Presumably it would be an amateur version of the pro ranks: a mark of the highest level achieved
As @Samraku said, itâs basically an amateur version of pro ranks⊠although I hadnât thought of it that way. 
I find this discussion really bring awareness to some of our biases (mine included), which is super interesting.
The way I see it, it sounds like many folks here were exposed to âkyuâ and âdanâ ranking through Go, which would obviously influence their interpretation of the meaning of the words.
I learned martial arts before Go, so Iâm predisposed to think of âkyuâ and âdanâ ranks as kinds of levels of education (at least for anything up to 1-dan). Thatâs how you learn karate and kendo.
In both martials arts, the typical routine was to regularly train kata and fighting. Then several times a year (maybe only once for high ranks, I forget) there was a âranking testâ. You went through it and could either pass or fail. You get a certificate if you pass, and thatâs how you âlevel-upâ (sometimes in half-steps). There was also a minimum amount of time we needed to wait between tests, which increased with the higher levels.
So in karate or kendo, your rank doesnât mean you are great at winning tournaments, but it does mean that you have invested a significant amount of time in the sport and have strong fundamentals.
A similar process could be done in Go. It could help raise money for different Go associations and raise interest / awareness of the game⊠but this would require a lot of work.
Itâs much easier to set this up for martial arts than Go given the difference in popularity.
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Iâve also practiced martial arts 20 years before go. However my thinking of ranks in go is different. One reason is that I donât know any good equivalent of kata (or other forms of codified exercise) in go.
Maybe our Japan specialists did observe some kind of kata of go there? Is there some accomplishement list to succeed in some schools?
If we accept for the purpose of argument that the raison dâ etre of kata in Martial Arts is to codify into choreographed sequences actions which have application within the art for the purpose of aiding in memorization and retention of them, then I would propose as a good Go equivalent carefully selected, perhaps even constructed, high level games to be memorized.
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The biggest difference (relevant to this particular discussion) between Go and other martial arts is that other martial arts canât be easily and quantifiably handicapped the way Go is.
Since I come from a Go background myself (my very limited exposure to martial arts training never went so far as tests, qualification, or degrees), for me the whole point of the ranking system is to make it easy for two people playing their very first game against one another to know what the appropriate handicap (or reverse komi, if youâre into that) should be for a mutually satisfactory game. There never really has been any other point to it as far as Iâm concerned.
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Kata are not just about memorization, you can practice Heian Shodan all your life, and itâs possible to judge the level of a karateka just by watching him perform Heian Shodan. Whereas you canât judge the level of a go player by watching him replay a game of Dosaku.
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I donât think the qualifications in strength / qualification in martial arts and go can be compared even though the same words are used to express them. Even grades in different martial arts are not comparable by the use of kyu or dan grades. Even between different schools studying the same discipline the same skills can be judged differently by their individual teachers / headmasters. Besides that, I donât think ancient warriors were very concerned about ranks. They just prepared themselves as best as they could. Every single fight was to the death and many skilled warriors have died by the hands of poor uneducated angry farmers with just a piece of their daily used tools. A very famous story tells about a fight between Miyamoto Musashi, a highly skilled swordsman, and MusĆ Gonnosuke who just used a wooden stick (jo). Supposedly Musashi was beaten. Whether it ever truely happened is a subject of debate but it is fair to say that itâs impossible to compare levels of skill between different disciplines. If Iâm not mistaken it was Jigoro Kano who introduced the kyu and dan system with different colours of belts (obi) in Judo for educational purposes which was later adopted in other martial arts. Up untill then pupils would recieve a formal written degree (mokuroku) in a small and very private ceremony at a moment the teacher deemed it appropiate.
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For many years the go club in Eindhoven has awarded colored diplomas to its members, similar to colored belts in martial arts (specifically the color sequence commonly used in judo and aikido in the Netherlands).
Some criteria for those diplomas are related to level of play, but there are also criteria on theory/knowlegde, as in knowing the meaning of some technical terms, including some Japanese terms.
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For a white diploma, candidates should be able to describe the goal of the game, liberties, chains, eyes, false eyes and territory. They should be able to determine the result of a completed game.
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For a yellow diploma, candidates should be able to describe a ladder, a geta, the ko rule and seki.
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For an orange diploma, candidates should be able to describe uttegae, oi-otoshi and ishi-no-shita.
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For a green diploma, candidates should be able to describe sente, gote, rules (of thumb?) for killing groups. They should be able to fight a ko correctly.
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For a blue diploma, candidates should be able to describe shimari, kakari, atsumi, semeai.
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For a brown diploma, candidates should be able to fight semeais correctly.
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How do you propose that a hypothetical strong black belt watching an unknown (to them) practitioner of their martial art performing kata, would be able to tell the difference between one who is good at kata, but cannot apply it in a fight, and one who is good at kata, and can apply it effectively in a fight? What they will be able to evaluate is in the telos of kata: how well the practitioner has memorized the kata and can execute them in a drilled context. Likewise, I do not claim that a strong dan player watching another player replay a game will be able to tell their strength from that: only their ability to remember games, and the moves in them, not if they can execute the patterns in a real game
I suppose from the way a player places stones on the board, removes stones from the board and scores a game, one would be able to tell the difference between a high level player and a lower level player.
Lower level player? (or perhaps a player with little experience playing IRL):
Intermediate level player?
Professionals:
Of course you canât judge all fighting skills when watching someone perform a kata. You can only judge
- if the body movements are correct
- speed
- stability
- power
- timing
- spirit (up to a certain point).
However there is infinite room for improvement in kata execution. I canât see any equivalent in go.
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Sure, and then it would be fair to allow the strong black belt to look for analogous clues, but this only strengthens the case for my proposal of a Go equivalency of kata
And you canât judge all gameplay skills when watching someone replay a Go game. You can only judge their speed and if the moves are correct. But if youâre allowing to inflate by so many categories what can be observed from kata, surely it is reasonable to allow the Go player to explain the reasoning behind moves, thus giving much more information to the observer
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Asking the player to comment the game would indeed be much more informative. We could imagine an exam like this: a random game record is given to the candidate, who has 2 hours to study and memorize the game. Then the candidate has to replay the game and comment it in front of referres, who may ask questions at any time.
However the process requires a lot of time from the referees, who would need to spend one hour just to judge one candidate.
Or another way to speed up the process would be to ask the candidate just to explain in detail 3 or 4 positions.
Well, I agree that skill in go is often reflected in other things than just results in competition. Examples are the diploma criteria I mentioned above (technical and conceptual knowledge) and finesse/form in handling stones when (re)playing on a real board. And joseki knowledge may have some similarity with kata in martial arts.
But to me, ranks in go are like ratings in chess. They are only a reflection of competitive skill.
It would probably be motivating for some players to also have rewards (such as diplomas) for other go skills, but I wouldnât want to mix those rewards into go ratings somehow.
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Having very little experience with martial arts - dabbled as a teenager with tae kwon do but never got into it - it seems to me the proper analogy to kata here is tsumego, not replaying a pro game.
An experienced player can indeed learn a lot about an unknown playerâs rank by watching them solve tsumego. But, as with martial arts, oneâs ability in tsumego may not necessarily directly correlate with oneâs ability to win go games, though it is a very strong indicator.
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Thanks, I didnât think of that before you said it, but I think youâre right. Tsumego is sort of a staged fight, like one could see kata.
Tsumego exist in a wide range of difficulty. One could even create tests out of tsumego with quite specific criteria, like solving a number of tsumego of a specific difficulty in an specific amount of time.
Iâm now considering to incorporate that into diploma tests in my childrens club (besides playing a match), if only to stimulate them to do some puzzle practice.
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I agree, I prefer ranks to stay tied to skill, Iâm treating the âkata for Goâ topic as a study method, not a ranking method, just like I wouldnât judge Martial Artists by how well they can perform kata, regardless of how much it helps them train. It would be like using tsumego skill to determine Go skill: tsumego skill best measures not Go skill, though there is undeniable correlation, but tsumego skill.
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I thought of that, but kata as I understand them are not dynamically created during performance, but are set sequences of actions. Solving tsumego requires that you figure out the answer, performing kata requires only that you memorize it