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Cho Chikun forced the Kisei title owner, Yamashita Keigo, to resign in game 2. The score is now 1-1.

You can find the game record on the tournament page.

Kisei title, game 2: day one is over:

The action so far was all in the upper-right corner, where they played some variation of the very complex Magic Sword of Muramasa Joseki.

Cho Chikun plays White and sealed the last move of this first day.

The real fight will start tomorrow (and end tomorrow, as well).

Yamashita started his defense of the Kisei title well, by winning the first game (by resignation).

It may look like an upset win since Yamashita made a large dent in Cho’s territory while they seemed to start yose, but by following the Cyberoro pro comments (just the variations, since I cannot read the actual comments) I think Yamashita was ahead anyway and Cho tried to over-stretch in the yose stage by not defending properly against White 118, which led to the more spectacular ending.

Yamashita looks happy during the post-mortem game analysis with the main referee, Kobayashi Koichi, who was himself Kisei in the late 80’s - early 90’s for a record of 8 consecutive years (of which, interestingly, he both captured the title from Cho, then lost the title to Cho as well).

The first day of the 2008 Kisei Title match is over. I started a webpage dedicated to this event.

The first game of the Kisei title, as always, was played abroad. This time in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Here are some videos from the opening ceremony, from where we learn that the 2 contestants are also skilled in Brazilian dances:

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!

Takao Shinji defended the Honinbo title.

The challenger, Yoda Norimoto, only managed to win one out of 5 games.
Again, just like earlier this year in the Kisei title, the younger player defeated the more senior player.

All game records are on the Honinbo title page.

Yamashita Keigo Kisei defended his title with 4 straight wins against Kobayashi Satoru.

It was a young vs. senior match, and the young one won - which seems to be the rule in professional Go today, rather than the exception. See my coverage of this year’s Kisei title.

New article

I wrote a brief article on my rule of thumb when it comes to approach a “Kobayashi fuseki” formation.

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I added a “Search this page” control in the upper-right of each page on the 361points.com site, to make easier to find things around. This is powered by Google.

Also, if you haven’t noticed that already, there is a “customized Go search” page, which only searches internet pages related to Go. Let me know what your favorite Go pages are and I’ll add them to the search list.

Game 4 of Kisei started on February 22nd (and will be continued on February 23rd)

I was surprised to see the fuseki: it’s the “old” Kobayashi-fuseki (no relation to Kobayashi Satoru though - it is named after Kobayashi Koichi, who dominated Japanese Go in the 80’s). I checked in my games database, and indeed, the last time it was played in a professional tournament (at least based on the games I have) was in 2005: I don’t know of any Kobayashi-fuseki professional game from 2006!.

See the diagram for what this fuseki is about: the interesting part is the lower side for Black.

The most popular choices for White next are, in order: A (242 games in my collection), B (41 matches) and C (18 matches). White (Yamashita) chose C in the 4th Kisei game. When this fuseki was still new, white used to play closer approaches in the lower-right: keima-kakari and ikken-kakari appeared briefly in the 80’s and early 90’s. Note how nowadays white keeps distance - black is very strong on the lower side, after all.

Close to the end of day one, the position is very complicated: white just did a cross-cut in the center, putting pressure on the black group in the middle. Black took profit in the lower-right quarter of the board, while white took profit in the lower-left.

The most interesting part is still to follow tomorrow, on the second day of this game. I’m covering the Kisei 2007 event on 361points.com.

Yamashita won the 3rd Kisei game by resignation, just like he did in the first two.

Looks like Kobayashi Satoru is not in good shape. I don’t know the professional verdict on this third game, but it seemed to me that after the first day, with black so strong in the center and white struggling for life on the lower side, white had a difficult game already. Please let me know if any of you followed the pro comments!

One interesting position in the second day of the game was the following, after move 83: it is white’s turn.

The position is complicated, so it is very instructive to pretend you are white and decide where to play next - this is actually the basis of studying pro games, just pretend it’s yourself playing, think what you’d play, then compare with what happened in the game.

Another interesting question, about the same position: analyse the status of the white group in the lower right: it has 2 eyes, right? Well, there is a small catch: there is something that black can try, only it doesn’t quite work yet. What’s the furthest black stone that, would that be present on the board, the attack would succeed?

This is a good question to ask, because in the heat of the game we often forget that the status of a group can change when the surroundings change.