Anonymous: How many games does a pro typically play in a year? And does Win 30 games as a 1 dan refer to all games played, or only those against other 1 dans

blubb: ... and is the winning quota entirely irrelevant, that is, does a 1p who has lost 270 games get promoted by the 30th win, no matter what?

Harleqin: As far as I understand, yes. You have to take into account that most tournaments are some kind of knockout, at least in the preliminary stages. This means that weaker players will also get less games to play, so it will take large amounts of time to get the required number of wins. When you have accumulated 300 games as 1p, it will have taken many, many years, so a promotion based on other merits will not seem out of place.

ChoUsRival: If you were to look at yamada kimio's record you will see he was the first to obtain a 9d by 200 wins as 8d since the new system was started. And yes it might be nice to just point out the dates of his promotion to 8d and the date of his promotion to 9d on how long that could take even with a decent winning average ^^;.

topazg: I think if we take the fact that getting to 9d would require 750 wins, and there are few pros that have ever reached 1000 wins (and is quite a recognised professional landmark), it is a very hard feat to achieve. Added to this, as far as I know, higher dan players tend to play much fewer games against lower dans in the main tournament rounds, the wins will also have to be against others that have been required to perform very highly or win a large number of games also. I suspect that if your record is 30 wins from 300, and as you go up that ratio will go down unless you improve, reaching the higher dan ranks on wins would not be feasible.