The 20th Kisei Title match, the most prestigeous title in Japan, features title holder Kobayashi Satoru and challenger Cho Chikun thus being a clash between the Kisei and Honinbo title holder.
The first game of this best-of-seven match will be played on the 17th and 18th of January 1996 in hotel Okura Amsterdam, the Netherlands. You are most welcome to visit this event in the European Go Centre.
The game will be discussed in so called Discussion Go groups, a good opportunity to seriously study a professional game of Go with the aid of strong Go players. The Discussion Go start Wednesday at 13:30 in the afternoon and Thursday at 11:00 in the morning. Other activities during the Kisei title game are teaching games with the visiting Japanese professional Go players and a personal comment on the Kisei game by one of the visiting pros (we will try to ask Iwamoto Kaoru the donator of the European Go Centre to give his personal view on the game).
For those who are not able to come and watch the game in Amsterdam, the sponsor Yomiuri Shimbun has kindly permitted the live broadcast of this title match game on IGS. This means that wherever you are physically located you will be able to watch and discuss the game with hundreds of other enthusiastic Go fans from all over the world.
We will let the kibitzers on IGS participate in the Discussion Go activities by passing on their suggestions to the panel in Amsterdam. As much feedback as possible will be given to you, thus letting you profit as much as possible from the professionals present at the scene.
The game will be played on Wednesday the 17th and Thursday the 18th of January 1996. Daily from 09:00 till around 17:00 local time (GMT+1). (IGS local time: January 18th and 19th, starting daily from 4 PM and lasting about 8 hours daily.) (Jan 17th and 18th, 08:00 GMT - 16:00 GMT)
Today we write the 14th of March: the Kisei sen main roles Kobayashi Satoru and Cho Chikun have just finished their 6th game and the score is dead even: 3-3. So we are looking forward to an exciting finish of this match. In the mean time John Schouten was so kind to send me digitized shots of the opening ceremony which took place the 16th of January in Amsterdam. Take a look at them!