361points.com/blog

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.

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).

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.)

I got asked in this blog comment: “How about covering the Tengen?”

I started writing a belated reply, when I realized that I’d better turn it into a blog entry. Here it is:

The reason I didn’t cover Tengen (and other recent tournaments) on the website is because I realized that I don’t have the resources (and by resources I mean “time” ) to keep track of all current titles and tournaments.

I did follow Tengen myself though - it was especially interesting for me because Kono Rin (he is the Tengen titleholder, he just defended it against Yamashita Keigo Kisei) was insei when I was (he kicked my butt by 2.5 points in the only game we played - since he was mostly 1-2 classes above me.)

He was still insei when I quit (he became pro 1 or 2 years later) and I would have never guessed that he’ll become a title holder. His style, just like his personality, was very quiet, deep-thinking type, never spectacular or attracting attention.

He was very serious all the time, I am sure he must have studied very-very hard.

Yamashita Keigo, who also ows the most prestigious Japanese Go Title, Kisei, took the lead again in his defense of the Oza title: he leads Imamura Toshiya by 2-1 after today’s win, and he is only one game away from winning this title match.

White (Yamashita) managed a very clean and sharp cut at move 80, in a textbook style. Imamura must have been very sad to see his position split into two groups in such a painful way. It was all due to a very skillful series of three forcing / peeping moves by Yamashita. Check out the game record for details.

Next game is in two days, on November 29th.

The title holder, Takao Shinji, kept alive his chances to defend the Mejin Title this year: he won today’s game by 2 and a half points, after what looked to me like a very good game for Black.

Takao won the first game of the series, but then Cho U won 3 in a row: one more loss for Takao and he is losing the title.

The score is now 3-2 for Cho U.

Cho U is just one step from winning Meijin Title: he won the 4th game by forcing a resignation in 141 moves.

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.

The first day of game 2 in Honinbo is over, and the game will be continued tomorrow.

Yoda Sensei played the sealed move in the middle of a complicated fight on the upper side.
While Takao Honinbo played 2 unusual moves in the opening of the first game, it was Yoda Sensei who played an unusual variation of the tsuke-nobi joseki in this second game (in the upper-left corner).

Today is day 1 of the first game in Honinbo Title match.
Yoda Norimoto is challenging Takao Shinji.

It is interesting to see that the match is between the authors of last 2 Go books I read: Takao Shinji wrote “Pure and Simple: Takao’s Astute Use of Brute Force” and Yoda Norimoto wrote “Vital Points and Skillful Finesse for Sabaki”.

(I bought both books from slateandshell.com a couple of months ago, I finished Yoda’s book and I’m almost done with Takao’s book - both are wonderful books, I highly recommend them).

So let’s see what style is prevailing this year: “pure and simple” or “sabaki”