So reaching high dan ranks in China works by awarding promotion to a specific percentage of players who got good results in a large tournament with a strong player field?
You spoke about brackets in tournaments. Is there a bracket per rank? Can players move from one bracket to another during the tournament?
In the Netherlands the system is that a commission collects all tournament game results of Dutch players above 2k (at least the serious games with a time control of at least 1 hour per player). The commission has criteria for promotion to a certain rank, and those criteria become tougher for higher ranks.
For example, they check the last 20 tournament games of a 1k player. If the 1k player scored ~65% against 1k, ~50% against 1d and ~35% against 2d, theyâd probably be promoted to 1d. As a typical weekend tournament here consists of 5 games, the 1k player would need to score consistently well for 4 tournaments in a row to be promoted.
For promotion to 5d the criteria are more strict, like requiring ~75% against 4d, ~50% against 5d and ~25% against 6d over a stretch of 50 games or so. So promotion to 5d requires significantly more player consistency than promotion to 1d does.
Besides that, for some years the commission also allows declaring the rank that corresponds to your EGF rating. So if a 1k player reaches a 1d EGF rating, they are allowed to declare a 1d rank in tournaments for the rest of the calendar year (but if they drop below again without officially being awarded a 1d rank, they would need to declare 1k again in the next year).
Most amateur dan rank-up tournaments in China and Taiwan are divided into brackets that compete separately during the tournament (like 1d bracket, 2d bracket, and we have enough players in each rank to fill each bracket most of the time, except like rural regions, even then, it would be mostly just with 2 ranks in each bracket, at most 3 to fill each bracket at least 16 to 32 players). And the qualification to participate in each bracket depends on the diploma currently hold (there are usually only a few or even just one association handling the amateur ranks that count, smaller amateur associations also issue diplomas, but usually limited to the tournaments they co-host separately. Each tournament that can get you new diploma has to be co-host by one of the association, otherwise it would be just for the prize). And players only get promoted after the tournaments, when they will be issued new diplomas for the next rank (with diploma fees ofc).
The criteria to get promoted out of the bracket changed depending on the bracket. For lower-tier dan rank, the percentage out of the bracket (using Swiss system, for 5, 6 even 7 rounds in each bracket in one day), is usually like 1 in 5 to 1 in 8, for the mid-dan range (4d->5d, 5d->6d), usually 1/10 to 1/16. And the 6d->7d, mostly just one, or sometimes 2 (and sometimes the higher tier donât use swiss system but use single elimination or double elimination, if it is a very large national tournament with hundreds of participants). Sometimes 7d are allow to join the mix 6d-7d tournaments (there is usually a difference in tournament size for those big high prize money tournaments, and those tournaments mostly just for ranking up), since 7d can still get the prize money even if they cannot get promoted anymore (hence making ranking up to 7d even harder, only those who reach the cap of the regional amateur would get promoted and donât leave the amateur tournament pool)
Another quark of the diploma and relative percentage ranking, is that a player never get demoted (except rare cases got dispelled). Hence, we might end up with players getting worse as they age or havenât played in a while, and still participate in the same bracket (and forbid to join lower tier bracket unless in special tournaments like for middle aged or elderly). This widen and weaken the player strength of each dan bracket even more.
I went through some of these tournaments in the years 2006-2010. It was in Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan. I call it capital because each Chinese province is like a European country (size, different cultureâŚ). Sichuan is one of the provinces with a very popular culture about go (weiqi) and not only in Chengdu.
I was allowed to join, starting from the lowest class (1d), and from memory I was the only foreigner then. There were a few more adults, like less as my fingers. We are talking about a few hundreds of kids here in the lowest levels, and less and less until you reach the 5d tournament which was in a tiny classroom like 20 players maybe.
I havenât seen qualification groupe for 6 or 7 dan. No idea it existed. Maybe itâs something which wasnât implemented yet. At that time I met only 2 players 6d and a few professionals (but many 5d). The 6d were very honored, a class of players very high and respected. 7d? Did that exist? To become 6d I heard that you had to win some big amateur tournaments, to be recognized as one of the best players and that there were very few in fact.
There is a reason why national tournaments are what get you promoted to 7d, since in province or regional tournaments, there is usually not enough 6d players to host them separately. And in the early 2000s, the Chinese Go players in terms of getting dan diplomas were still relatively low (in terms of population ratio), hence even fewer in each province. (They often said the older high dan were much stronger than modern high dan). And indeed it is still very hard to get to 6d amateur, and usually, they are regional champions at one point in their tournament lives, but their numbers accumulated over the years.
Itâs a test that invites you to assess your level with Chinese teachers. Thatâs what they did with Westerners. Not Chinese professionals but teaching teachers
Well we were talking about the official dan qualification system organized by the Chinese weiqi association. Which is somewhat different thing as a test from AI Sensei.
My guess is they are promoting events for Go schools online or overseas. Like the one from HJJ Go schools in this yearâs European Go Congress for their IGQE exams. Almost all Go schools have their own âjudgmentâ (internal rankings/ratings, for the purpose of knowing when and who to send to tournaments).
If that is the case, how accurate their assessment is depends on the Go schools and obviously the teachers. With someone weaker than you to judge your strength, the confidence for your strength estimation should be a bit lower. Iâve seen the game records, and Iâd say whoever played you is about equal til mid-game, maybe a bit lacking of the whole board judgment (but for fighting type players quite common), and only made a blunder in the live and death for the game deciding ko. Hence, probably on par or a bit weaker (1 rank weaker I think, not yet 1 stone). Overall, around weak amateur 5d is not a bad guess.
I see. So it seems the default tournament system determines the promotion system. The Dutch dan promotion system is based on tournaments using the McMahon tournament system which is the default in Europe. In the McMahon system itâs quite common to meet opponents who are ranked a bit higher or lower (depending on your and their results sofar). Any player who is doing well will meet progressively stiffer opposition in the course of the tournament, and vice versa. So if you win 4 games out of 5, you probably beat some higher ranked opponents and youâll typically win a small money prize (of say 2 times the registration fee) or a go book, and you might also earn a rank up.
Note that there are no diploma fees here, which is good I think because that would muddy the waters of what a rank represents.
But Iâd say that for most players in Europe the motivation to participate in tournaments is just the enjoyment of playing IRL and meeting old friends. There is hardly any money at stake because go is quite unknown here, so there are no big sponsors (except for some high profile tournaments). I think that a typical top 30 player (~7d EGF and up) in Europe wonât win much more than a few 1000 euro per year in prize money. For anyone below 6d level, tournament participation is probably a net loss financially, because accumulated prize earnings wonât cover accumulated expenses for travel, accomodation and registration.
Also, most participants are adults (probably even middle-aged). Although there are some exceptions, in most countries youâll find only few children participating in regular tournaments.
There are not many go schools for children in Europe, because there arenât many places with a sufficient geographical concentration of youth players. I think itâs more usually a case of isolated talented children taking private (online) lessons, if their parents can afford it and are willing to support their childâs obscure hobby.
Ya, the swiss system makes winning a number of games in one setting easy to count. Like many still just use the winning 3 games in 5 rounds as a guide for promoting to dan. But not all tournaments use the swiss system, so the regulation specifies a ratio, and as long as the tournaments can determine the top winners, they can rank players up.
And the diploma fee could go out of hand like the situation in Japan, but the diploma fees in China and Taiwan are mostly token, and often they are covered by the prize money (or if the tournament doesnât have money prize, the diploma fee deduction can be part of the prize).
As for the host and sponsors of tournaments, many local tournaments might be sponsored by temples and local businesses (Chinese temples are pretty rich and often act like underground âbanksâ), so prize money usually wonât be a problem. However, sometimes they are held by schools and other non-profit sponsors, they will be more about ranking up and no prize money involved.
