🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1021@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> Cliff Joslyn writes:
>>In article <1257@PT.CS.CMU.EDU>, dai@FAS.RI.CMU.EDU (Dai Feng) writes:
>>> I know go players are rated by dans, but never heard of the rating kyu. What
>>> does kyu mean, especially relative to dan? 
>
> Numerically, go rankings are on a scale from
>-30 to about 8 or 9, where below zero is kyu, and above 0 is dan. 
>People who don't know the rules are 30 kyu, a weak ametuer is about 15
>kyu.  I'm a 5 kyu, which is a low- to mid-level player.  I try to play
>
>To Dai, the above are all ametuer rankings.  Professional rankings are
>completely different: *much* stronger.  There are no professional kyu
>rankings.  To the net: who knows how many stones say a 5-dan
>professional would give a 5-dan ametuer?

Being closer to 5-kyu myself, it may be presumptuous of me to try to answer
this question, but my guess would be about 4.  On the other hand, this
situation would be most likely to come up in a teaching context rather than
a competitive one and 4 stones probably would not suffice to make the
difference competitively.  A 4-stone handicap would probably make the
amateur work extra hard, but then that is what you want in a teaching
situation.  I have never actually seen that particular pairing (pro 5-dan
vs. amateur 5-dan), but a number of years ago when I was in Berkeley, we had
a touring pro 7-dan come to town.  He gave the local 3-5 dans 6 stones (and
played at least 2 or 3 games simultaneously).  Only one local player (a 3
dan) actually won a game with him during the week he was there.

-- 
Paul Neubauer         neubauer@bsu-cs.UUCP
                      <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!neubauer