Life In 19x19

Is Cho ChiHoon(ChKun) too old for younger generation?
He lost to insei(Kim SungJin) in Agon cup. Very surprised to see it happen..(Feel very sad.)

Korean insei are very strong, a lot of professionnal lost against korean insei.

For example, Moon Dowon is 2P, but when she was insei, she beat a lot of pro

IMO,

level of players have gotten stroner over the years.
i personally think Cho in his prime can not win against current top players like Lee sehdol.
only reason Cho was successful is that his competitions were not strong.

then again..it's only my opinion.

Magicwand wrote:IMO,

level of players have gotten stroner over the years.

On the other hand, Huang Longshi is refered to be as strong as 13p by Go Seigen and he is pretty dead since a few hundred years. Well, maybe Go Seigen is now, too, considered weak compared to nowadays players? Or are nowadays top-players themselves as good as 13p?
If I remember correctly Dosaku was refered to be at least 13p aswell.
Then again, is Shusaku only (mostly) praised as one of the strongest players in history because of Hikaru no Go or is there something more solid, which would back that up?

But those are japanese players and their are naturally considered weak in international competition, ... so I heard. Difficult ^^

I don't think that modern players are stronger.
It is just that they are playing different game. The talent is absolute and cannot be compared in any way. Japanese go plays longer game and other country are playing shorter game. Shorter game looks very exciting and appeal to audience. But playing shorter game is detrimental to game itself. Just my 2 cents.

Wouldn't a modern pro crush Huang Longshi in the opening?

trout wrote:I don't think that modern players are stronger.
It is just that they are playing different game. The talent is absolute and cannot be compared in any way. Japanese go plays longer game and other country are playing shorter game. Shorter game looks very exciting and appeal to audience. But playing shorter game is detrimental to game itself. Just my 2 cents.

During the prime Cho won title in 2 day game and also shorter game which proves if you are good at one then you are good at other.

i can not understand why people think japanese will do well if the game is 2day game.
it is a fact that they are weaker than Korean and Chinese players.
more time will not help them win the game.

SoDesuNe wrote:Then again, is Shusaku only (mostly) praised as one of the strongest players in history because of Hikaru no Go or is there something more solid, which would back that up?

from what i know, Shusaku had impressive winning ratio and other stats but there were stronger players in history. to already mentioned Dosaku and Huang Longshi i would add Honinbo Shuei, who is the last classical player whose games are still studied by modern players (i hope i am not wrong on this)

the truth is that the level of theory and knowledge rises through the time so today players are stronger than past ones. still, it doesn't say anything about who of them would be stronger if they lived in the same time (so they could compete on equal terms)

Magicwand wrote:i can not understand why people think japanese will do well if the game is 2day game.
it is a fact that they are weaker than Korean and Chinese players.
more time will not help them win the game.

i agree strength is pretty much independent on time limits. but i wonder which players produce better game records, i guess long Japanese limits would beat stronger Chinese/Korean players. (this is mainly philosophical question. Chinese/Korean could surely produce better games than they do, but they don't)

Regardless of who would be stronger in a slower game, it's unfortunate that so many games are played so quickly these days.

It's difficult to argue that it doesn't reduce the quality of the game and it would be nice to see top players take their time and create real masterpieces more often.

It's the media, of course, who keep pushing for faster and faster games, just like they do in other sports. A few years ago, Korean veteran Seo Bongsu criticized this trend, saying that it turned professional players into clowns who had to perform while the crowd laughed at them. I know other professional players feel the same way.

On the topic of Cho, he is also getting quite old and it's natural for certain functions of the brain to degrade and others to improve as people age.

Regardless of who would be stronger in a slower game, it's unfortunate that so many games are played so quickly these days.

It's difficult to argue that it doesn't reduce the quality of the game and it would be nice to see top players take their time and create real masterpieces more often.

I'm in this camp. I suspect modern players are stronger because there's a bigger pool, they are possibly healthier, and they've had, one assumes, the benefit of improvements in teaching methods.

But if you ask whether modern games are better, the answer may be no. I have spent the last year or so producing books on games of the past that were played over long periods - six months in one case. What I noticed in the very many pro commentaries I looked at is that very few mistakes were found. There was quite a bit of "nowadays we'd do this" in the opening, but that shouldn't obscure the fact that generally the players in these old games were then innovating as well as producing almost mistake-free games. These were famous games, but you often encounter comments about more ordinary games to the effect that they were almost perfect, too. There is thus a case to be made for studying these games above all others.

Going back to players rather than games, with the exception of Takemiya, I can't think of any modern player who can be said to have re-defined go theory in some significant way, whereas names like O-Senchi, Shuho, Shuei, Shusai and Go Seigen leap out.

John Fairbairn wrote:Going back to players rather than games, with the exception of Takemiya, I can't think of any modern player who can be said to have re-defined go theory in some significant way, whereas names like O-Senchi, Shuho, Shuei, Shusai and Go Seigen leap out.

Forgive my ignorance, but could you tell me what innovations Shuho, Shuei and Shusai came up with? I know Shusai wrote a famous book of life and death problems and Shuei's games were said to be like flowing water, but nothing more about them. O-Senchi's name rings a bell, and I'm sure I've heard/read what he invented, but it's not coming to my mind at the moment either.

John Fairbairn wrote:Going back to players rather than games, with the exception of Takemiya, I can't think of any modern player who can be said to have re-defined go theory in some significant way, whereas names like O-Senchi, Shuho, Shuei, Shusai and Go Seigen leap out.

Would you draw the conclusion that innovation has slowed (since 1940? 1950? or some other date), or that it's now the product of a great many minds making smaller contributions?

There will always be innovations in the game, but being known as a player who redefines go theory is on a totally different scale.

Forgive my ignorance, but could you tell me what innovations Shuho, Shuei and Shusai came up with? I know Shusai wrote a famous book of life and death problems and Shuei's games were said to be like flowing water, but nothing more about them. O-Senchi's name rings a bell, and I'm sure I've heard/read what he invented, but it's not coming to my mind at the moment either.

I wrote about the three Shus in a book which has just arrived in England yesterday, 29 April 2011 (The Old versus New Fuseki) so I'm sure you'll forgive me not wanting to repeat it here, but in a nutshell they redefined fuseki, and Shuei added to that mastery of miai play. O-Senchi was the Takemiya of his day, but rather more formidable in some ways as being the true pioneer of the cenre-oriented style and at a time when there was no komi. The same book will also show you that Go's contribution to New Fuseki is generally overrated (there was more evolution than generally supposed), but he innovated in several other areas, too.

As to Shusai being famous for a life & death book - phooey. Several of the problems there were straight copies of ancient ones. What was famous about that book was the presentation. It marked the first real attempt to present a reader-friendly problem book to the general public and, for that, was as significant in its day as e-books today. In fact I have produced an e-book version of it for that very reason (when it will appear is out of my hands, but very soon I expect - for SmartGo Kifu). Jiji Shinpo deserve the credit more than Shusai.

I think it stands to reason that the quality of a game depends on you definition of quality. To some, this could mean optimal play. To others, there is something fascinating - skillful - maybe finesseful (?) about having the skill to play well under time pressure.

Consider the field of AI. Many machine learning algorithms are not deterministic. The use probability to infer likely best decisions given a set of incomplete information. Some such algorithms can do amazing things, from detecting stuff in images, to predicting stock trends, to even playing go under time constraints. If I were to measure the quality and intelligence of such algorithms compared to a brute-force algorithm that they teach in a high school math class, the non-deterministic algorithm is often much more complex, elegant, and impressive to me.

In the same way, I am not impressed if someone can brute force the solution to 5x5 tic-tac-toe in 5 days. I am impressed if someone can show the aptitude to make probabalistic decisions in the face of uncertainty under tight time constraints playing the same game.

I won't claim that crappy fast play is impressive. But near-optimal play under fast time constraints is. It shows intuition, skill, and quick thonking more than slow games often do.

If a computer can brute force go by calculating for 1000 years, that's impressive. But if there's a 5d algorithm that can decide moves in under 5 seconds - well, that's more pressive to me. It shows true skill and aptitude in the underlying algorithm - something more than basic, run-of-the-mill brute force.