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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.

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.

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.)

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 successfully defended the Oza title this year, against Imamura Toshiya: he won the 4th game today, so the final score is 3-1.

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.