This is because until recently, only China (China Qiyuan), Japan (Nihon Ki-in, Kansai Ki-in), South Korea (Korea Baduk Association (Hanguk Gi-Won)), and Taiwan (Taiwan Chi Yuan Culture Foundation) had professional Go organizations.
Some rare students achieve professional status at a much earlier age, such as Sumire Nakamura and Cho Chikun.
In order to qualify as a first-dan professional (1p), one must have deep resources of game experience and study.
In local positions, professionals are often on close ground with each other, understanding good shape, tesuji, life and death, fuseki and joseki patterns.
Professionals may also differ in actual strength for a number of reasons, such as promotion not keeping up with actual gains in strength, or the fact that professional ranks (unlike kyu or amateur dan) may rise, but never fall (even if the player grows weaker).
This trend has been primarily credited to the result of increased competition to become a professional player in China and Korea.
Today's Japanese system uses various benchmarks; for example, winning certain tournaments or a certain number of games, to be promoted by a rank.
Recent criticism has been given to this aspect, arguing that an individual may increase many professional ranks at once through the virtue of a single competition result (such as Piao Wenyao).
The Taiwan Chi Yuan Culture Foundation also employs a dan system similar to that in Japan.
Tuition is provided by both European and Asian professionals, and includes exchange programs allowing students to travel to China to study.
[6] The first Pro Qualification Tournament was held in three European cities in the same year as the system's launch, and resulted in first Pavol Lisý of Slovakia and secondly Ali Jabarin of Israel emerging as the most successful players and thus the first two European professional players.
They gain automatic qualification to prestigious European tournaments, including the Grand Slam that has the largest prize pool in Europe (the overall champion won €10,000 in 2021).
During major European tournaments, professional players are also paid to provide live commentary of games.
[2] Seven qualification tournaments have resulted in nine European players being awarded professional status by the EGF.