December 1995

Ryu Shikun remains Tengen. "After getting trounced in the third game, I figured it was all up," said Ryu afterward, "unless I settled down and just concentrated on playing the best I could." His best was good enough: he defeated Kobayashi Koichi by 3 1/2 points on December 14 and half a point on December 21 to win the match by a 3-2 score. Kobayashi played well too, but not perfectly, and Ryu proved to be the kind of opponent who doesn't let you get away with mistakes. This self-transplanted young Korean seems set to make a major mark on the Japanese go scene.

Ryu Shikun is also doing well in the competition for the Judan and Honinbo challengers' spots. In the Judan double-elimination knockout, he is tied at the semi-final level with Kobayashi Satoru. In the Honinbo league, he stands second at 2-1, behind Yo Kagen who is 3-0.

The China-Japan Supergo series is not over yet. Otake Hideo beat Chang Hao and Yu Bin by resignation on December 26 and 28 in Beijing to keep Japan's remaining hopes alive. The two Chinese players subjected Otake's stones to almost constant attack, but Otake fought back expertly. His next opponent will be Liu Xiaoguang.

The first six rounds of the three-way Jinro-SBS cup were played December 5-11 in Tokyo. China's Chen Linxin earned $10,000 with three straight wins, but China, Japan, and Korea stood even at the end, two players having been retired on each side. Yoda Norimoto will go to bat for Japan when play resumes on January 9 in Korea.

     Choi Kyubyung (Korea)     beat  Luo Xihe (China)
     Morita Michihiro (Japan)  beat  Choi Kyubyung (Korea)
     Chen Linxin (China)       beat  Morita Michihiro (Japan)
     Chen Linxin (China)       beat  Yang Jaeho (Korea)
     Chen Linxin (China)       beat  Miyazawa Goro (Japan)
     Yoo Changhyuk (Korea)     beat  Chen Linxin (China)

The amateur+pro team structure and foamy rewards make the Kirin Cup one of the most enjoyable go tournaments in Japan. Dominated in the past by teams from within and around Tokyo, this year it was won by the Kinki team, representing the Kyoto-Osaka area. In their final match against the Chugoku-Shikoku team, the four Kinki amateurs (Kanazawa, Oshima, Sakai, Itoi) settled the outcome with four quick victories. Stoically ignoring the irrelevance of their results, the Kinki pros (Rin, Yamada, Yanaka) struggled on, eventually adding two more victories to the Kinki score. Three of the Kinki team members took unbeaten records into the final, so they were playing for a year's supply of beer, which may have been a deciding factor. Yamashiro Hiroshi, the sole victor on the Chugoku-Shikoku team (he beat Rin Kaiho), also won the beer prize.

Thirty-three three-man teams, including five from Japan, took part in another Asian inter-city tournament, this one held from December 2 to 6 in Shantou on the southeastern coast of China. A team from the Tokyo Shuei club finished second, behind the winning team from Chengdu (China). Yang Qiao, a Chinese exchange student on the Shuei team, took second-place individual honors, finishing behind Cai Jianpeng (China). Though they failed to place, the three teams from Singapore attracted attention by fielding six players between the ages of eleven and fourteen.

The talk in the streets of Japan these days is not of go but of shogi, and the continuing feats of Habu Yoshiharu. In 1994 this young man won six of the seven major shogi titles. In 1995 he defended all six titles, and won the right to challenge again for the seventh, the Osho, starting next month. Stay tuned for further developments.