Life In 19x19

The Asian New Stars Match has started--China and Korea will play Tuesday to determine the winning team. http://igokisen.web.fc2.com/an.html

Taiwan lost badly so far, (1-7, 1-7). Japan did ok against China (3-5) but lost badly against Korea (1-7).

Murakawa Daisuke, who's we've mentioned before, won against Gu Lingyi. That's quite a good win for him.

I don't actually know the cutoff for participation. Several 9 dans are playing, and Anzai Nobuaki is 25, so that suggests it might be an under 25 tournament, but that's just a guess.

Does anyone know how participants were selected? I recognize that Japan changed almost the whole team after last years debacle. (With clear losses against Korea and China, and a loss against Taiwan as well.)

PS This is a question, I don't know the reason for the changed team composition.

Tapir: is that conjecture, or do you know that the team was changed because of the results? I just ask because I all but one of Japan's 2009 wins came from players who are not competing this year, and you wouldn't want to drop Iyama Yuta.

The Go News page at senseis says Korea beat China 5-3, but I don't have full results.

According to Tom.com (http://post.weiqi.tom.com/s/1B0009042823.html), this year's competition featured teams representing 4 cities: Hangzhou, Seoul, Tokyo and Taipei. In the last round, Team Hangzhou split the 8 games with Team Seol, but lost the match as the result of the team captain losing to Team Seoul's. Team Taipei took the third, after beating Team Tokyo 5-3.

I don't know what the deal is with the cities. Looking at Japan, Murakawa is a Kansai Ki-In player--no obvious Tokyo affiliation, and the list just looks like more or less the under-25 players you'd want to pick to make a team.

Losing to Taiwan these past two years is a new development for Japan, but doing poorly in youth matches isn't an isolated phenomenon. By chance, I looked at the Ing World Youth Goe Championship a few days ago, and found that in 27 years, the Japanese have never won either the junior or senior divisions. That's really remarkable: while the Japanese trail the Chinese and Koreans in general, they at least do sometimes win international titles, or the WAGC. In contrast, they're constantly behind in the youth competitions.

that 3 of 5 lost games against taiwan were 0.5 wins probably doesn't help. the ambition is probably not to be close to taiwan but to succeed against china and korea. what a pity.