Hello all,

I've been on a search for game records from preliminary leagues in the Japanese tournament scene (e.g. Honinbo A Leauge). I've contacted the Japanese publications Go World and Weekly Go, also the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper (Honinbo Sponsor). None of them publish those game records.

Does anyone know if they are available anywhere and why not?

Thanks!

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"For we are like tree trunks in the snow. In appearance they lie smoothly and a little push should be enough to set them rolling. No, it can't be done, for they are firmly wedded to the ground. But see, even that is only appearance." Kafka

The gotoanywhere site will contain links to some of the games. See https://gotoeveryone.k2ss.info/news/jp/meijin/47/.

For a number of those, see, e.g., https://homepages.cwi.nl/~aeb/go/games/games/Honinbo/76/prelimA.html. The game collection there contains over ten thousand such game records, the web pages usually only document the later stages of the various tournaments. Download games.tgz or games.7z.

It depends on what you mean by "preliminary games".

If you mean all games before the title match, most games are widely available. http://www.go4go.net/go/ has a lot (all?) of them. The problem might be going too far in time.

If you mean preliminary are what the tournament calls preliminary, then it might be impossible, because they aren't recorded.
Before the main event, there is usually a "last prelim tournament". And before that, "A prelim", "B prelim", "C prelim"... it varies. The main events, and the last preliminary tournaments are recorded. But before that... usually not. Some are broadcasted on-line in WBaduk, for example, and perhaps it is possible to get the record later.

I am explaining this because you said "from preliminary leagues in the Japanese tournament scene (e.g. Honinbo A League)." The definition of "preliminary" was not clear.

I'll just add on to what was already said, but basically if you cannot find the game in Go4Go or some other online database, then that means that the game is not publicly available.

Title Matches and the League to decide the Challenge of the Title are all published eventually. Either in Weekly Go, Monthly Go World, or in the Yearbook. They are sometimes streamed on the Nihon Kiin YouTube channel. Many more games are demonstrated in real-time on the "U-gen" Go server. But I believe most of these pro games require a subscription. For instance, I am watching Shibano play Hane on YouTube right now but I cannot watch the same game demonstrated on U-gen.

A few of the Qualifying Section A games will be streamed on YouTube or demonstrated on U-Gen but not all of them, I believe. And certainly the lower tiers of qualifying are never published, though the Nihon Kiin does record and keep them.

Thought I replied to this already to thank you for all the responses! Too bad to find out most of the A/B/C Leagues are not published as there are so many great matchups. However, glad I can stop looking hehe.

_________________
"For we are like tree trunks in the snow. In appearance they lie smoothly and a little push should be enough to set them rolling. No, it can't be done, for they are firmly wedded to the ground. But see, even that is only appearance." Kafka