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The first round of the international Toyota and Denso Cup took place in Japan yesterday.

I was mostly interested in the games between Asian vs. non-Asian players. Unfortunately there was no surprise out there: Fernando Aguilar lost against Lee Changho 9p of Korea, Cristian Pop of Romania lost to Imamura Toshiya 9p of Japan, Ilia Shikshin of Russia lost to Xie He 7p of China. Maybe just one “reverse surprise”: Jie Li 9d of US, who’s usually giving a hard time to even the very high-ranked Asian professionals living in the US, lost against Alexander Dinerstein 3p of Russia.

Fernando Aguilar vs. Lee Changho

Link to game record

Cristian Pop vs. Imamura Toshiya

Link to game record

Jie Lie vs. Alexander Dinerstein

Link to game record

Ilia Shikshin vs. Xie He

Link to game record

While not involving amateurs players, but worth mentioning as an international match: Jiang Minjiu 7p originally of China, currently playing for the US, was matched against Cho U of Japan and lost:

Japan was almost eliminated in the first round, unfortunately: Zhou Junxun defeated Yoda Norimoto, Lee Sedol defeated Kono Rin, Mok Jinseok defeated Hane Naoki, Piao Wenyao defeated Ogata Masaki, the prodigy Han Sanghoon defeated Yamada Kimio, Gu Li defeated Hikosaka Naoko, Cho Hanseung defeated Yamashita Keigo, Park Yeonghun defeated Kim Sujun. The only players for Japan who survived the first round are Takao Shinji (defeated Yang Shihai), Cho U (defeated Jiang Minjiu) and Imamura Toshiya (defeated Cristian Pop).

The next 3 rounds (including semifinals) will be played every other day starting tomorrow.

Hane Naoki went all the way in his recovery from 0-3 by winning all 4 remaining games, capturing the Honinbo title from Takao Shinji!

Here is the game record. There was a lot of fighting and sharp moves on both sides.

Yamashita takes the lead again (2-1) after game 3: he forced Cho to resign.

The game started strangely, with a big fight on the left half of the board, while the right half was almost empty (the forth corner was occupied only on move 70!).

Apparently Yamashita had the upper hand when the dust settled on the left side, which prompted Cho to try his last chance by building a huge moyo in the upper right and then threatening to kill Yamashita’s invasion - but that didn’t work.

(Link to the tournament page.)

The title of this blog entry, “Don’t Kiss Me”, is the title of this Korean site news.

I cannot read Korean, so the English title intrigued me a lot

The first (misleading) clue was the English title of the tournament, from one of the photos: “The 6th International Women Baduk Championship KGC Cup”:

Mystery solved, in the end, when finding the following photo:

I was very surprised and sad to read today’s blog entry about a decline in Go/Baduk interest in Korea.

In case you don’t know about this blog already: it is an amazing view inside the life of a 7 dan professional player in Korea, Cho Hye Yeon.

It is interesting also to read this so soon after my
Go/Baduk Affected By “Internet Entertainment”? very recent blog entry, where I was commenting on some 2007 statistics which showed a decline in the revenue of Baduk clubs in Korea. My conclusion there was that players moved out of traditional clubs and play online more.

After reading Hye Yeon’s blog, though, I understand that there is a real decline in Baduk in Korea: many Baduk schools are closing, less books being published, less children dream of becoming pro players… Sounds very much like the situation in Japan that started in early nineties (maybe earlier?).

The reasons for this situation seems to be related to both extra sources of entertainment (when it comes to explain the decline in amateur players) and to the fact that attending top universities in Korea became more difficult, so parents are less inclined to gamble their kids future while letting them study Baduk (when it comes to explain the decline in the number of inseis).

Here’s also a quote from a 2 years old blog entry of Mr. Ooijer’s:

So why do all these kids want to be a professional? It is hardly rational. They gamble with their career.

Some western Baduk players do not see this hard life and have a much too romantic view about the life of a Baduk professional.

Let’s hope that in the new year 2008 Go/Baduk/Weiqi will grow again.

Happy New Year everybody!

This is very cool news: Kiseido Digital is extending their PDF offer soon, to include out-of-print Go books.

(I also wrote a blog entry when I first heard about their PDF GoWorld offering.)

Here are the first PDF Go books that will be available:

• What’s your Rating?, by Miyamoto Naoki
• Kato’s Attack and Kill, by Kato Masao
• Enclosure Josekis, by Takemiya Masaki
• All About Thickness, by Ishida Yoshio
• The Breakthrough to Shodan, by Miyamoto Naoki.

They seem to sell them together, as a “bookshelf”, for a total price of US$39.95.

Takao won the 4th game of the Honinbo title and leads 3-1.

He is just one win away from defending the title.