Nordic Go Dojo

Every now and then, when I’m logged in on the Online Go Server, I get asked about what my ‘1p’ rank means, or why my account name is displayed in green. The usual colours are black, orange, and purple for normal account, supporter account, and administrator, respectively. Green is left for professional players – of whom, it turns out, there are not many around on ogs. When I get asked about this in the ogs chat, the discussion almost invariably turns to what ‘professional’ means when it comes to go players. This has become so common that I thought it would save everybody’s time if I wrote a reference article on the topic. At the same time, this is a good opportunity to elaborate on what professional go players actually do for a living, as most go players probably have no idea.

Go as a job

When the ‘professional debate’ heats up on ogs, there is usually somebody who points out that ‘anybody who plays or teaches the job for a living is a “professional”’. This is technically true – one definition for the word ‘professional’ is, after all, ‘participating for gain or livelihood in an activity or field of endeavour often engaged in by amateurs’ (source: Merriam-Webster). In case of go, however, when there are professional associations who certify professional players, I think this definition will unnecessarily mislead people. ‘Professional go teacher’ might still be fine when denoting somebody who teaches the game for their living; but if an amateur who lives off on their tournament prizes is a ‘professional go player’, how then do we refer to the (probably much more numerous) group of association-certified professional players?

I believe part of the reason for the debate is that its participants don’t actually have a clear idea of what an association-certified professional player is or does. Let’s start from covering this.

Association-certified professionals

‘Professional go associations’ traditionally refer to the Japan Go Association, Korean Baduk Association, Chinese Weiqi Association, and the Taiwan Go Association. More recently, the American Go Association certified five professional players in 2012–2015, and the European Go Federation has certified in total seven professional players from 2014 on. Professional players certified by any of these associations have access to professional dan rankings, which start from 1 dan professional (or 1p) up to 9 dan professional (9p). The rules for how one qualifies to become a professional player and how a professional player can improve their ranking depends on the association

There is no straightforward way to compare professional rankings with amateur rankings – in fact, professional rankings of one association are not even really compatible with those of another. Add to this that recently, new 1p players often get better results in tournaments than older 9p players, and it is probably best to think of professional rankings purely as titles. As for why 1p players are often stronger than 9p players, this is because there is fierce competition to get qualified as a professional: once you are a professional, you will ‘eventually’ rank up because of the promotion system, even if you don’t hone your skills. The promotion system depends on the association, but usually you need to win a set amount of games to promote up to the next rank, with no way of getting demoted. Still, as a general rule an association-certified professional will at least be as strong as a top amateur player.

Professional associations

The four traditional professional go associations (in Japan, Korea, China, and Taiwan) generally follow the model of the Japan Go Association, which was the first professional go organisation (founded in 1924). Professionals certified by these associations are barred from participating in amateur tournaments, and instead participate in professional tournaments organised by their association. This limitation does not apply to the professionals of the American Go Association and the European Go Federation, as their smaller number of professional players does not make it feasible to play many professional-only tournaments annually.

The raison d’être of professional go associations is to bring together strong go players and their customers. In the Asian model, traditional customers are newspaper companies: a newspaper sponsors a tournament’s game fees and price moneys and in exchange gets rights to featuring the tournament’s games in their paper. The Japanese ‘big seven’ title tournaments (Kisei, Meijin, Hon’inbō, Ōza, Tengen, Gosei, and Jūdan) are examples of newspaper-sponsored tournaments. Recently, tournament sponsors are no longer limited to newspapers, and for example the Aizu Central Hospital is sponsoring an annual go tournament for female go players.

A second important group of customers are of course amateur players who want to get tutoring or lectures from strong players. A professional go association helps connect such customers with teachers, while at the same time also guaranteeing the teacher’s skills.

A certified professional’s work

Professional players of the Asian associations generally get paid for every tournament game they play. Most qualification tournaments are single knockout, meaning that a professional player’s salary is directly tied to how many games they win. Professionals whose winning rates are not very high cannot usually make a living purely by playing tournament games, and need to do additional work such as helping run their go association, or teaching amateurs via one-on-one lessons or lectures. This work is often supplied by the player’s go association, although one can go freelance as well. Even when doing freelance work, an Asian professional player has to be aware that they are viewed as representing their association, and that any misconduct of theirs will reflect poorly on their association.

In my case, beyond my tournament games, I:

• Supply content to go newspapers and magazines of the Japan Go Association: sometimes by getting interviewed, other times by writing whole articles by myself.
• Hold lectures and workshops for the Japan Go Association; usually in English, as that is my main advantage over most other Japanese professionals.
• Maintain the website of the International Go Federation.
• Write go books as a freelancer.
• Maintain this website and teach at the Nordic Go Dojo as a freelancer.
• More recently: do anti-cheating work for online tournaments, with the Korean Prime Minister’s Cup as the newest entry.

A professional’s philosophy

Last Monday I had a brief talk with Kuma-sensei (Shiung Feng 6p, one of my insei-time tutors) about what it means to be a professional go player. Kuma-sensei seemed to be of the opinion that a Japanese go professional’s dream is to be able to make a living purely by playing tournament games. I did not contest this in our talk, but as of lately I have been thinking whether that is all there is to life as a pro. Certainly, top tournament games such as by Iyama or Shibano will gather a lot of viewers and therefore improve the visibility of the Japanese Go Association; but when there are 400 certified professional players, only 0.5% get to be Iyama or Shibano. What should the rest do?

A professional go player only has work as long as there are amateur players who are interested in the professionals’ skills – which can mean either the quality of their play or their insights on the game. If nobody reads the newspaper articles of recent tournament games, newspaper sponsors have an incentive to stop sponsoring go tournaments; and if for example the emergence of strong go-playing ai also makes people less interested in human teaching, then a professional association will be in danger of going under. This is, luckily, not quite yet the situation of any professional association, but the general tendency is not looking very promising.

It seems to me that the main job of professional associations, and of their professional players, should be to get more people interested in and involved with the game. In the modern environment, when most go players go online to play and study the game, this should mean working to get more visibility online. In these terms, the too-often repeated discussions on ogs are a clear sign that something has to be done. My work with the Nordic Go Dojo is one small step in starting to meliorate the situation.