It will be reduced to a 16 player knockout and 5 game three hour per player final. Quite drastic. It will become 5th in prize money ranking losing 70% of it's winners prize. https://www.nihonkiin.or.jp/news/releas ... um=twitter

At first I doubted it but then I checked it with google translate

Is it that Iyama won one too many times? Broke the camel's back.

Two days ago I wrote to them to invite the most popular pro 최정先生 and 조해연先生 into the 本因坊戦. They should invite Korean women pros and then find a Korean sponsor to pay for the two-day games. However the silver lining this is it will mean the top Japanese players are more likely to participate in international tournaments.

This news was preceded by an announcement that Go Weekly will cease publication in the later summer. The reasons given were centred around life-style changes in Japan, with fewer people reading paper, and of course just doing other things. The bling of the internet has attracted most blame, but lifestyle changes caused by Covid and the subsequent work-from-home craze have also had a big impact worldwide. And teachers everywhere are reporting shortened attention spans among their charges.

In several countries, too. I sense, too, that AI has killed off much interest for the sort of less committed go fans who might buy newspapers and books. Scaling back sponsorship is no surprise given the hard times newspapers and publishers have had. What is very surprising is the huge scale of the scaling-back. This hints at wider and bigger problems so we may expect more such announcements. Even just within Japan, the impact on the Kansai Ki-in must be much bigger than that on the Nihon Ki-in. And who would want to venture into running a go club in Japan nowadays? Or even become a pro? There will always be the equivalent of chess bums, I suppose, but it is easy to envisage a day soon when go in Japan will no longer be treated as a respectable profession, at least by parents guiding their children into careers.

Japanese professionals will not be able to switch to international events. They need invitations. Otherwise, they need to qualify through preliminaries and in several cases they have to pay their own travel and accommodation in these preliminaries.

Korea has had a very patchy sponsorship record. Few companies stay the course and they don't put in anything like the money that has been put into Japan. Hence, so many Korean pros playing in China.

But China has its own economic go problems, as Ke Jie keeps reminding us.

All in all, a depressing day. The same issues have been killing off this forum for some time, so we have very few mourners even!

The only possible upticks I see on the horizon are the 100th anniversary of the Nihon Ki-in next year (if it survives that far!) and the possibility that someone like Sumire might win a major title. But even those kinds of events are nine-day wonders.

Are you talking about when they cited the cease of publication of Go weekly as a reason?



I'm going to write to LG and the Cholsun Ilbo to spread their integration preliminaries across different countries, with integration preliminaries with two places each in Japan and China, and on with one place in Taiwan. A pro from any country can play in any integration preliminary.

I think the Hobinbo and Meijin should find a Korean co-Sponsor and do a deal where Korean women pros are allowed to participate. Lotte is a Korean-Japanese company.

I find it hard to understand this mentality. The invention of the motorbike did not kill off athletics. People still get surprisingly excited by the fact that one person can run faster than another person, even if a machine can outdo all of the people. Closer to home, AI didn't kill off chess. If anything, AI analysis has enriched the game. (Not that chess is exactly looking healthy these days. But for other reasons.)

I think there's a few different things going on at once. Hard to tell how much is AI, how much is other go-specific or Japan-specific factors, how much the general decline of the human race (if that's a thing)...

Japanese Newspaper circulation is dropping.See:

http://yoshizuka.com/index.php/2021/09/ ... on-copies/

The Mainichi has the smallest circulation of the three major daily Japanese papers - Yomiuri (Kisei), followed by Asahi (Meijin) and then the Mainichi (Honinbo).

The newspaper sponsored titles seem to have been around for ever - the Honinbo tournament was announced by the Mainichi in June 1939, just after Shusai retired. Times are changing.

John Tilley

Chess has been suffering the consequences of the superiority of computers for a longer time than go has so we might draw some ideas from the experience of chess when thinking about go. One thing I notice is the decline of what in chess circles is known as classic tournaments and matches. Classic refers to long time limits, as have been traditional in particular in world champion matches. Consider the most recent chess world championship match between Caruana and Carlsen, which had a fixed number of "classic" games and, when the results of those were tied, the championship was decided by rapid games. Sponsors want viewers to be entertained by the games and the matches. Few people want to watch a go game for hours over two days. What is the viewership of the streamed two-day match games? At least with streaming people with short attention spans can interrupt watching and return after refreshing themselves. Even though it appears participation in chess seems to be healthy compared to go, it is still small compared to competitive football basketball, and baseball. As for baseball, in the USA there is some problem with public interest in the sport; tinkering with the rules of play is taking place in the form of pitch clocks to make the pace of the game quicker and thereby attract more watchers.

The game of go will not disappear. We just have many additional sources of information (websites, videos, forums,...) so that people read less printed material. It doesn't mean they stop reading books and magazines completely.

I first discovered Go through an article in 2009 talking about how computers were so bad at playing it, and the research being done to advance AI play. The fact that even AI could not beat humans intrigued me.

With AI first beating humans there was plenty of news about Go. But now AI seems mainstream in the news. Go AI is old news. Perhaps AI is so prevalent that Go no longer attracts players from that circle.

I very much appreciate the Newspapers for their sponsorship, but Shuwa was the last Honinbo and times had already changed after him. If times change again I think it will be OK. Nothing lasts forever.

Instead of being a best-of-5 of single day games it should be a best-of-3 of two-day games. What does everyone think?

The 5 hour games are very intense, often lasting late into the evening. I don't think it is such a bad thing to have this format in the title match. The real negative is that the Honinbo league will be replaced by a knock out with 3 hour time limit, if I understand the translation. Personally I find knock out tournaments to be the worst, it is less games for the fans and really it is less games for the players too. I'm much more interested in the number of games played by professionals than what they earn

Btw what is with all these letters that you say you have sent to the Nihon Kiin, did I miss out on an in joke

The analogy of motorbikes and athletics is inapposite for various reasons (a motorbike is not actually a runner). More relevant, I think, was the introduction of drugs that made some runners run faster, or further. I used to watch athletics a lot, with great enjoyment, on tv when I was young but two things turned me off. The first was the introduction of pace runners to create world records artificially. The other was the use of drugs (or, as it was mainly encapsulated in those days, the presence of East Germans in the event). It killed off my interest totally, to the extent that I don't even watch the Olympics today.

That is a subjective response. Other people do watch the Olympics and other people keep running. But that doesn't obviate the fact that many of us have switched off from athletics, and so the total audience is smaller than it could be. That maybe doesn't matter much with events as big as the Olympics, but I happen to feel that with much smaller events such pro go tournaments, even a small proportion of people (or maybe even the "silent majority") being put off can make a big difference, not just in terms of actual numbers playing but in the diminishing respect in which the game is held in the wider world (which impinges on sponsorship).

I believe this has already happened in chess. AI did not kill off chess, and I don't expect it to kill off go. What I do claim, though, is that it is has already killed off interest in both games for many people. In the case of chess, I've heard this from top grandmasters even before Stockfish and AlphaZero came along. This subdued interest leads to sponsorship difficulties and the other issues you hint at.

I personally rarely play go but I do chronicle its history. Any major change such as AI is actually grist to my mill. Therefore, unlike my quondam spectator's interest in athletics, my interest in go is less likely to fade away. But taking the historian's perspective, I can see a distinct possibility that go will now suffer in a way similar to the ending of the Shogunate, which led to a loss of sponsorship and a surge of interest in western bling. It took over 40 years for traditional Japanese arts to recover then. On the other hand, I'd hope that the faster pace of change nowadays may offer some hope for a speedier recovery.

There is something to be said for the connection to the players that can be achieved due to restrictions on who may participate in a tournament. For example, if the AGA has a go tournament among players in North America, the level of play maybe laughably weak compared to a pro tournament in Asia. Nonetheless, among North American players, such a tournament can garner a lot of interest. One reason for that may be that players in North America can relate to the competitors: they are from the same geographic location; they may have a similar background; someday, it may theoretically be possible to be one of the competitors. Because of these factors, some players in North America may even have *more* interest in AGA tournaments than the Asian counterparts.

The case for human-played go is similar. Yes, the level of play is laughably weak compared to our silicon friends. But we can relate to the players in a way that can't be achieved with AI. Our human role models are real people with their own quirks. They get fatigued and sometimes play emotionally.

This human connection is real, and transcends the moves themselves. For sure, the go playing landscape has changed significantly, and some have lost interest in the game completely. But there remains something magical about the human element that can be seen beyond the moves themselves.

I am reminded of Lee Sedol's move 78 from Game 4 of AlphaGo. Strictly speaking, the move didn't work - it could be refuted, and Lee would continue to have a losing position. But as someone connected to the player on Team Human, there remains something magical about what happened in that game. Maybe Team Human didn't play optimally. But there was something beyond the moves themselves with us on that day. And on that day, we won.

_________________
be immersed

Having a dying family member has led me to think a lot about the experience of life. What does it mean? What's the point? What should I aim to achieve? As a human being, it's somewhat natural to strive toward achievement. Perhaps through achievement, we can leave an impact on the world that will outlast our inevitable end to existence. From this perspective, the human go playing greats who have etched their names into the history books through their go accomplishments have achieved, to some degree, an impact that has outlived their human existence. In years to come, that mark, too, will cease to exist. But at least the impact has lasted longer than the typical human lifespan. That seems to account for some type of meaning.

But amateur go players aren't achieving the same type of meaning through go. None of us will have the same degree of achievement as Go Seigen. Maybe our close friends and family will remember that we played go in the years that pass after our funerals. So where can we find the meaning - the purpose of spending our time on this activity?

On one hand, maybe we aim to make our own, smaller-scale achievements. If I can't be the next Go Seigen, maybe I can win my division at the local city tournament. Or perhaps I can get a few stones stronger to mark some progress for the time I have spent on the game.

On the other hand, some may choose to find meaning through other means - again, by leaning on something bigger than themselves. For those individuals, meaning can be found in the experience itself. Immersing yourself in the game is one way to do this. Being absorbed by the black and white stones, reading what you can, is a way to occupy your mind and feel good about the experience of playing go itself. Alternatively, the experience may come from the flesh and blood connection that you have across the board. Playing an old friend - or making a new one by sharing moves together - is one way to experience the game. It's one way to be connected to something outside of your own, inevitably transient, self.

Human go tournaments help us, to some degree, in all of these pursuits. For the aspiring achievers among us, absorbing high-level play helps us to become stronger - aiding our progress by the play we see on the board. For those of us who look toward the experience, what better way to establish a connection than through sharing an experience with humans we can relate to?

In the end, none of this will persist forever. But while our hearts are still beating, let's achieve and experience go in a way that satisfies us as the human beings that we are.

_________________
be immersed

“Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

And let's not forget: games should be fun.

And learning is fun. History is fun. Challenges are fun.

Go is fun.

In I think August to September 2022 I sent a heartfelt letter to Samsung Fire and Marine Insurance, much of it things I've felt for 10 years https://lifein19x19.com/viewtopic.php?p=273103#p273103 One of the things I said was players who qualified through special preliminaries should always be paired with players from countries with the fewest representatives that round. It's sponsored by the left-wing JooSang Ilbo, which is unsurprising given the structure of the tournament, so I think and am honoured they really considered my thoughts based on what happened in the last tournament! Congratulations 최정先生!

You can write to the Japanese like I did if you want https://nihonkiin.or.jp/profile/inquiry.html https://kansaikiin.jp/subpage/inquiry.html

The LG Cup is sponsored by a right-wing paper, so I'll ask of them the other dreams I have of a two-day internatonal final and integrated preliminaries in multiple countries, but first would be to pair players from countries with the fewest representatives with the Korean and Chinese players with the lowest ranking in their respective ranking lists, so it's essentially a right-wing version of what I told SMFI.

I would add that I'm not the celebrity type but I'm beginningto think the biggest asset of the pro organisations are the personalities of their pros

We live as the result of two strands of RNA that themselves have no meaning. But together they do. Okay well RNA does a bit of coding, but still . . .

The it's not being able to reproduce, but being able to pass on genes in style, and perhaps you flex so much you create advanced brains compared to all other species. Or perhpas it's the ability to realise that what we should is often perpendicular to what we assume based on what society or our environment tells us. caring about the state of our existence is perpendicular to thinking it's only important to the degree it maintains our genes. If you asked our fish answers the meaning of their exitstence, they would have no idea. But in a way we are an answer to that question, they were a stepping stone us, a more advanced life form, and so I absolutely assume the meaning of our life is the same. In a sense, the very idea of trying to discover the meaning of life is against the meaning of life. A fish would have no chance of being able to concieve of what a life form as advanced as ours might be like, and I assume we are the same for one just as more advanced than us. The best both the fish and us can do is to try to understand our current level of consciousness so perfectly that we glean glimpses of the highr level.

To me, 바둑 represents all of these ideas and more, and that's why I will never stop playing it. I see the links between stones as social relationships.

That reminds me how the ancient Zhuangzi declared "this is how fish are happy" and when queried by the resident philistine Huizi "You are not a fish. How do you know that the fish are happy?" retorted like every 1st grader "when you ask how I know you admit that I know". The wisdom of the ancients was sublime. If the ancients could enjoy watching fish in a river, then why not writing a letter to the Nihon Kiin?

Btw RNA folds onto itself as a single strand not double strand, this is how RNA is happy