Life In 19x19

Ke Jie will celebrate his new year with IMSA championship and returning to no.1 reign. (Though he once again win with white in Chinese rule)

Not yet!
That will depend on his performance against Peng Liyao in the Xin'ao Cup. Of course, I think most people(including me) will be banking on a Ke Jie win, completing his streak of 3 international titles each year for the past 3 years. I believe those will be the last games of the year for Ke Jie?

Xinao cup final starts tomorrow 18th Dec and then 19/21/23/24. I guess having Christmas eve off isn't so important in non-Christian Asia (quite a few in South Korea though, I seem to recall Cho Hyeyeon famously didn't play on Sundays).

Edit: Or did it? I couldn't see game on wbaduk.

Park scored two wins yesterday and today against lower ranked pros, Kwon Juri 1P and Park Geunho 2P in the Crown Haitai Cup. With Ke Jie's 3rd round loss to Peng yesterday, it seems that Park may overtake him again for #1!

That should last for about a day, assuming Ke Jie takes the next game, haha.

UPDATE: Nope, Park is still 0.84pts below Ke. Apparently goratings doesn't round a 3635.93 to a 3636

WindCaliber wrote:completing his streak of 3 international titles each year for the past 3 years.

Head of Chinese National team received Lawrence award instead of Ke Jie (how can I say this correctly in English?) because Ke Jie is still at Xinao cup. He said this cup will be Ke Jie's fifth world champion. So their criteria didn't count Limin and IMSA. But let's do it our way and count them all, what's Ke Jie's third cup in 2015 and 2016 beside Bailing 2015, Samsung 2015-2016, and MLily 2016?

Hmmm, I think I may have hallucinated when I typed that—I think I meant two.

I'm not sure about including the IMSA(then again what else would it be classified as?), but there's absolutely no reason not to include the Limin Cup.

Edit: Yep definitely a typo. In this post from the 19th Nongshim Cup thread, I say two. Haha, oops.

WindCaliber wrote: Your information is incorrect. Counting by when he actually won the final game, he won 2 international titles in 2015, 2 in 2016, and he won the Limin Cup this year. Thus, he is on track to win 2 a year for 3 years in a row.

WindCaliber wrote:but there's absolutely no reason not to include the Limin Cup.

Maybe Limin cup is for age under 20 only?

I think the "real" reason is that they—the associations—don't want easy 9D promotions, with the assumption being that junior and foreign competition is lesser. This can be seen in that GLOBIS Cup and Limin Cup winners don't get promoted to 9D, e.g. Ichiriki Ryo and Li Qincheng.

This is poor reasoning, IMO, because what if one day western pros do reach top tier level? What if the U-20 tournament was stacked with players like Shin Jinseo, Ke Jie, Li Qincheng, etc.? Or what if a western pro manages to win the IMSA(defeating Ke Jie and Park?), would that not merit a promotion? What if a "real" international tournament *somehow* has all weak to average pros? The way things are done now is quite arbitrary. The only objective way to determine if a tournament should count as "international" is if it's actually international or not.

Sorry for rant.

Though it's unlikely that Ke Jie will be back to no.1 within this year, winning Xinao cup is already good enough

by international title I think people generally mean "major title", like Grand Slam in tennis.

Ke Jie agrees to play a series of games with AIs including FineArt, DeepZen Go, CGI, etc. I knew he couldn't resist!

BBC Article: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42493027
Sina Article: http://sports.sina.com.cn/go/2017-12-27 ... 3456.shtml

Ke Jie's comments:

Ke Jie: “我说不再跟AI下棋，现在食言了。”
Ke Jie: "I said I wouldn't play against AI anymore, now I eat my words."

Ke Jie: “今年刚开始期待很高，特别是刚开始跟AlphaGo下完棋后的连胜，以为没人能阻挡我了，但后来发现阻挡我的人还是很多的。后来我也看开了，努力过就没有遗憾。今年总的成绩还算乏善可陈，还算满意。”
Ke Jie: "The beginning of the year [my Go] looked very good, especially my winning streak after playing against AlphaGo. I thought that no one could stop me, however I soon realized that I wasn't unbeatable. Afterwards, I accepted the reality and just worked hard [on my Go] leaving no regrets. My performance this year hasn't been that amazing, but I can still be satisfied with it."

pookpooi wrote:Though it's unlikely that Ke Jie will be back to no.1 within this year, winning Xinao cup is already good enough

If he doesn't have another slump, he should take back his #1 spot without too much difficulty.

One comment in Reddit said Ke Jie will only play with Tian Rang

https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments ... ing_no_a0/

Anyway, Chinese news finally found something to praise Ke Jie, it's that he's the youngest to reach fifth world championship, surpassing Lee Changho

pookpooi wrote:One comment in Reddit said Ke Jie will only play with Tian Rang

https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments ... ing_no_a0/

Anyway, Chinese news finally found something to praise Ke Jie, it's that he's the youngest to reach fifth world championship, surpassing Lee Changho

Hi, I posted that comment in Reddit. To add on, another report speculates on the reason why Ke Jie will only be playing Tian rang, as follows. It says that Fineart is seen as too strong, making the match uncompetitive, while deepzengo was not suitable as it was now the "secret weapon" for the Japanese national team. Chinese Source: https://36kr.com/p/5110088.html

I thought the comment on deepzengo being Japan's secret weapon was interesting. China has Fineart and tianrang, japan has zen. Where does that leave Korea?

Caesura wrote:Where does that leave Korea?

South Korea has Dolbaram
http://english.etnews.com/20160518200003
While North Korea has Silver Igo
http://articles.latimes.com/1999/aug/19/news/mn-1595/2