March 1997

Among the several Japanese professional go tournaments that end together with the fiscal year in March, the most visible to the Japanese public is the NHK Cup, which is broadcast on nationwide television every Sunday afternoon. Japanese taxpayers who struggled to get their returns filed by the March 15th deadline were able to relax on March 16th by tuning in NHK's educational channel and watching the two NHK Cup finalists, Kobayashi Koichi and O Rissei, struggle on the go board.

The game had actually been played two weeks earlier at the Pacifico Yokohama convention facility. Kobayashi's old rival Takemiya Masaki give a live commentary before a thousand go fans, assisted by pro shodan Umezawa Yukari. Takemiya and Umezawa both speak their minds, so the commentary was almost as interesting as the game itself.

In the opening, Kobayashi built a big framework, O invaded, and Kobayashi attacked the invading stone in his usual methodical style. "Not that I mean to criticize the audience here," Takemiya said, "but Kobayashi's playing the way a lot of you amateurs would play."

After forcing O's invaders to live in a small space, Kobayashi expanded the remaining part of his framework and O invaded again. In the ensuing fight O surrounded a group of six stones, which Kobayashi promptly sacrificed to seal off a large area in the center. One key move in the fight made an ugly empty triangle, but reduced the liberties of the sacrificed group. In the commentary hall, Umezawa spotted this move before O played it, and had the satisfaction of pointing it out to Takemiya and explaining why it was better than the more shapely alternative Takemiya recommended.

As the fighting died down, Umezawa began pressing Takemiya for an estimate of the score. Takemiya resisted, saying "People who can count accurately are black-hearted," but eventually he gave in, did the calculations, and pronounced O to be safely ahead. "Of course your counting may be wrong," Umezawa said, presumably to keep the audience in suspense, but it wasn't. O won by 7 1/2 points to capture the first NHK Cup of his career.

Asked for a comment, O (a.k.a. Wang Licheng) simply said "I'm happy." As Takemiya remarked, the NHK Cup is the tournament everyone wants to win and the one in which everyone hates to finish second. When it was his turn for a comment, Kobayashi said, "I did my best," maintained a smiling composure for about five seconds, then gave an exaggerated grimace.

But in the mixed bag of results this month, most of the losers were also winners. Three weeks after that grimace Kobayashi won the Kakusei tournament by beating Kato Masao, who had earlier won the NEC Cup by beating Kobayashi Satoru, who bounced back from that defeat by upsetting Lee Changho in Korea, and is currently playing Cho Hunhyun for the Tongyang Cup.

Other items:

NEC Rising Stars Tournament:
Yo Kagen (Yang Chia-yuan) beat Nishida Terumi in the final game on March 1 in Tokyo.

Women's Meijin title:
Nishida Terumi beat challenger Ogawa Tomoko 2-0. Second game (March 5, Tokyo) Nishida won by resignation

Japan Tobacco Cup:
Yoda Norimoto beat Ryu Shikun in the final game on March 22 in Tokyo.

Tokyo TV New Stars tournament:
Yo Kagen (Yang Chia-yuan) beat Kurotaki Masanori in the final game, televised March 23 & 30

Judan title match:
Yoda Norimoto and Kato Masao are tied 1-1

     First game (March 6, Sapporo) Kato won by 3 1/2
     Second game (March 19, Nishiura) Yoda won by 10 1/2

Japan's Strongest Amateur:
Sakai Hideyuki defended this title by beating Kanazawa Moriei 2-0 on March 22-23 in Kyoto

All-Japan Women's Amateur Championship (March 8-10, Tokyo) won by Osawa Narumi