Well I definitely wish him the best. And the initial post asked us to give him our best wishes how would we do so?

On a side note I am not sure giving Pro status to players not really of that caliber is the best option to take. It does not increase my interest in them. There is no dishonor in being a strong amateur. And based on the US anyways most of the outreach and energy in teaching GO, evangelizing it, and supporting it is amateur based.

Finally what is the latest update? Thank you!

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Walla Walla GO Club -(on FB)

We play because we enjoy the beauty of the game, the snap and feel of real stones, and meeting interesting people. Hope to see ya there! お願いします!

Anthony

You are assuming a few things wrong: the desire for an amateur to become a pro is simply the shallow desire to gain more respect, and that the amateur-turned-pro would come back and base himself in his home country instead of staying in the pro-accredited country.

But I do agree that it does nothing to help the pro level of playing Go. It helps publicity though. With the really small amount that have been accepted under this scheme though, I doubt there will be any repercussions of this. Besides, given time, I'm sure he will come to be a real 1 Dan professional with the pro study sessions and games he plays with fellow pros. Just not yet.

I think it should be fair to treat foreign pros who got in under a special scheme to be treated like female pros accepted under the female pro qualifications, where they get a much lower pay than those accepted from the open ones, until they reach the higher dan ranks (4D, iirc).

Two more defeats for Nikola Mitic, now on 5 7 . He needs three victories in his last three matches to qualify.

At the top, still three players on 9 3 , a 14-year-old male insei (Kan Koutarou), a 18-year-old male outsider (Shibano Ryuunosuke) and a 19-year-old female outsider (Iwata Saeka).

(tentative name translation)

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La victoire est un hasard, la défaite une nécessité.

( my emphases )

Shoryuu, I'm sorry but I completely don't see how you got those assumptions out of what was written. Could you explain your logic ?

To say that there's no dishonor in being a strong amateur showed that the OP disregarded any other motivation Antti and any other foreign pro might have for turning pro, like simply wanting to lead a professional Go-playing life and felt that it was more to do with reputation/honor/respect. If he didn't disregard that then he would very well know that you can't play in professional-only tournaments and get a chance to win titles, be supported by the pro Go association and lead a professional Go-playing life otherwise.

To mention about strong amateur support in his country, he is implying that there is no need for a strong amateur to go professional and come back to teach because one doesn't have to have a professional status to "teach, evangelise and support it". This also shows that the OP disregarded the fact that the foreign pro might not want to go back to his country of origin and have no Go ambitions rather than to go there, get accredited and fly right back.
If not, what was the point of mentioning the strong amateur base in US? What does that have to do with the ambitions of foreign (or even US) players who aspire to be pros? Likewise for the statement in the previous paragraph.

I am not making assumptions. Using logic, one can deduce such things. The only way I am wrong is if the OP is illogical and wrote his statements out without any reasoning behind them.

I think = loss and = win? So maybe you have them backwards in your report here?
Edit: I went to the results page, looks like you counted the correctly but actually his last two games were which means he won his last two games? Am I getting this right?

Um I read the first page again and looks like people eventually decided = win... Bah I'm so confused

= win and = loss

is the correct mapping.

At first glance you would think it might be easier to write "wins" and "losses", but you know how go players love to turn simple into complex using black and white round thingies.

My next post will be in botched Japanese for increased Zen.

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La victoire est un hasard, la défaite une nécessité.

If you ever had to write wins and losses in Kanji, you know why they draw circles and fill them in instead.

There is also the possibility that you misunderstood GoTony (who btw is not the OP). For example, he writes: "I am not sure giving Pro status to players not really of that caliber is the best option to take." In this sentence he is speaking not about the motivations of the players to become pros, but rather of the motivation of the institution to grant foreigners pro status.

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Patience, grasshopper.

I'll give him a very skeptical benefit of a doubt. I might have used OP wrongly then. I meant to use it as OP of that post, not this thread.

Shoryuu you display a masterful sense of incorrect assumptions based on one comment. And your assumptions were equaled by your boorish tone. I am disappointed in your comments.

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Walla Walla GO Club -(on FB)

We play because we enjoy the beauty of the game, the snap and feel of real stones, and meeting interesting people. Hope to see ya there! お願いします!

Anthony

As opposed to the non-original poster of the post?

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

Meanwhile, Nicola has had a rough patch, losing six straight and standing 5-9 with one round to go. Shibano seems to be leading.

http://www.nihonkiin.or.jp/player/saiyo ... onsen.html

Cheers,
Vesa

Nikola Mitic lost his last match, for a total of 7 defeats in a row and finishes 14th out of 16 at 5 10 . Must be pretty rough indeed.

The two new pros are:
- Shibano Ryuunosuke, 18-year-old male outsider, on 12 3
- Kan Koutarou, 14-year-old male insei, on 11 4

Both started pretty badly but Shibano won his last 8 games and Kan finished on a 9-1 streak, losing only against Shibano.

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La victoire est un hasard, la défaite une nécessité.

Too bad for Nicola Mitic.


Any relationship with Shibano Toramaru?

Nice catch! It seems to be his older brother (by a bit more than one year).

I found the info by rough translation of his twitter info: https://twitter.com/igospicyspy

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La victoire est un hasard, la défaite une nécessité.

Thanks. I must say the (large?) number of brothers/sisters and father/children(/grandchildren) among professionals makes me question the very idea of "talent", or at least its importance compared to early exposure, professional guidance and training from day 1.

But isn't "talent" usually considered largely genetic? So Go families would support not detract from the talent theory.

Is it? If so then, yes, I guess go dynasties only make the idea of "talent" stronger. Im my mind "talent" refered more to this inexplicable knack individuals have for something and so I have trouble relating it to something as down to earth as genetics, but why not