I don't think there is a thread about Yu Zhengqi but he is the top Kansai Kiin player according to mamumamu0413 and also at six consecutive victories in Kansai Kiin 1st place tournament. Now we have a thread about Murakawa Daisuke, a fan favorite who upped his hair game earlier this year, and a thread for Yu Zhengqi is the logical next thing for the Kansai Kiin fans.

Besides finding Yu Zhengqi style agreeable, being about to watch the beginning of his game with Iyama Yuta in the Oza final and being in a good mood because I won good game of Go for my bundisliga team, I am wondering what is it that Yu Zhengqi needs to do to earn the 9 dan? He seems very strong for the 8 dan rank already

To be 9-dan, you either have to win big titles, or win a lot as an 8-dan.

First condition has not been met. Second condition... promotion rules are similar for Kansai Kiin and Nihon Kiin. I don't know hoy many games he has to win as an 8-dan to be promoted, but I know that it's 200 for NK players. It takes a lot of time to win so many games. He is 27, I'd say he's young, but it's a matter of time.

I found the promotion rules (in Japanese).

It is 200 wins as mention above. Interestingly, in light of the ongoing Oza title match game, winning the Oza title only grants 8 dan but if you do it twice it is 9 dan. That is if the automatic translation wasn't misleading. Btw Yu is after Iyama's dragon in the game, current move 121.

For comparison:

Ida Atsushi was promoted to 9-dan a couple of months ago. He is 1 year older and although he has 8 titles, none of them are Kisei, Honinbo, Meijin... But he was promoted from 4-dan to 7-dan the same year (2013), and 8-dan following year(2014). This must be when he entered the Honinbo league for the first time, and challenged. He could save time, but it took him 8 years to promote to 9-dan based on wins.

So, for Yo Seiki, it's going to be a while. And this year, he won't become Oza, because Iyama survived.

Yeah, he didn't have success in the Oza and Judan title matches this year. Still a very nice game today.

The comparison with how Ida Atsushi is maybe valid, they are also neck to neck in the mamumamu list. It still seems a bit odd to me that Yu is six times in a row Kansai Kiin 1st place champion and that is a tournament that does count toward promotion and the winner is in some ways the Kansai Kiin champion. It is a bit different from the Okan, which Ida has won six times in a row, that one doesn't count for promotion (as far as I can tell from the Nihon Kiin rules), it is a regional tournament for one of the Nihon Kiin branches.

Checking this a little bit closer I see that Yu got the 8 dan in October 2018 but I don't know how many wins he has since then. I was kind of hoping for a comeback in the Oza and a successful title defense next year

I see now that Katago approves of Yu's all out attack on Iyama's group in today's game. The game was dead even up to that point, it was a very good game. Could have been a memorable comeback

Though it belongs more to the Amazon Army thread, this discussion of Yu brings to mind the long-simmering excitement of the first female Japanese to reach 9-dan with 200 wins. Mrs Sugiuchi, Yoshida Mika and Aoki Kikuyo have all been in the wings long enough to allow us to wonder whether they may soon get on stage.

Mrs S has been waiting nearly 40 years, so she only needs an average of about 5 wins a year. Aoki goes back to 2000, and Yoshida to 2003.

The problem seems to be that they all seem to concentrate on all-female events, which is presumably rather like the men shying away from international events in favour of better-paid domestic events. But, surely, being the 1st female 9-dan would eclipse everything else?

Maybe Aoki Kikuyo could be well past the halfway point? I noticed she was doing well in different editions of the Teikei cup and when I checked tournament brackets for the main titles on Nihon Kiin pages it was the case that she had a decent amount of wins. Mika Yoshida and Konishi Kazuko do appear to play in the available tournaments, but Sugiuchi Kazuko doesn't appear to (but I think she is 95). For some reason some pros appear in every big tournament (the final or the preliminaries) but others don't. I can imagine that a 95 year old might reduce their appearances but sometimes much younger pros don't seem to appear. It is hard to gauge where different players are at with number of wins, it is something I would have thought the kiins would have on their webpage or some fan would collect.

I caught part of a game this week between Konishi Kazuko and another Kansai Kiin woman Sakakibara Fumiko 6 dan and therefore can claim to have some familiarity with these names but otherwise I don't think I would.

After a very convincing win against Shibano in the challenger decision game last Thursday, Yu Zhengqi will challeng Ichiriki for the Honinbo title.

Kansai Kiin news notes that he is the fourth Kansai Kiin player in history to challenge for the Honinbo. The others were Riichi Sekiyama, Hashimoto Utaro and Dogen Handa. It has been 62 years since Dogen's match with Sakata. See 余正麒八段が本因坊戦挑戦者に for the news on the Kansai Kiin web.

His last title match appearance was a hard fought match with Iyama for Oza at the end of last year. Since then he has beaten Iyama twice!

The challenger decision game with Shibano:


Btw move 211 may have been played earlier, at move 139.

Seems a little bit naughty of the Kansai Ki-in to claim that. Sekiyama won the title in 1941, Hashimoto challenged in 1943 and won in 1946. The Kansai Ki-in didn't exist until 1948. And Sekiyama didn't join till 1951, before retiring in 1952.

It seems fair if Nihon Kiin doesn't want to claim him. Their web doesn't appear to list him or other professionals that joined Kansai Kiin around the time. Maybe I aggravated the message unintentionally by adding "in history", the implication then could be that they were Kansai Kiin players at the time not simply that they are Kansai Kiin players.

Yu and Ichiriki are also battling it out in the Meijin league. Yu is at 4-0 and Ichiriki at 5-0. That is the major title that Kansai Kiin player hasn't even challenged for.