The news coverage, or lack thereof, on Suzuki Ayumi (see below) is a little disconcerting. While the Nihon Ki-in is not always quick to get their own news stories out, they have yet to feature Suzuki Ayumi’s impressive wins (I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt). The Korean outlets are usually much better at this and have scooped the Nihon Ki-in in this regard. However both Oro and Tygem’s reporting place an undue emphasis on Suzuki Ayumi’s appearance by referring to her as an “eye-catching beauty.” Of course, none of the other news pieces refer to the men as “eye-catchingly handsome,” which I assume is not because they’re unhandsome. Finally, the game records of Suzuki Ayumi’s wins against Gu Lingyi and Moon Myeonggeun are currently unavailable. Nevertheless, the game records of a few of her Japanese male colleagues, who lost their 1st and 2nd round games, are available.
Note (important): this is not the fault of Mr. Kin who is one of my primary sources. His sources, which I also use, don’t have her games either. No one does as far as I know.
This is by no means an isolated case. This sort of reporting on women professionals is common. For instance, news reports on Korea’s Park Jieun often refer to her appearance, and this is certainly not the first time that Suzuki Ayumi’s appearance has been featured in reporting. I’m sure there are many who think that such a focus is benign or intended as complimentary and not sexist in the least. I won’t get into the reasons here why such attitudes are troublesome (below the fold perhaps). I will, however, direct your attention to a discussion on Sensei’s Library about Discrimination in Go, where most if not all of the participants are men, with the very welcome exception of the most recent entry by gogogirl. Her contribution is an important and refreshing voice in that discussion.
To be clear, I’m not arguing that such examples are intentional in any way. Quite the contrary. The fact that this type of reporting is most likely put out there with the best intentions is the troublesome part. No one is immune to discrimination, either on the giving or receiving end - yes, everyone. But with a game like Go, where race, gender and ethnicity play no inherent factor in one’s performance, we should be extra vigilant when distinctions are made based on such, even inadvertently. It seems to me that failing to acknowledge such incidents when they occur threatens to compromise the very nature of the game itself.
This is an amazing picture. Cameras and microphones are being shoved in Lee Changho’s face, reporters are almost falling over the table to get close to Changho, while his challenger, Chang Hao, is trying (presumably) to make a move on the board amidst all the commotion. Perhaps I should have titled this post - Lee Changho matters in Korea.
The article accompanying this picture is about the upcoming 8th Chunlan Cup and the excitement surrounding Korea’s seeded players for this international tournament - Lee Changho, Lee Sedol, and Choi Cheolhan. How this relates to the picture is unclear to me. I just thought the picture clearly demonstrated the sort of renown and high status that professional Go players have in East Asia.
The article can be found on Oro’s website - http://www.cyberoro.com/news/view.htm?div_no=12&num=513576&cur_page=0
Edit: Thanks to retesz for providing the source of the above photo - http://baduk.or.kr/news/homenews_view.asp?gul_no=512730&gdiv=12. Equally as powerful is the the following photo of Chang Hao in that same game (same source).
(WARNING: the following would fall under – off-topic, navel-gazing discussion not really Go related. Read at your own narcoleptic risk.)
It’s not a concatenation that I thought I would ever see, but there you have it. Frank A. de Groot, developer of Moyo Go Studio, made the following announcement on Go Discussions (GD) today:
I have decided to stop charging 29 USD for Moyo Go Studio, and instead ask that you send a 5 Euro or 10 Euro note to one of a selection of political prisoners. Both prisoners are disbarred attorneys because they defended other political prisoners in court. Although they are a married couple, they have been incarcerated in separate jails. The husband is 74 years old and is currently serving 11 more years. His wife is serving 3.5 years.
Initially left out of his announcement was the fact that the political prisoners have been incarcerated in Germany for defending holocaust deniers, which is a punishable crime in Germany. Javaness (a GD moderator) locked the thread fairly soon after because it violated GD’s terms of service - no political content. I think it’s safe to say that Mr. de Groot was fully expecting his thread to be locked; he’s not a newcomer to GD and enjoys sticking it to the Go community when the occasion arises.
Be that as it may, Mr. de Groot accomplished what he set out to do on GD, as he almost always does, and for better or worse is getting additional exposure from my posting about it here on JustPlayGo. To be perfectly clear, I have no intention or desire to further Mr. de Groot’s need to stir up controversy within the Go community or his political agenda, but his actions do pose a dilemma of sorts for those of us who champion freedom of speech and at the same time abhor the ridiculous and baseless claims of holocaust deniers - I’m being extremely nice here in my characterization.
The easy response is to ignore Mr. de Groot and his software and think nothing more about it. I suspect most people will follow this path. However, what about those who already own Moyo Go Studio? Yes, the conditions of sale at the time of purchase had nothing to do with supporting holocaust deniers and one cannot reasonably impute complicity as such given de Groot’s present endeavor. Nevertheless, there are some who would argue that continued use of the software given this new set of conditions at least tacitly lends support to de Groot’s political agenda. The parallel here would be the use of medical technology developed under Nazi experimentation on holocaust victims (a distinction not in kind but in degree to be sure). I think such an argument is pretty weak but not implausible to make.
The more pressing issue, in my mind, is what if you were considering purchasing Moyo Go Studio and now have decided against it because to do so would commit your support toward a cause that you find abhorrent? But, at the same time, you would be actively turning your back on another cause that you fervently support. In other words, you would be actively choosing one set of values/principles while denying the other.
This doesn’t suggest that in order to stay true to oneself, one must avail support or opposition in every instance that presents itself. The dilemma is that by deciding not to buy Moyo Go Studio due to these new conditions, you are actively pitting one set of values/principles against the other. Put differently, if you never had any intention of purchasing Moyo Go Studio now or in the future, then the dilemma would not present itself because it’s unreasonable to expect someone to respond positively or negatively to an offer for which they had never considered in the first place.
I think there is a reasonable way out of this dilemma, but it would be interesting to hear your thoughts first. Is this even a real dilemma?
If there was a 2009 player of the year award, my pick would be Lee Changho. He doesn’t have the highest number of international tournament wins in 2009 (that distinction goes to Gu Li) or the highest number of wins among Korean professionals in 2009 (Kim Jiseok takes that honor) but Lee Changho has consistently demonstrated his steadiness in play, his grace in both winning and losing, his keen sense of strategy and patience, and what I think is perhaps the most admirable disposition that any professional player could take – humility and fortitude.
Cartoon translation (a big thanks to sol.ch from GoDiscussions for proving this translation):
rabbit on the left: ‘Ranked #1’
rabbit on the right: ‘Won the Meijin’(these are clearly rabbits of good fortune)
Caption on bottom: ‘He has caught two rabbits. May he catch even more rabbits next year!’
Alexander Dinerchtein (3p) has created an online insei league on KGS. There are currently 50 student players accepted into the league, with other registrants on a waiting list. The lowest rank allowed is 10kyu; players are divided into five groups according to rank; and prizes are given to those who have the highest winning percentage. Here’s how the prizes are distributed:
All groups have own prize fund, made from entry fees:
A group: 1-place: 200$, 2-place: 100$, 3-place: 50$
B, C, D, E groups: 1-place: 100$, 2-place: 50$
Places are decided by the highest winning percentage. To win the prize you have to play at least 10 games (from 44 possible games) per month with at least 5 different opponents.
I think this idea of an online insei league is great. Dinerchtein and his co-teacher Ilya Shikshin (7d) have designed the league to be very competitive, with some significant incentives. For example, the student who demonstrates the best results at the end of the year will receive a $1000 dollar grant for “private lessons, offline study trips to Korea, Japan or China, Go books or Go equipment.” This grant is limited, however, to students in the A group.
The cost for being an insei is $95 dollars per month. For me, that’s more than I could afford, but it’s obviously priced well because they now have a waiting list. All of this is great, makes sense, provides a wonderful opportunity for improving one’s game, etc. However, there’s one feature of this league that really doesn’t make sense to me. Here it is:
Teachers can take cash prizes too, so they are also interested in winning their games in simultaneous. Teachers are not allowed to take prizes, if they play less than 60% of all games. Also teachers have big bonuses, if they play 80, 90 and 100% of all games - you can be sure, that each teacher will try to play as many games as possible (to get these bonuses).
It may just be a cultural thing, but it seems to me that teachers competing with students for prize money takes away from their role as teachers and with the exception of the A group, it significantly reduces the chances of students winning prizes. Furthermore, why are the prize amounts different for the A group and pooled across the B,C,D, and E groups? Rank certainly has its privileges…
This leads me to an observation about the Go world more generally. I’ve noticed discriminatory practices across the board (not only in East Asian countries) and when these practices are pointed out they are either dismissed on (erroneous) assumptions about inherent playing ability - age, sex, ethnicity being the primary targets - or simply justified on cultural grounds. Not surprisingly, I think both of these reasons are extremely weak and morally untenable.
The relevance of this to the KGS Insei League surrounds the issue of why the prize money is being distributed so unevenly. I’m not arguing that Dinerchtein and his colleagues shouldn’t be free to run their enterprise however they wish. This venture of course is a private one within the international public sphere, which doesn’t oblige them whatsoever to be fair or politically correct or whatever, but such discriminatory practices nevertheless need comment.
I welcome your views whatever they may be.