February 1993

Sugiuchi Kazuko swept the women's Meijin match again, defeating challenger Aoki Kikuyo in two straight games. Now that she has taken this title for three straight years, her next goal is to win a 9-dan ranking in the Oteai (she has been 8-dan since 1983).

The China-Japan Supergo Series, in which Japan was enjoying a big lead, suddenly tightened up when Ma Xiaochun beat both Kobayashi Satoru and Yamashiro Hiroshi in Tokyo on February 2 and 4. Japan is still ahead, but now has only three players left (Kataoka Satoshi, Awaji Shuzo, and Otake Hideo) with which to defeat China's top duo of Ma Xiaochun and Nie Weiping.

A week after those games, the semi-final round of World Baduk Championship sponsored by Tongyang Securities was held in Seoul. One of the two best-of-three matches pitted Cho Chikun, playing for Korea, against Nie Weiping of China. Cho has always placed special importance on beating Nie. Before departing for Seoul he let it be known that he was "staking his life" on this match, and while that may have been an exaggeration, the result left no argument: Cho won 2-0.
The other match turned out to be a continuation of the Korean Kisung series. Lee Changho had come back from a 1-3 deficit in that series to score three straight wins and wrest the Kisung title from Cho Hunhyun. In the Tongyang semifinal Lee promptly earned two more straight victories from his mentor Cho. In April Lee will attempt to complete the job by beating the other Cho.

In further international competition, in the last two games of the Korean SBS Cup, Takemiya Masaki (Japan) bested Suh Bongsoo (Korea) on February 24, but despite a day's rest, he was defeated by Cho Hunhyun on February 26. That gives the Korean team its second consecutive triumph in this event.

After losing the first two Kisei games to challenger Kato Masao, Kobayashi Koichi came out fighting in the third. Kato met him head-on and the sparks flew on the board. Kobayashi is good at this type of free-for-all and he won by a point and a half, putting a stop to a twenty-two-game winning streak by Kato.
At the end of the fourth game Kobayashi was confident that he had won again, by half a point. He was therefore aghast to find that he had miscounted one of his territories and had actually lost by half a point. Worse yet, he had overlooked a one-point tesuji that he could have played at the very end of the game to win. Instead of tying the match, he was now down 1-3.
But the mark of greatness is being able to recover from defeat, and that is what Kobayashi did in the fifth game, taking the lead early in the middle game, holding it firmly from then on, and winning by resignation. So there will be at least one more Kisei game in March.

Also in March, Otake Hideo will be playing Takemiya Masaki for the Judan title. The series starts on the 4th in Bangkok.

In a key game in the Honinbo League, Yamashiro Hiroshi defeated Kobayashi Koichi by a point and a half on February 10. That does not put Kobayashi completely out of contention, but since he has three losses and only two wins, his chances are not very good. Currently Yamashiro leads the league at 4-1, followed by Otake Hideo, Komatsu Hideki, and Rin Kaiho at 3-2.