was at a disadvantage from the beginning after that.

I saw on Wbaduk today that Iyama had lost a game, to some 4p Chinese name with a Japanese flag I didn't recognise: Hsu Chiayuan. Turns out this is Kyo Kagen, the young pro from Taiwan who I recall ez4u's reporting from mamumamu's site had a rating higher than the average 9p. It was the Champion of Tournaemnt Winners tournament so doesn't derail Iyama's hopes of getting the big 7, but shows he's not invincible in Japan.

Hsu Chiayuan was the runner up in the first Globis Cup (2014) to Ichriki Ryo. So for normal intents and purposes, he could be considered one of the top pros, but maybe not as strong as who Iyama has to win two games against in the Juudan.

Recalling Iyama 9p's loss to Murakawa Daisuke in the oza, this title match could morph into something very tense.

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On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

Recently, I've been monitoring the goratings.org scores closely. By losing a game to Hsu Chiayuan (#94) yesterday , Iyama lost 14 points. In comparison, by winning a game against Zhou Hexi (#44), Ke Jie only gained 2 points. Of course WHR is a whole-history system so not as simple as what I just describe. But generally speaking, if you want to maintain a very high position, you need a very high winning percentage. Iyama has been winning more than 90% of his games recently, which is really amazing. But no one in history could maintain that level for a long period of time (not even Lee Changho at this peak time). I think Iyama is still the favorite to win all 7 major titles. But his rating is about peaked. He probably will settle around #10 - #15 in the world list, unless he can make significant progress in world stage.

Two things:

Perhaps implicit in your comment, but it would also require Iyama to play more international games. While each international game he wins will typically contribute more to his ranking than games against domestic opponents, if he doesn't have many of them, their impact will be swamped by domestic games.

You're implying a limitation of the model when you say that no one could maintain a 90% win rate. The model claims that Ke Jie can win 84% of the time against Yamashita Keigo, so more than 90% against a normal basket of Japanese players. If that's not true, then something has gone wrong.

Just to be clear, I think the most reasonable guess is that Iyama's rating will decline a bit over the coming year. I suspect his current performance represents a combination of improvement and luck.

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Occupy Babel!

Can I ask you the question regarding of goratings.org? Right now everyone is probably watch youtube video 'The history of the world's best Go players' that use data from goratings.org, the video has the data date back to 1974 while in goratings.org only date back to 1980, so I want to know how this video acquire data from before 1980?

I can't speak for what Remi or macelee might have done, but there is data for players before 1980. A little scraping or even manual work could create the top ten for earlier years.

What is really unfortunate is that the data is so limited for earlier years.

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Occupy Babel!

If only all go organization send record to this list, the algorithm is already great, the database is, well, as good as it can.

Mark April 14th on your calendar! Iyama will play the 3rd Judan game on that day and if he beats Ida Atsushi, he will hold all SEVEN major titles! Japan will be officially conquered!