P ranking question

Hello everyone! I wanted to know why sometimes professional players have a P (pro, I guess) letter and sometimes they have D (dan) ranking.
I’ve looked it up on sensei’s library and didn’t find an answer.
For example, what’s the difference between 9D and 9P? If it’s the same thing, when do they use one and when do they use the other one?
Thanks a lot!

P is professional Dans are amateurs.

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This Sensei’s page explains it all: http://senseis.xmp.net/?Dan

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You can tell by the original post that I know that.
I just don’t understand when you use one and when the other.
E.g. Fernando Aguilar is the best argentinian go player. He played international tournaments, he is professional, but he uses dan ranking to rank himself on argentinian tournaments.
Another example is that I see players using both rankings depending on the game.

If I got it right (have in mind that english isn’t my mother language), then players only use P ranking if a Go entity ranks them that way. Is it so?

From http://senseis.xmp.net/?Professional[quote=“http://senseis.xmp.net/?Professional”]In the context of go, a professional (or pro in short) is a go player who has received a professional diploma from one of the professional go associations. The more general English usage of the word professional, denoting a person who made something their profession and earns money from it, is not used in go.

[…]

Go professionals are generally affiliated with one of the professional organizations in Asia. The major current organisations are:

the Nihon Ki-in and Kansai Ki-in in Japan
the Hankuk Kiwon in South Korea
the Zhongguo Qiyuan in China
the Taiwan Qiyuan in Taiwan

These were all founded during the twentieth century. There are a few further smaller groups in Japan. Other countries do not currently possess a professional system, though there have been some initiatives in that direction in both Europe and the US.[/quote]

Meanwhile the EGF has nominated two professionals (Lisy and Jabarin), and IIRC the AGA also has one or two.

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I assume what your asking legas is why it is like that online… in real life they usually just say “dan” so if they were talking about Lee Sedol they would say “this is Lee Sedol 9dan” but, online it is a bit different and use things like “9p” instead of “9d” for pros because online 9d is amateur while 9p is pro (online)

The amateur rankings from 30k to 7d are achieved by simply playing and winning games. Both online sites like OGS and go organizations like EGF and AGA keep track of games won and lost and calculate a rank based on some formula.

The professional ranks 1d to 9d can not be achieved by just playing and winning. They are more like titles awarded by various go associations traditionally only Asian ones, but both EGF and AGA have recently started “making” professional players too. To become a 1 dan pro I think you generally have to win some qualifying tournament and after that I think you advance at the discretion of the go association.

Sometimes, especially online, p is used instead of d to denote the pro ranks to differentiate them from the amateur dan ranks.

Fernando Aguilar is not a professional, just a strong amateur.

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This was the answer I was looking for.
Thanks to everyone in the thread!

:open_mouth: see? That’s why I created the thread, I didn’t understand it well enough, thanks for the data.