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rank - gup (Korean) explained
    Keywords: Go term

Dan, Kyu and Gup

Japan uses a system of kyu and dan ranks (or grades) for amateur players that has been adopted by most of the world. Korea calls its ranks gup. The Gup system starts with weaker players around 30 gup (note below), and goes down, so stronger players have a lower gup, with 1 gup being the strongest of all. The Kyu - Dan system is more confusing. It starts with the weakest players ranked around 30 kyu, and goes down as the players get stronger, with 1 kyu being a pretty strong player (similar to about 7 or 6 gup); then it starts over with the dan ranks. 1 dan is the first step after 1 kyu, and the dan ranks go up to 7 in most places. 7-dan players are the people who win the World Amateur Go Championship, for example.


I have heard that a Korean 1 Gup can be anything between 2 Dan and 7 Dan European/Asian and that 2 Gup is equivalent to 2k-1D. In the lower ranges, gup and kyu are approximately equivalent, but because Koreans don't have Dan grades, ranks don't go up quite as linearly as European/Asian. What is linear anyway: my experience is that handicap is not additive at all.

This is word having reached me and it can as well be myth.

--DieterVerhofstadt (1 kyu not gup)


Note: I believe in Korea they do not keep track of rankings until 18 gup. Hence there is "no such rank" as 19 gup, or 30 gup for that matter.


Korean do give (sell) "official" amateur dan diplomas. Of course, you must be really strong (or rich ;-) to get it. One way is to pay to take a test (a handi game against a pro). I forget the pricing and the handicap but it gets more and more expensive as you progress up.


Alex Weldon: I think the Gup system has changed to be the same as kyu, or close to it. Everyone I've talked to here says that after 1 Gup, you become 1 dan (amateur). So 1 Gup is no longer the same as 2-7 dan.


JanRamon As far as i know, a Korean would say he's 2 kyu if he is "strong" and 1 kyu if he is "very strong" (professional level). They usually only use dan levels for professionals (or indeed for diplomas that give more an impression of your richness than your skill). Therefore i was advised to emphasis the "amateur" in my "amateur 2 dan amateur" level when i went to korea. And indeed, a korean 1kyu can give me several stones. But as the hosts made a good attempt to translate everything for us, i don't know for sure how exactly the system works. The Dashn Baduk server uses kyu and dan grades quite equivalent to european ratings i think.


Alex Weldon: I'm still confused, actually. As I said, a Korean with excellent English (so there was no misunderstanding) said that after 1 Gup, there are amateur dan levels 1-7 before the professional ranks. This is held up by the fact that when I went to a kiwon? several months ago I was tested by a guy who said he was "amateur 6 dan." (in retrospect, I should have actually asked what my rank was... instead, he just came by and said how many handicap stones were appropriate whenever I played a game with someone else).

Also, a guy I play with regularly, and can now beat giving 2 stones handicap, told me last night that he'd say I'm 6 Gup, since he used to be 7 Gup, but is a little bit out of practice. Since I'm around 11k* IGS, there's no way that's true if 6 Gup is really in the low single-digit kyus.

On the other hand, when a student asked me what Gup I was, and I told her that someone told me I was 6 Gup, she gasped and said that was stronger than her teacher. So I don't know.

Charles Matthews It seems that in South Korea dan ranks comparable to international ideas of strong amateur levels (a little stronger than EGF, though) are being introduced gradually, but from the top down. Korean 7 dan represents the top group of amateurs no more than a stone from pros, Korean 6 dan is for winners of a national event. These are elite groups; Korean 5 dan is for the top 10000 nationally, and Korean 4 dan (I've met one recently) is close to EGF 5 dan, anyway EGF 4.5 dan. These ranks fill out in some way the space caused by 2 gup being traditionally a broad level (would cover a high proportion of good to strong European amateurs), since 1 gup has a special meaning. It is probably still not the case that one can consolidate all grade information there easily. (The same could be said for Japan, too, but there the effect is somewhat better hidden.)



This is a copy of the living page "rank - gup (Korean) explained" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2003 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.