The history of the world's best Go players

Based on Go4Go data and GoRatings algorithm:

Comments

Sometimes players are really young when they reach spot 1, like Lee Changho at 14, who lasted there more than 5'000 days! Also, the fall of a whole nation is very visible here, like Japan: maybe there are no recorded games of China and Korea from the pre-1980's? Quite probably the Japanese players were dominant in those days anyway, such a strong generation that still is performing quite well, where the older players from China and Korea kind of fade away because of the relentless youth. Great video!

Kind regards,
Paul

Gu Li & Lee Changho 0 win 1 lose top 3, Lee Sedol 0 win 2 lose top 5. Cho Hunhyun 870 games statistic of 2500. Nice rating.

That's how whole history rating algorithm works. Their strength at early years can be derived from their future performance. Sample size is indeed the weakest link of GoRatings. The current rating is calculated using 55000+ game results and there are plenty of data missing. However, for strong players with 100 of results available, their relative strengths are well modeled.

Wow! Lee Changho was in the first place for more than 5000 days!

If alphago didn’t beat lee sedol, I think he would have been first place longer