July 1994

The two Koreans who took first and second places in last year's Fujitsu Cup will do it again this year. On July 2 Cho Chikun, playing with one day's rest after his defeat in the fifth Honinbo game, fumbled the opening, couldn't quite catch up, and lost by half a point to Yoo Changhyuk. Meanwhile, Rin Kaiho was losing by 16 1/2 to Cho Hunhyun. Yoo will face Cho for the Cup on August 6 in Tokyo.

This will mark the tenth world championship won by Korean players in recent years. Besides the last two Fujitsu Cups, they have captured three Tongyang Cups and both Ing Professional Cups, and have three team victories in the China-Japan-Korea team tournament, which is for all practical purposes a world championship.
Japanese players have taken these defeats with surprising equanimity. They are more interested in the Japanese Honinbo, Meijin, and Kisei titles, which have deeper historic roots and get more media attention. The scale of these Japanese titles, with their drawn-out seven-game title matches, two-day time allowances, and elaborate preliminary rounds for choosing the challenger, exceeds the scale of anything on the international calendar. A couple of the strongest Japanese players regularly skip the Korean-sponsored international tournaments to save their energy for the domestic circuit.
Nevertheless, in winning their ten world championships the Korean quartet of Cho Hunhyun, Seo Bongsoo, Yoo Changhyuk, and Lee Changho have beaten all the top Japanese and Chinese title-holders, repeatedly. The implications are hard to miss.

Five days after losing to Yoo, Cho Chikun got back on track by out-ko-fighting Takemiya Masaki in the Meijin League, while Kato Masao narrowly beat Kataoka Satoshi. At midmonth Cho, Rin, Kato, and Kataoka are tied at 5-2. The Meijin challenger will be one of these four.

In the sixth Honinbo game on July 12-13, Cho Chikun got derailed again. After playing what should have been a game-clinching tesuji at Black 129, he made an intended forcing move to gain an extra minute to think. Unfortunately, this allowed Kataoka Satoshi to slip in a few forcing moves of his own, which destroyed the value of Cho's tesuji. Worse yet, Cho chose the wrong reply to one of Kataoka's forcing moves, giving Kataoka the lead. Kataoka held on and won by resignation, tying the series at 3-3. The deciding game will be played July 20-21.

Kobayashi Koichi and Rin Kaiho have split the first two Gosei games, so this best-of-five title match will continue into August.

The second stage of the Kisei tournament was won by Imamura Yoshiaki. In the third stage this young 7-dan from Hiroshima will compete with the 7- and 8-dan champions, the top four 9-dan finishers, and the Meijin, Judan, Tengen, and Oza title-holders to see who challenges Cho Chikun for the Kisei title.