Longest game (time of duration)

[sybob]

Does anyone know what the longest pro game of go ever played is, and know some details about it?

I tried to search this forum, but was not able to find more about this. I mean not to ask for longest time settings or number of moves, but total time of duration of a game. I was also not able to find the answer on Sensei. Sensei only mentions it took more than 8 hours (!) for a specific move.

I am interested to know who the players were, when and where the game was played, how long the game took, etc. If you have information about the longest match (multiple games; total time span) and/or longest championship, I am also interested in learning more about that as well.

[John Fairbairn]

Here's cut & paste from the (copyrighted) GoGoD Encyclopaedia. I'm not prepared to do more than this without knowing why the request was made - had too many cases of "Oh I was just curious."

It's really a different category, but the longest game in terms of time spent appears to be a game for Jiji Shinpo between Honinbo Shusai and Karigane Junichi (1920-05-21a) in the days when there were no time limits. According to Jiji Shinpo's records play was adjourned 20 times and the total time used was 240 hours.

In the era of time limits, the longest game is Shusai's retirement game against Kitani Minoru (1938-06-26a). Out of deference to Shusai's health, but also to ensure that his last ever game would be a masterpiece, limits of 40 hours each were set. In the end it was said that Kitani used 34 hours 19 minutes and Shusai 19 hours 57 minutes.

[sybob]

Kindly thank you for your reply.

I'm not prepared to do more than this without knowing why the request was made.

A youth member (10 years) came up with this question during a club evening the other day. Noone knew the answer. I think he was just spontaneously curious.

[Uberdude]

Do you mean the longest time actually spent at the board 'on the clock' for the game as John answered, or longest time between the game starting and finishing? For the latter correspondence games easily get big times: I think my longest was 11 months and I'm sure in the play by mail days several years were not uncommon. And those long pro games of old were split into many sitings but I'm guessing months rather than years. Maybe I should finish my Malkovich game with Magicwand...

[sybob]

... correspondence games easily get big times...

I think this young club member is not familiar with correspondence games. I think he meant 'regular' games.
That's why I inquired about pro games. Those are not correspondence, as far as I know.

[Uberdude]

That's why I inquired about pro games. Those are not correspondence, as far as I know.

Indeed not in the typical sense, but some had breaks (e.g. moves 1-60 one day, 61-84 a few days later etc) and the players studied the game during the breaks: a famous example being Shusai vs Go Seigen where the all-but-confirmed rumours of one of Shusai's pupils being the one who found the brilliant myoshu that made Shusai win the game. IIRC in that game Shusai had the right to choose when to adjourn and used it to his advantage, which was behind Kitani's insistence in a fairer setup for their later game.

[Simba]

I played a correspondence game of go covering the first two years of my play (and improvement) - my opponent was dreadfully slow (he had almost 1,000 games running at one point, ridiculous) and only resigned when finally everything on the board was dead.

[DrStraw]

Stu Horowitz and I once has a set of 5 correspondences games going, back in the early 90s, which went on for around 5 years and we never did finish them. I still have them somewhere