Damn, I totally forgot about game 7. Could've watched it since I got a few days off.... Well... But I'm really happy he defended the title yet again. It was a great match and I really like Ichiriki, too. His time will come one day. Until then I hope Iyama will win a lot more titles.

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I think you mean 500 HKD (Hong Kong Dollar) = 64 USD (more or less). Not bad, but not 500...

To the point: Iyama made it again, recovering after a bad start of the match. It's not that I don't want him to win, but I feel bad for Ichiriki. He just lost the Gosei, and they are going to fight again in the Kisei.

I watched this last game, both days. Ichiriki (white) started a fight quite early, and had a group running. I don't think Iyama had any serious trouble. The last game of the Honinbo was the same, when Shibano tried too hard too early. At least, that was my feeling.

A few days ago, there was an opening ceremony of the Gosei. I don't know if there is one for every big title. The thing is that Iyama said something like he had to try harder in one day games, it was something to work on... clearly, he feels very comfortable with 2 day games.

This Pro vs Ama Honinbo match started off pretty wild. 5-5, then 2 space high kakari, and then 6-4. I haven't heard anything about the amateur Honinbo but this seems like a fun event. It's live now. Short time allowances but I'll probably still miss the end.

https://youtu.be/o4aSp4EbLDI

There is an amateur Honinbo championship and the winners of the ama and pro Honinbo play a game with handicap that is changed every year depending on who won. I think John Fairbairn posted more details in this forum before.

According to sensei's and wikipedia the handicap was 2 stones with -3 komi in 2018 and it is not clear to me if the 2019 match took place but the 2020 amateur Honinbo was cancelled. The amateur is Hiraoka Satoshi. It seems he is titled as a replacement for the 2021 match because the ama-Honinbo seat was vacant but then also titled as the current Honinbo, maybe there were two matches this year. He has won the pro-ama match at least twice and this would be the third or fourth showing. Judging from SL he has won with 2 stones and -6 komi and with 2 stones but lost with -3 komi.

I am not sure what the komi is in today's game. Sometimes these matches are relayed on Pandanet but not today so there is not really any one to ask except if someone here knows (but I guess the game will be over in just over an hour from now).

The 2020 Pro-Am Honinbos [note the plural] match, Term 57, was played. Ozeki Minoru beat Iyama with 2 stones, 0 komi.

For the game record of the 2019 match (played on 2020-02-09), see https://homepages.cwi.nl/~aeb/go/games/ ... index.html

Do you mean the 2019 match, term 57? That's according to the previous link. The 58th match would be skipped. I would expect the next one played, whenever it was, to be 58.

Anyway, in this match(2021, Term 59), Iyama won by resign. Next year we'll see black placing 2 stones again.

Iyama beat Fan Tingyu in the Nongshim Cup yesterday. It was an exciting game. Iyama was under pressure but ended up handling overtime better. He is playing again today against Byun Sangil. The game is being streamed by the Nihon Kiin on YouTube. There are a few more games happening over the next few days.

I got some Nongshim at home that I've been avoiding. Time to cook it up.

https://youtu.be/3azw_7vVJ2Q

Lots of Iyama fans in the 日本棋院　chat, of course. I noticed that the number people watching increased as the game went on and the possibility of Iyama winning increased. Baduk TV had 2-3x as many live viewers. They also have a neat real board setup with superimposed stones for commentary. It was fun to watch.

Thanks to Iyama for a short game. I'm looking forward to the next round tomorrow.

It seems he beat both Byun Sangil and the next player from China, 李欽誠 (not sure how that's pronounced).

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A good system naturally covers all corner cases without further effort.

The game with Byun Sangil had an exciting big kill.

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A good system naturally covers all corner cases without further effort.

Iyama won against Li Qincheng and today he will be facing Shin Minjun.

I'm ready

So you'll have a Nongshim Cup for dinner?

In the days of two-day matches it was the norm in the newspapers to discuss what players had for lunch. It was like reading tea leaves, as far as I was concerned, but the colour writer would make sage remarks such White had noodles and so was building up stamina in preparation for a long game, or Black had fish and was sharpening his brain for some deep calculations.

But all this was in the days of almost 100% traditional food, and young readers don't want to hear about that. Lord knows what a traditional colour writer would make of a young Kisei ordering a burger for lunch. Maybe he'd expect a brain fart before 3. Or in the case of the real youngsters like Sumire - chocolate cake leading to a sugar rush and whizzing round the board 300 times before playing a gurugurumawashi.

Yup, another night of eating and watching Nongshim Cup. "Shin" flavor as tribute for Shin Minjun.



Someone's got to support the sponsor's 500 million KRW payout. I learned that 辛 "shin" means "spicy-hot." Definitely hot!

...Maybe as an Iyama fan I should be eating soba instead...

Wow! What a hero!

A true hero indeed! Looks like Shin overlooked the weakness in the lower left. I'm kinda proud I saw F5 coming, a few years ago I'd have answered meekly and missed the chance.

Remaining players now:
China: Ke Jie (9d), Mi Yuting (9d), Fan Tingyu (9d), Li Qincheng (9d), Li Weiqing (9d)
Japan: Iyama Yuta (9d), Ichiriki Ryo (9d), Shibano Toramaru (9d), Kyo Kagen (9d), Yu Zhengqi (8d)
Korea: Shin Jinseo (9d), Park Junghwan (9d), Byun Sangil (9d), Shin Minjun (9d), Won Sungjin (9d)

Looks a little desperate for Korea to have only 1 player left. And Japan has 3 players left, one of them Ichiriki. That looks kinda promising... But there's still players like Ke Jie and Shin Jinseo left, so Japan's fans better not celebrate too early. I wonder if China will send out Ke Jie next to end Iyama's roll. I hope, though, that Iyama may keep it up with the Kisei title match vs. Ichiriki starting in January and keep on winning for Japan (or maybe Ichiriki). And I hope Iyama won't be too tired now since he'll be quite busy until mid-December: Oza title matches on 3 December + maybe 9 December vs. Shibano and Tengen title matches on 6 December + maybe 16 December vs. Ichiriki.

Go, Iyama-sensei!

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It's confirmed that Mi Yuting is the upcoming opponent. And the next game is not until 21st February, so neither player will be focusing on Nongshim for a while.


Iyama isn't playing in the Tengen title match. That's Seki Kotaro.

However, there is the Kuksu Mountains International Baduk Championship from 9-12 December. It would be great to see him compete in that, although he would likely have to win the Oza game on 3 December (and thus avoid a game 5).

Thanks for posting this! I was wondering if the order of the players would be revealed only before the game or would be fixed from the beginning oder would be decided on as early as possible before the next game.


You're right, thanks for noting. I was so used to Iyama being in all the title matches and a bit too happy maybe after his win yesterday to check that correctly.

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Sometime in the late 2000s, I used to watch Japanese title matches live on IGS. Seeing photos of the players’ traditional lunches was always the silver lining of the hour of dead time around midnight. I didn’t speak Japanese so I have no idea if the commentators still tried to connect the meals to the strategy in those days.

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Occupy Babel!