[jessupjonesjnr87]

i thought dan was in martial arts? i thought you were after beating up some kungfu master potemkin.

[Potemkin]

i thought dan was in martial arts? i thought you were after beating up some kungfu master potemkin.

The 'kyu' and 'dan' rankings are applied in any sort of sport, Jessup. In fact, the dan rankings were originally applied to the game of Go during the Edo period of Japanese history. It was only much later, in the late 19th century, that the Go ranking system was applied to the martial arts.

The dan (段?) ranking system is used by many Japanese organizations (and Korean martial arts) to indicate the level of one's ability (expertise) within a certain subject matter. As a ranking system, it was originally used at a go school during the Edo period.[1] It is now also used in modern fine arts and martial arts.

The system was applied to martial arts in Japan by Kanō Jigorō (1860–1938),[2] the founder of judo, in 1883, and later introduced to other East Asian countries.[3] In the modern Japanese martial arts, holders of dan ranks often wear a black belt; those of higher rank may also wear red-and-white and red belts. Dan ranks are also given for strategic board games such as go, Japanese chess (shogi), and renju, as well as for cultural arts such as flower arrangement (ikebana), Japanese calligraphy (shodō) and tea ceremony (sadō).　

The Chinese character for the word dan (段) literally means step or stage in Japanese, but is also used to refer to one's rank or grade, i.e., one's degree or level of expertise. In Chinese pinyin, however, the same character is spelled duàn, and was originally used to mean phase. Dan is often used together with the word kyū (級?) in certain ranking systems, with dan being used for the higher ranks and kyū being used for lower ranks.

Dan (rank)

It should also be borne in mind that there is a difference between the professional and amateur grades - a 2-dan professional player is much stronger than a 2-dan amateur player, for example.

[Truth To Power]

It should also be borne in mind that there is a difference between the professional and amateur grades - a 2-dan professional player is much stronger than a 2-dan amateur player, for example.

And to make things even clearer, dan ranks are proportional to strength, while kyu ranks are inversely proportional to strength. Thus, a player who has just learned the rules of go and played a game on a 9x9 board might have a strength of ~40-50 kyu. Moreover, professional dan ranks are closer together than amateur ones, as they are not based on the amateur handicapping system (one stone per rank of difference), and partly on seniority: it takes time to put together a track record to rise in rank. Each pro rank difference is (very roughly) equivalent to maybe 1/4 stone of amateur rank difference.

[Ummon]

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160329 ... -big-deal/