Are the top tournaments in China and Korea not played this year? I don't see the preliminary and round games of both Mingren and Kuksu, I hope there are no problems in the top go world.
Kind regards,
Paul
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Korea are experiencing some big problems right now. They put most resources in the major league tournaments. The cup games are dying. Last Siptan tournament was in 2013; Last Prices Information Cup was in 2014.
This year, things get significantly worse. If you check the tournament calendar last year and compare to that of this year, you can see some major tournaments are missing, including Kuksu (should have started in summer), Myeongin (should have started in autumn), Chunwon (ended last year, together with the associated China-Korea competition), Female Myeongin (should have started in summer), and few smaller tournaments.
While the league tournaments are booming, there can only accommodate 50 or so top players. The rest of the players are probably starving.
One major problem with the league tournaments is: they are arranged to fit TV schedule. As a result there are too many fast games and much fewer slow games (with 2-3 hours each side). For example in Korean A League, each match there are 4 fast games and only 1 slow game. The quality of such games are not as good as they should be.
Because the agenda is so closed tied to TV programs, there is little flexibility. We therefore witnessed that farcical situation the Park Junghwan needed to travel hundreds of miles to catch a league game on the same day after losing in the Samsung cup quater-final. In comparison, the Chinese are very flexible - if there are international duties for certain players, some league games can be delayed.
With a bad system in place, we can see clearly this year that Korean players are losing ground in major international tournaments. I can only see things get even worse for them in the years to come.
When we talk about Korea's dominance during 1990's and 2000's, we often think of their top players like Cho Hunhyun, Lee Changho and Lee Sedol, and how strong they were. But what is often get neglected is the fact what Korea had a very good professional system to support the development of such top players. Check the tournament records around 1990 - there were 4-5 major tournaments in Round Robin format so that top players can repeatedly compete against each other. Games were almost always slow (around 4 hours each side) so that players could plan their strategies carefully.
This truly is alarming, this means the game could be dying on the long run. Let's think worldwide: if you envision 50 top players in a period of 5 years, you need another 150 players these top players can beat. These 150 are both the older players that were the top-50 players 10 years ago, the youngsters that will be top-50 players within 5 years, and those players that never will be top-50, but of course don't know it yet. You cannot become a top-50 player right out of the blue sky, you need many games and some money. And those that were part of the not successful group of 150 need to have some perspective of a good life, or nobody with a bright mind will endeavour the adventure of a life for go, where a happy and prosperous life as lawyer, economist, engineer etc. then is the sensible alternative. How sad!
I wonder if a look at the chess world helps to show the way. All kinds of Swiss tournaments are organized, or round robin tournaments, sometimes as kind of marketing effort for companies. Sometimes these are top tournaments, most often sub top. There is some attraction to the local press, the local lovers of the game. The idea is to attract the local community, with go being loved by so many in Asia there should be a chance to do this succesfully. Hmm, I still feel sad about a possible bleak future.
Thanks for the information, by the way!
Kind regards,
Paul
Paul,
Do you mean a bleak future for the world of go in general or just go in Korea. The Alpha Go match seemed to spur a strong interest in go worldwide.
When the world chess champion, Gary Kasparov, was defeated by Deep Blue in 1997, chess (especially scholastic chess) took off in popularity. I do feel sad to hear this news regarding Korean go though.
Right at the moment the future seems bleak for Korean go. Japanese go is suffering, maybe not because of the money but because of the lack of enough real talents, and the way to train them: they lost quite some ground to the Korean and the Chinese. More than 20 years ago the Japanese were looking for young talents at the European Go Congress, apparently they were hoping to get some of them to study go in Japan: maybe a few went, most parents will have objected, I'm sure. As far as I understand the Chinese government helps Chinese go, which is laudable. But a successful sport should be independent from help of government to succeed, must be able to generate enough money themselves, for the young talents, the top players, the supporting not quite top players and the older players that once were top players. And after a career in go there must be possibilities to do well elsewhere, if there is no possibility to coach or teach, to govern. Tennis, baseball, basketball, football are great examples, somehow it has to work only slightly as with these sports, or you are in trouble, certainly on the long run.
In the meantime, the Mingren tournament started again, great, it seems they skipped a year. Good luck to the international go world!
Kind regards,
Paul
Indeed the Mingren tournament started quite late this year. However, I wasn't worried about it. Its sponsor is the Chinese People's Daily, the official newspaper representing the government views there. So it is very unlikely that the sponsor can run into any difficulty. The main tournament will start next week.