This year’s Kisei, the most important Japanese title, will start tomorrow. The first game is usually held abroad. This time the title holder, Yamashita Keigo, and the challenger, Cho Chikun, are playing the first game in Sao Paulo, in Brazil.
(I covered last year’s Kisei title here.)
“Old lion still has teeth”: Cho Chikun Judan won the playoff against Cho U to earn the right to challenge Yamashita Keigo for his Kisei title, according to Go Topics.
It will be a very interesting match: Cho Chikun has already defeated Yamashita earlier this year, in his defense of the Judan title.
Let’s see how Yamashita Kisei will defend his title against Cho.
Cho Chikun seems to be the only representative of the old Kitani school which can still win titles nowadays, not giving up to the new generation of players in Japan.
Go, Cho Sensei! 
Cho Chikun defended the Judan title 3-2!
He won the last game by 3.5 points.
Interestingly, this last game was played on a Western-style table, instead of the traditional tatami mat - see pictures here and here.
I am very glad Cho Sensei won - he is one of the last representatives of the old Kitani School that is still competing successfully with the newer generation of players in Japan.
The title holder, Cho Chikun, continued the pressure on the challenger Yamashita Keigo (the Kisei title holder) in the Judan title and won the second game after another spectacular fight.
I wrote a few thoughts on this second game.
Here is the position after move 76, and a nice whole board problem: Black to play next and do something about White’s moyo on the right side.
Update: see this very nice article on the second game, by Pieter Mioch.
I finished updating the “Professional Go tournaments” page - added a bit a background about the pro titles in Japan, and also a link to the upcoming Judan title page.
In the Judan page I wrote a story I had almost forgotten: how Cho Chikun became self-appointed insei teacher.
Since I added the possibility to add a comment (besides the rating) at the end of most of the 361points.com pages, a few people started to use it. I got mostly encouraging words - thanks everybody for your feedback! - but also the first actual suggestion:
“Please post more lectures on fuseki, things like direction of play, thickness vs weakness, urgent points vs. big points”.
I’ll try to do that as I’ll follow the Judan title next - and when I’m writing the next article/lesson.
I am thinking to add some sort of page to allow users to vote on different topics they are more interested in - but until then please feel free to use either the feedback system on the website, or just comments to this blog and let me know if you have other suggestions.
My name is Sorin Gherman. I studied Go as an insei in Japan, and I built 361points.com to share my Go experience with you.
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