I think this conversation may be going skewgee. Without evidence of titles and so on, I personally would not presume to judge whether one pro was as strong as, or stronger than, another. I can simply quote dan grades. But I hope I am right (as a go fan) in judging Sumire as a SUPERIOR person, in that she has not blemished her reputation by misusing AI.

There is, I imagine, the possibility that Americans latch on to the word 'grade' in ways that are alien to me, i.e. to do with age in school. We don't normally use that word in a school sense in Britain except for results of exams. In fact, the entire American educational system, from kindergarten to phi-beta-kappa and beyond is a total mystery to me. For the avoidance of doubt, when I use grade here, I mean dan grade. (And most certainly not a PEE grade, either.)

Kim was born in May 2007, Sumire in March 2009.

Even using ranks is dangerous here, because they are from different countries, and their ranks are earned with different systems.

If possible, in these cases it's best to check direct matches or at least games with the same opponents. But this is risky too.

Anyway, nearly two years is not a small difference. Not for normal kids, and big not for go pros.

Regardless of the official decision on it and the technical definition, I don't consider Kim Eunji to be a pro, personally. I'm still upset that she didn't get her pro status officially revoked.

Cheating with AI changes the game - you don't deserve respect as to be a pro.

_________________
be immersed

Fukuoka had a fever and had to forfeit his 1st round game. He was replaced by Yuki Sakai for the final 2 rounds.

And I'm not sure if this was mentioned, but Sumire actually played Kim Eun-chi in the final round. Kim Eun-chi won.

Unfortunately, Japan lost that round too.

Speaking of Sakai, check out this Character/Stat sheet that Kono Rin made for him.

Opening (序盤) - 5
Middle Game (中盤) - 7
Endgame (終盤) - 4
Reading (読み) - 8
Big Picture View (大局観) - 5
Positional Judgment (形勢判断) - 3
Comeback Potential (逆転力) - 6
Calmness/Composure (冷静さ) - 3

Sumire just beat Asami Ueno in the Women's Meijin League. She's now 3-1 in the league. Up next is Nyu Eiko 4p (3-2).

I wonder what AI think of this game https://go4go.net/go/games/sgfview/97767, especially since I've wondered what AI would think of games that end up with the board very simply partiitoned. Or as I later found out, in finnish terminology with oversized 'airports'!

I would like to note that Kobayashi Satoru Predicted that it is exactly around this time we'll start to see--then little Sumire--appearing in the title matches of Female Japanese tournaments. And maybe the reason why Fujisawa predicted it a year earlier was because she was basing it of the Japanese-scenes female level of play when she was coming up: many of the pros who were in Japanese female title matches don't even make it into the leagues that often anymore, and it happened too quickly for it to be put down to them just getting old. A literal Hikaru no Go-esque 'New Wave' in Japanese female go seems to be what happened here, and the level of play at the top has improved. So I wouldn't be surprised if Nakamura Sumire is nearly as strong as Fujisawa Rina when she won the Aidu Cup, but at one year earlier in age!

On even another note, I remember a while back An Younggil saying that it was a shame that Cho Chikun timedout in his game against his great rival Cho Hun-Hyeon, however when I read John Power about it being common for exhibition matches of that sort--referring to Iyama and Nakamura's--to not played until the end in Japan, I realised it was hilariously most likely a cultural misunderstanding, haha (in fact this is one aspect in which Japan and Korea are likely cultural opposites )!

Today, Sumire beat Rin Tzu Yuan 8d (he is from Taiwan, so different spellings are possible) in B prelim of the Kiriyama (or Agon) Cup. Next is Yamada Takuji 8d.

I don't know these players, but beating an 8d is good, beating two would be great.

This win counts for promotion. I wonder how many wins till 3 dan.

Which should help us remember, "rank" is a poor indication of strength for young players because it takes TIME to achieve a given number of wins (in games that are counted for the purpose). Very young players have not yet had that much time available.

The same day, Sumire played (and beat) Yamada Takuji.
This game was not announced in her profile, but until the first game of the day was played, the next pairing wasn't decided.

Next game in the A prelim is against Kubo Hideo 7 dan, and perhaps another player the same day. Games are played with 1h30. Not too fast, not too slow.



Yes, it has been already discussed. The new system vs. the Oteai. Strong players could become 2 dan the same year that they turn pro. Sumire has been pro for 3 years. After 3 years, Iyama was 4 dan, Cho Chikun was 5 dan, Otake Hideo was 4 dan, Michael Redmond was 4 dan... I'm not comparing Sumire to them. I'm just saying how much you could advance in rank in the same time, comparing new vs. old systems.

It's so nice to see Sumire doing so well in these preliminaries!

First, beating Rin Tzu Yuan 8d, rated 3151 in goratings.com.
Then beating Yamada Takuji 8d, rated 3004.
Next up, Kubo Hideo 7 dan, rated 2959. Sumire (3059) should be a slight favorite.

Btw. My favorite page to track Sumire's progress is this:
https://www.goratings.org/en/ladies/2022-01-01.html
Too bad they dont have live rankings for women. However the page quite well reflects the rankings in the beginning of the year
At the moment is she is 35th out of 204 female players. That's quite impressive for someone who just turned 13!

I just found this:

https://twitter.com/KK_joryu/status/1505777068961050626

Right now, the World Pair go Championship is in progress. Mostly in Japan, with international games played on-line, but with real boards, players playing moves of the remote couples. Not the point right now.

What I understand from the tweet is that both Iyama and Sumire had already lost (I knew this), and that new pairs were formed. "Shuffle pair go", as I understand, means that random new couples are formed and play in another event. I don't know if those are exhibition matches, or if there is some kind of prize. Actually, it doesn't matter.

What matters is that, by chance, Sumire is playing next to Iyama. It must be a great experience, and learning opportunity. To play well, players need to understand each other's thinking, and follow their plans. Iyama+Nakamura beat Shiho Hoshiai+Ichiriki Ryo. What must they have talked about before the games?

An official game soon, please...

There is some background here that I didn't know. But I have done some research.

Fujisawa Rina won the 1st edition of the Aidu Cup in June of 2014. Rina was nearly 16. She was 2-dan (1-dan in 2010). Her rating in goratings.com was round 3094.

Today, Sumire is 13, 2-dan and her rating is 3065. She has had good results, everybody knows it, but she hasn't yet won any tournament. Comparing ratings in different years is surely risky.

But, if we want to make a comparison, Sumire is probably around the level of Rina when she won the Aidu Cup, but more than 2 years younger, not 1 year. Rina had been a pro for a bit more than 4 years, Sumire has been for a bit more than 3 years. Here, the difference is 1 year.

I think that Sumire is progressing a bit faster. As for rivals... is there a new wave? In 2014, Xie played that Aidu Cup. The other players are still active, but aren't in the fight for titles. Perhaps Rina's fresh air helped her. Now, I think that there are more players, more young blood. Perhaps, yes, a new wave. Or a change of paradigm. Women don't give up their careers for marriage/children/...

If Sumire becomes the Meijin challenger, we'll see a real test of strength.

Wow, a nice comparison!

Here are the top 25 Japanese female players at the moment. It looks as if the next few years will be dominated by Fujisawa Rina, Ueno Asami and Nakamura Sumire. They are actually gonna be a good basis for a strong team - even in an international level!


Indeed! If it is not her time yet, it will be soon

It's actually three different Pair Go tournaments - none of which are World (Professional) Pair Go Championships.

First was a "Pair Go Friendship Dream Match" where 9 games were played between Japanese pros (including Sumire and Iyama) and foreign pros. There was no knockout or ultimate winner.

Second was an "International Pair Go Online Tournament" which was a knockout event featuring mostly amateur players.

Finally there was the "Professional Pair Go Championship" which was exclusively Japanese pros. Notably the Japanese pros that played in the Friendship Dream Match were in different pairs for this event.

Go World recently started running a series on young members of the Japanese national squad. These are players who are eligible for special training by top pros. The way the series is designed is that each player has to make a self-analysis radar chart, and a coach in the squad comments on this. This is followed by a game commented on by the coach, making reference to features highlighted in the radar chart.

The radar chart (or spider chart, or various other names) is a way of doing multivariate analysis, but the series gives no clues to how the examples here are used (unless it's simply as a platform for the commentary), and it seems pretty obvious that there is not much rigour in making the charts for each player consistent with each other. Even for an individual, I have a suspicion that some players have either marked themselves down a lot out of modesty or have marked some variables high or low as a way of getting extra attention on those aspects of their game. Ueno Risa, for example, marked herself 9 out of 10 on reading ability. But she also gave herself just 3 out of 10 on the middle game, where you'd think reading would really come into its own. She's only 1-dan and scored just 21-16 in 2021, so analysing her chart doesn't seem like a job for a layman. But variations of this type of chart have been presented in go magazines over the years, so presumably they are either popular or useful or both.

What's interesting about the latest batch of players is that they include Sumire. Her radar chart is given below.



Going round the chart, 12 o'clock represents the opening (in the full sense, not just the fuseki), 1.30 is the middle game, 3 o'clock is the endgame (again in the full sense, not just yose/boundary plays). 4.30 is reading (i.e. looking ahead with moves), 6 is whole-board vision, 7.30 is positional judgement, 9 is resilience when behind, and 11.30 is composure (i.e. keeping calm under pressure).

We can see that Sumire considers herself as very composed but lacking in resilience, and rather lacking on all other departments. If we assume she is being modest, and so bump up her scores for her, the composure element would be off the chart!

The coach in this case was Hirata Tomoya 7-dan. His comment on the chart was: "No explanation needed, I imagine (laughs). Compared to her peers, she has the best record for actually winning games. In the past year or so, she has suddenly gained a lot of strength. By keeping on winning, she gets more and more games and so her match-play intuition is being honed. The younger you are, the more you learn from competitive games. It's a bebign circle."

I don't know how to do tables here, but I'll present the core data for the other players so far for those who are interested and willing enough to sort it out.

For each player, I give the scores (out of 10) in clockwise order starting at high noon (the opening). I also add their career scores in 2021.

SAKAI YUJI 3-dan (26-10): 5, 7, 4, 8, 5, 3, 6, 3
MIURA TARO 2-dan (23-11): 8, 7, 7, 7, 8, 7, 6, 7
UENO RISA 1-dan (21-16): 4, 3, 5, 9, 2, 5, 5, 9
JO BUNEN 1-dan (7-8): 2, 5, 5, 3, 4, 4, 5, 2
KATO CHIE 2-dan (32-20): 7, 3, 5, 5, 5, 2, 7, 8
NAKAMURA SUMIRE 2-dan (43-18): 6, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 3, 8
FUJII KOKI 1-dan (10-12): 7, 5, 3, 4, 6, 5, 5, 6
TANAKA YUKI 1-dan (9-10): 4, 8, 7, 10, 6, 5, 7, 6

Note that 10 out of 10 for reading ability! Tanaka presumably solves Igo Hatsuyoron after just one Shredded Wheat for breakfast. Miura is the most balanced player (in his own estimation, of course), but what is not shown in the charts is that Kato Chie is the hardest worker. Hirata rates her as "super composed - she never gets flustered."

As regards the commentaries, Hirata is one of the AI aficionados among pros. He doesn't refer to AI directly in his commentaries, but he seems to have AI thinking in his mind as he writes. If you want to look at an example, refer to Sumire's game with Hoshiai on 2021-12-02, move 40. This was a move by Hoshiai actually, but instead of the usual single-concept comment ("this is a well-timed forcing move" or "Black is now overconcentrated" or similar), Hirata gives us a kaleidoscope of concepts: White 40 is a probe but is also tenuki with a kiai feel, and so a running battle begins." Four concepts at once - just like AI play. This is multivariate analysis of a different kind!

Edit: See post below.

This would probably be very useful for L19ers to do too, haha! With 9 for reading and 2 for whole-board vision, Ueno might have on average the widest range in skillset. Muira Taro's stat's I guess implies he's not just the most balanced but also is the strongest at the moment!



Wow! It's a new era indeed. Then again, what do I know. He may have been describing the competition that emerges when someone takes the last of the shredded wheat!

I find this quite interesting, and a bit eye-opener. In a previous post, with Sakai's chart, I wanted to ask about other players. Good to have an answer without making the question Also, now I see that Kono Rin was the commentator, but he didn't make the chart.

Anyway. Seeing that charts are made by the players themselves, with no common criteria, only their self-diagnosis, I want to comment that:
- Giving a 10 to yourself is a sign of overconfidence, arrogance, and other things that I can't say here. Good luck in your career.
- It's surprising how some players rate themselves very high in some area, and very low in others. Ueno Risa can read very well, but is poor at whole-board vision. Really? Might be. But I tend to think that you need to have a minimum level of skill in every area to be a pro.
- Jo Bunen and Nakamura Sumire give themselves low ranks, and both are also daughters of pro players. I wonder if they were raised to be modest.
- How players rate composure and how we can compare is interesting. From my point of view, it is something that runs inside of each head, and no one can really know what other people are thinking or feeling. For example, I can think that I read well if I can read better than other players. But I can't really compare how I keep calm and deal with stress. Too personal.
- Sumire has played a lot of strong players, and beaten some of them. Perhaps she understands better how strong other players are. John said that she might be modest. But she might also be thinking in the player she wants to become. In this case, she sees all the improvement that she has to make. She is realistic, but also ambitious.

I'd like to know what top pros think about these charts, and if they will repeat them in the future.

This perhaps belongs as an edit to my post just above, but I imagine many people are like me and don't scroll back through earlier posts, so I'll add it here. But to make perfect sense of it, you may indeed have to scroll back!

I was lying in bed this morning thinking more about Hirata's commentary style. It's actually much more multivariate than appears at first sight. Same game as above, but move 60: "White turned to an ideal hane with 60 and so got splendid outside influence. White has also left the cut at A. There is an impression, too, that Black has been cleverly boxed in." The hane did not just give influence, it reduced the liberties of some important Black stones below the critical ;five alive' level. "Got" as usual implies the sequence ended in gote, so there is an implied mention of sente/gote, but also a strong hint at the distinction between sente and the initiative. That initiative is further implied by Black being more or less boxed in. In other words she now becomes prone to bullying (ijime). The cut at A implies the endgame in this case, as it's just a pure profit move with no strategic or aji implications, except of course that it requires sente eventually to get it, and so timing comes into the mix. The reference to outside influence, apart from being correct here of course, is a contrastive allusion to White 36 in the same area which was described as making Black's thickness (different concept) anaemic. One of the important differences between outside influence and thickness is that thickness is always on life support in its early stages. Outside influence naturally also implies the initiative at various points on the board, so is part of whole-board vision. This is a paella of a comment as opposed to a plate of Shredded Wheat.

Note that this and the earlier comment are essentially criticisms of Sumire's moves. Relating this to her radar chart, we can see that she has indeed fallen short in tis game on whole-board vision, one of her self-confessed weak points. Ending up boxed in also confirms another weak point, being boxed in, and perhaps too some weakness in her middle game.

I was too tired to hunt out the game last night, but here it is.




Sumire went on to win, despite her claim to lack resilience when behind. My interpretation of that is that she means, with lack of reading ability etc, that she feels she lacks the technical resources to be called fully resilient, but she has more than enough composure not to let that get her down and/or she remained patient.

Her strong point is the opening, and Hirata's commentary accordingly skipped over that, except to say that he would have preferred a pincer around R11 over Black 35. Sumire's problems really only started with Black 53, although White 46 had made Black thin rather than thick. Black 47 was reasonable enough in the circumstances.

White's mis-steps started with 66 (big but gote), and the above-mentioned cut at 81 may have been better.

85 starts another running battle, and it is my own impression (from 175 Sumire games in the GoGoD database) that she rather likes such seriai fights. Whether she is good at them or not I'm not competent to say, but they are a high-risk strategy, because if you lose inititaive control you end up being forced into damage control. Maybe this is why she sees her middle game as weak?

Black 103 was an example of Sumire's composure, according to Hirata. 107 was a bit of a cheeky move in that it irritates the opponent without being really sound (the usual souba move would be C17).

Black 131 and 133 were "typical Sumire-chan moves" But White still has the advantage at this point. However, she missed the tactical punch necessary and relaxed with White 140 (which should have been at M12). In view of that White (missed) resource. Black 133 should have been at M14, and then it turns into a yose shoubu or boundary-play contest.

Coincidentally or not, all these comments by Hirata seem to match the AI chart of the game, except that there was a big White dip on move 102. Hirata's comment on 103 perhaps implies that, and maybe he was also implying criticism of her composure here - the bot did not like Black's response, which cancelled out White's loss.

There's a post on OGS forums based on these graphs but it devolved (improved?) pretty quickly. https://forums.online-go.com/t/create-y ... t/42232/37

yebellz was the first to have fun: