Life In 19x19

Team Japan won the last round 3-1 and will play in the B-league next year! Organizer of team Japan Ko Reibun said he would try to get Iyama to play if the schedule allows. Since Lee Sedol's team is only in 5th position with one round to go we might see an Iyama - Lee showdown next year.

Has the level of Japanese Go declined this much? I'm beginning to get the feeling that even if Japan had sent Iyama, Takao, and Yamashita, they still wouldn't make it into the A-League.

By the way, how did GoRatings.org rank Iyama as high as number two in the world?!

hyperpape wrote:How strong are teams in the C league?

C-League is the weakest of the three and has the shortest time controls. It's basically used to qualify for the B-League, and B-League serves as a qualification league to get into the A-League. The A-League is where all the players aspire to play in and where only the strongest are admitted.

And the fact that Japan has been toiling in the C-League is kind of humbling to say the least. That said, the Chinese League system is no walk in the park because it's open to the very best players regardless of their countries of origin. Lee Sedol has been playing in the Chinese League for years. Park Yeong-hun, Lee Changho, Choi Cheol-han, Park Junghwan, and other top Korean players have all participated. Because of this, the Chinese A-League is possibly the most competitive gathering in the world outside of major international tournaments.

by78 wrote:By the way, how did GoRatings.org rank Iyama as high as number two in the world?!

Simple model: his average Japanese opponent has a rating of X, and he beats them something like 80% of the time. According to the ELO system, that implies he is 200-250 ELO points higher than his average opponent, which puts him in the top five or so players.

There are definitely ways this model could fail to be accurate, but that's the gist of it, and it makes decent sense. See also: http://lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 91#p204691.

by78 wrote:Has the level of Japanese Go declined this much? I'm beginning to get the feeling that even if Japan had sent Iyama, Takao, and Yamashita, they still wouldn't make it into the A-League.

By the way, how did GoRatings.org rank Iyama as high as number two in the world?!

I'm sure Team Japan will not be promoted to A-League. A-League is too competitive for these players (except Iyama). For example, Team Shandong has three very strong players Zhou Ruiyang, Jiang Weijie and Fan Tingyu, but their performances as captain are Zhou 2-4, Jiang 0-2, Fan 0-1. Another example is Tang Weixing, whose career performance in A-League is only 76-71.

Yeah, it seems like there's only one team they might be equally matched against:

Hebei Xinao with
Li Ming, Xie Ke, Xia Jiankun, Liu Xing

lambdacdm wrote:

by78 wrote:Has the level of Japanese Go declined this much? I'm beginning to get the feeling that even if Japan had sent Iyama, Takao, and Yamashita, they still wouldn't make it into the A-League.

By the way, how did GoRatings.org rank Iyama as high as number two in the world?!

I'm sure Team Japan will not be promoted to A-League. A-League is too competitive for these players (except Iyama).

No, Iyama wouldn't be competitive if he were in the A-League. If those names you mentioned couldn't get a wining record, then Iyama would be lucky to win 30-35% of his games.

B-League is more likely Iyama's level.

by78 wrote: No, Iyama wouldn't be competitive if he were in the A-League. If those names you mentioned couldn't get a wining record, then Iyama would be lucky to win 30-35% of his games.

B-League is more likely Iyama's level.

I think it is simply too difficult to predict how Iyama would fair in A-league. I still believe he should at least be in world top 20 if not top 10 or even top 5. There are just not enough data to gauge his strength against other top players. If he could play in B-league at least that would provide a few more data points. And his schedule makes it very difficult to play in A-league which is a weekly fair, so B-league might be the best we could hope for.

Unfortunately(well fortunately for his team) Lee Sedol won his last round game and his team (which finished in 3rd place) will play in A-league next year due to the expansion of A-league! So we will not see Iyama vs Lee in B-league.

wolfking wrote:

by78 wrote: No, Iyama wouldn't be competitive if he were in the A-League. If those names you mentioned couldn't get a wining record, then Iyama would be lucky to win 30-35% of his games.

B-League is more likely Iyama's level.

I think it is simply too difficult to predict how Iyama would fair in A-league. I still believe he should at least be in world top 20 if not top 10 or even top 5. There are just not enough data to gauge his strength against other top players. If he could play in B-league at least that would provide a few more data points. And his schedule makes it very difficult to play in A-league which is a weekly fair, so B-league might be the best we could hope for.

Unfortunately(well fortunately for his team) Lee Sedol won his last round game and his team (which finished in 3rd place) will play in A-league next year due to the expansion of A-league! So we will not see Iyama vs Lee in B-league.

Not even the Japanese themselves rank Iyama in the world top 20. GoRatings.org is the LTCM of Go player rankings; take it seriously at your own risk.

GoRatings is run by a programmer, not by a trained statistician, and the ranking relies on incomplete data.

Other ranking lists (run by Asian organizations with access to games and data points not available to GoRatings.org) all have Iyama much, much lower.

The Japanese themselves rank Iyama at #23: http://sports.geocities.jp/mamumamu0413/total.html.

Dr. Bae's ranking is kinder as he has Iyama at #17 as of this April: https://www.baduk.or.kr/news/report_vie ... ws_no=1738

There really is no need to ask if Iyama is in the world top-10 because he's most definitely NOT strong enough to merit that question, unless you want to abandon all common sense and reason.

Instead, we should ask if Iyama is a world top-20 player. Again, the answer is probably NO.

I think Iyama would fare poorly if he were to participate in the Chinese A-league. But I think he is a good fit for the B-league, and there is no shame in that because these Chinese leagues are no walk in the park.

Saying things louder doesn't make them more convincing.

by78 wrote:GoRatings is run by a programmer, not by a trained statistician

The "programmer" is a Ph.D. in Computer Science, whose work covered machine learning and monte carlo methods, Dr. Bae Taeil is a Physicist.

As far as arguments from authority go, let's call it a push.

I wonder what qualifications and office mamumamu holds has that makes him the voice of "The Japanese".

Uberdude wrote:I wonder what qualifications and office mamumamu holds has that makes him the voice of "The Japanese".

Simply the energy and enthusiasm to spend years doing what no one in the Nihon Kiin, Kansai Kiin or any other 'official' organization cares to do.

ez4u, my comment wasn't meant as a slight against mamumamu, I think he does a great job (and I've like your posts based on his information), but to highlight by78's double standards: he poo-poos Remi's goratings with the relatively high raking of Iyama as the work of a mere programmer not a statistician, but fails to apply the same ad hominem arguments to other sources of ratings which agree with his lower ranking of Iyama.

I just noticed that back in June 2014, Taeil's rankings had Iyama at 5th, Kono Rin at 20th and Yamashita at 31st (http://senseis.xmp.net/?WorldRanking).

I am eagerly awaiting by78's response.

Regardless of Iyama's ranking, I think we all want to see him play in B-league against Chinese and Korean opponents. Hopefully Ko Reibun can make it happen.