Life In 19x19

I see your GoGameGuru link and raise you: http://gogameguru.com/experience-trumps ... msung-cup/
Three of the four semifinalists are Korean.

Any competition trying to figure out right now whether Korea or China is stronger is rather pointless. They are extremely close on the international stage.

lindentree wrote:I see your GoGameGuru link and raise you: http://gogameguru.com/experience-trumps ... msung-cup/
Three of the four semifinalists are Korean.

I see your link but it somewhat negates the BC link since, Baek Honkseok was the only Korean semi-finalist, so China is still better head to head this year.

"All of China’s hopes are on Gu Li

Gu Li, the only remaining Chinese player, must be feeling a lot of pressure.

I’m sure he’s hoping to emulate Baek Hongseok’s determined win at this year’s BC Card Cup, where Baek was the sole Korean semifinalist."

This has got to be one of the dumbest arguments we've had on this site, and we've debated for 10+ pages over the definition of "brilliant" before.

Splatted wrote:

oren wrote:I think the handicap discussion has derailed this thread a bit.

It's so obviously a troll that I don't know why people are even replying to it.

Because I prefer to believe that SmoothOper is trolling than entertain the possibility that he seriously believes this nonsense he is spouting.

Uberdude wrote:

Splatted wrote:

oren wrote:I think the handicap discussion has derailed this thread a bit.

It's so obviously a troll that I don't know why people are even replying to it.

Because I prefer to believe that SmoothOper is trolling than entertain the possibility that he seriously believes this nonsense he is spouting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

Uberdude wrote:

Splatted wrote:

oren wrote:I think the handicap discussion has derailed this thread a bit.

It's so obviously a troll that I don't know why people are even replying to it.

Because I prefer to believe that SmoothOper is trolling than entertain the possibility that he seriously believes this nonsense he is spouting.

The only thing more surprising is the number of people who think ninrensei is a good opening because Takeyama won once in the 80's and that Japan is the epicenter of good go traditions. Of course Uberdude, Splatted, etc won't comment on how dumb that is

The only thing more surprising is the number of people who think ninrensei is a good opening because Takeyama won once in the 80's and that Japan is the epicenter of good go traditions. Of course Uberdude, Splatted, etc won't comment on how dumb that is

Who is Takeyama and what is "nin"rensei? Do you mean Takemiya and/or nirensei? Sanrensei?

lindentree wrote:

The only thing more surprising is the number of people who think ninrensei is a good opening because Takeyama won once in the 80's and that Japan is the epicenter of good go traditions. Of course Uberdude, Splatted, etc won't comment on how dumb that is

Who is Takeyama and what is "nin"rensei? Do you mean Takemiya and/or nirensei? Sanrensei?

Ah yes excuse me. I didn't mean to disrespect Takemiya in that way If you would be so nice as to address the more substantial part of the argument I would appreciate it thanks.

SmoothOper wrote:If you would be so nice as to address the more substantial part of the argument I would appreciate it thanks.

What is your argument? I don't think anyone quite follows it. We've explained before that handicap placement has nothing to do with it.

oren wrote:

SmoothOper wrote:If you would be so nice as to address the more substantial part of the argument I would appreciate it thanks.

What is your argument? I don't think anyone quite follows it. We've explained before that handicap placement has nothing to do with it.

No one addressed my rebuttal that while pros generally don't play handicaps in tournaments they probably use them while training in there dojos. Furthermore people always cite that Takemiya won with ninrensei as an argument for the traditional placement, so it seems like it ought to be established that this may have been only a fluke, and that neither is the Japanese tradition very good or ninrensei a very good strategy since they aren't able to really win with it at the top levels in modern play.

SmoothOper wrote:No one addressed my rebuttal that while pros generally don't play handicaps in tournaments they probably use them while training in there dojos. Furthermore people always cite that Takemiya won with ninrensei as an argument for the traditional placement, so it seems like it ought to be established that this may have been only a fluke, and that neither is the Japanese tradition very good or ninrensei a very good strategy since they aren't able to really win with it at the top levels in modern play.

In their study sessions, they would never use handicap. Japanese players also rarely use nirensei today. From recent experience at looking at pro games, if anyone does use nirensei, it's as white and more likely to be a Korean or Chinese player. Takemiya's influence was to make sanrensei popular. However, I haven't seen any Japanese players use that at the top level in quite a while.

and now ez4u can drag out all the cool search algorithms for fuseki...

SmoothOper wrote:No one addressed my rebuttal that while pros generally don't play handicaps in tournaments they probably use them while training in there dojos.

No

SmoothOper wrote:Furthermore people always cite that Takemiya won with ninrensei as an argument for the traditional placement

Really? I've never heard that. And even were it true it has no relevance to the issue. Plus traditional handicap placement predates Takemiya by at least a few centuries.

SmoothOper wrote:and that neither is the Japanese tradition very good

What?

SmoothOper wrote:neither ... is ninrensei[sic] a very good strategy since they aren't able to really win with it at the top levels in modern play.

It is true that black rarely plays nirensei today as the big komi means he tends to play at least 1 3-4 point to get territory. White often uses nirensei for a speedy opening. I am not aware of national differences here.

SmoothOper wrote:No one addressed my rebuttal that while pros generally don't play handicaps in tournaments they probably use them while training in there dojos.

Actually I did, several times

SmoothOper wrote:Furthermore people always cite that Takemiya won with ninrensei as an argument for the traditional placement

I don't think anyone has mentioned this in the thread. I certainly diddn't

SmoothOper wrote:so it seems like it ought to be established that this may have been only a fluke, and that neither is the Japanese tradition very good or ninrensei a very good strategy since they aren't able to really win with it at the top levels in modern play.

Do you have any statistics to back up this statement? I would like to hear what ez4u has to say about the statistics
Edit:
I also am not sure what the relevance of nirensei is to the discussion we are having.

Dusk Eagle wrote:This has got to be one of the dumbest arguments we've had on this site, and we've debated for 10+ pages over the definition of "brilliant" before.

I liked this post and wanted to agree with it. But then I checked the latest in the Logical Players, Intuitive Players topic and thought, "Hmmm..."