Archive for February, 2008
Kisei Title: Cho closes the gap
Thursday, February 28th, 2008
Kisei game 5 ended with Cho’s 3.5 points victory.
Lee Sedol fights back and wins LG Cup
Thursday, February 28th, 2008
The final game of the 12th LG Cup is over: the famous Lee Sedol managed a 2-1 win over his countryman Han Sanghoon 2p.
Kisei Title, game 5, day 1
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008
Game 5 of the Kisei title started today: Cho (Black) played the last move of day one (49, in the upper-right corner) before Yamashita sealed his next move.
While Cho cannot afford to lose any other game, Yamashita has a comfortable 3-1 lead so he only needs to win one of the next 3 games (including this one) in order to win this match and keep the title.
Kisei Title – can Cho recover from 1-3?
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008
The next Kisei Title game between Yamashita Keigo and Cho Chikun will be today. Yamashita leads Cho 3-1, which means that one more win will assure Yamashita of keeping his title again this year.
Will Cho be able to make a recovery from this uncomfortable score?
The Nihon Ki-in website published a table with the history of best-of-seven titles where one of the players recovered from 1-3 (or even from 0-3) to win the title.
Out of 10 such cases, Cho recovered 3 times from 0-3 to win the title: against Fujisawa Shuko in Kisei, 1983, against Otake Hideo in Meijin, 1984, and against Kobayashi Koichi in Honinbo, 1992. Cho also came back once from 1-3 to win the Honinbo title in 1990, also against Kobayashi Koichi.
Cho was also on the the other side of “miraculous comebacks” once: he led 3-0 against Rin Kaiho in Honinbo 1983 before losing the title 3-4.
Yamashita just one win away from defending Kisei Title
Friday, February 22nd, 2008
Yamashita Keigo leads Cho Chikun 3-1 in the Kisei Title match.
Yamashita won game 4 in which Cho seemed to have had a comfortable position for the first 160 moves or so.
White’s slack play a little bit earlier allowed Black to play a beautiful double purpose move with 165 (the circle marked Black stone in the lower right) which threatens White’s positions on both lower and right sides. In the game Cho defended his right hand side group and Yamashita laid wasted on White’s lower side territory. The diagram shows what happens if White defends the lower side instead: his right side group dies.
China wins Nongshim Cup 2008
Friday, February 22nd, 2008
I already wrote about Chang Hao’s (China) wins against Takao Shinji (Japan) and Lee Changho (Korea). That resulted in Japan being eliminated from Nongshim (Takao was the last member of Japan’s team), and Korea being down to their last member, Park Yeonghun.
Kisei game 4 started today
Thursday, February 21st, 2008
Kisei game 4 started today, it will conclude tomorrow.
This is an important game: at 2-1 for Yamashita, one more win will bring him just one step away from defending his title against Cho.
Here is the situation so far (click on the board image to download the game record). It is amazing how quickly the position turned into a non-standard variation in the lower-left corner.
On a related note, Cho Hye Yeon 7p of Korea was wondering what did Cho Chikun think about during day one of game 3 (when only 25 moves were played). Read her wonderful “Only a matter of TIME” article – it is very interesting and informative with respect to (decreasing) time limits in professional tournaments.
Nongshim Cup 2008
Thursday, February 21st, 2008
Nongshim Cup is a team tournament between China, Korea and Japan: each team member keeps playing until they lose once, at which point they get replaced by the next team member. In the past few days, Chang Hao of China eliminated Takao Shinji of Japan and Lee Changho of Korea, and he’s playing with Park Yeonghun of Korea as I am writing this (I am following the game live on Cyberoro).
Photo of the end of the game between Chang Hao and Takao Shinji: Chang Hao won by 2.5 points.
Umezawa Yukari defends Female Kisei title against Mukai Chiaki
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008
Umezawa Yukari (of Hikaru-no-Go fame) defended her Female Kisei title against Mukai Chiaki 2p with 2 straight wins.
Xie Yimin captures Female Meijin from Kato Keiko
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008
Kato Keiko was again on the wrong side of a half point game in the second Female Kisei game, so she lost her title to Xie Yimin (who is currently also Female Honinbo in Japan).
