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Dan Discussion
About the termIn contrast to the translation given in RGG-FAQ 1.7, 'grade', I like 'step' as a translation of 'dan' better. The image would be like: During your time in the kyu-ranks you decided whether you will stick to Go. Whether you get satisfaction from it and things like that. Reaching 'dan' you quite showed that Go is important for you - that you spent much time on it and are willing to spend even more. So when receiving a 'dan' you made (just) a step. A step towards an (unreachable) goal. -- SteffenGlueckselig John F. But a grade is a step - Latin gradus. I have to admit - I didn't know that ;-|. I still like the more 'philosophical' connotation of 'step' better, though. -- SteffenGlueckselig About the strengthDieter: Although there is not much to argue about - you are dan when your ranking system says so - it can be discussed what dan level should mean. Myself I am 2 dan in Europe but I feel this has to do more with the fact that I can beat 1d regularly and lose to 3d regularly (i.e. my strength relative to others) than with some kind of mastery of the game (i.e. my strength relative to the game). Several things spring to mind when thinking of what a master should be able of: a) Shouldn't a master, i.e. a shodan, when he comes out of the opening with a clearly favourable position, be able to win it with ease ? b) Shouldn't a master know all trick plays in joseki and know how to refute them ? c) Shouldn't a master be completely free of bad technique ? If all these - and the list is not exhaustive - be fulfilled, well that almost sounds like a pro. Well, no. A grandmaster of the game would be able to force a favourable opening against a master. A grandmaster should also have a whole board view, always. A grandmaster would be able to know exactly when a seemingly bad technique is a good one. In one word, what would distinguish a grandmaster from a master, is planning?. Whatever the criteria set for a dan, I think they would be much more significant than a rating system, because less sensitive to inflation. I admit that my criteria are sometimes vague, if not self-recurrent. In any case, when I see how little I master, it is not hard for me to accept that in some rating systems (IGS, Korea) I would still be a kyu. kokiri In the west, amateur dan level players are deemed to be masters and, if not the finished article, at least a source of some authority to others. In Japan, however, i think that shodan has a different meaning to it. In my experience of go, and friends in other traditional arts such as kendo, shodan marked a basic sort of competance. So once you hit shodan, you were regarded as a go-player proper, rather than a beginner, but still far from being a master. Whilst it is natural for the orient, with its greater depth of players, to have higher barriers to what is regarded strong, I still think it's worth noting. I think that in the west there is upward pressure on the playing standards of dan players (they are masters, after all) and downward pressure on Japanese dan grades (as everyone wants to be competant) which serves to explain/widen the gap between diefferent countries' gradings. joshual000: My western thought patterns may have directed me slightly differently (but then maybe it's my chess background). I view amateur dan level being about equivilent to chess's 'Master', which of course is lesser than 'International Master', which in turn is lesser than 'Grand Master'. 'Master' being a rank more than an expression of comprehension level. Certainly a Grand Master chessplayer can obliterate any Master chessplayer's plans. Generally speaking, anyone who can beat me with more than 2 stones (which is still well within the kyu range) I consider a sort of 'authority' on holes within _my_ game. This is a copy of the living page "Dan Discussion" at Sensei's Library. ![]() |