I don't think there is any official award for length of holding a title consecutively except for the Honorable title. The record for the longest consecutive years holding the Honinbo title used to be held by Takagawa and, when Sakata couldn't match that there was a sense that no one would ever beat Takagawa's record. Cho Chikun made it to ten. I suppose the age of the players reaching the top has something to do with it. Cho was at the top long enough to fight off the younger players. Iyama, of course, started early, too, so perhaps he could make it to ten.

Its better to lose Honinbo title game "almost KGS style" than lose in court and be sentenced "almost KGS style" .

According to FA, just before corner invasion Shibano had only about 20% wr (but FA considered game playing CHN rules with 7,5 komi) - so maybe Shibano thought he is losing badly and tried to make some swing (almost Gennan style)? And iirc FA thought 3-4 contact play was better than 3-3 (but very slightly).

Shibano is down 0 for 3. In other contests, the underdog coming from behind is a big deal. Anyone have stats for come from behind wins for the big titles?

_________________
David Bogie, Boise ID
I play go, I ride a recumbent, of course I use Macintosh.

Shibano just clinched the Judan title, bringing his titles to 3 (out of 7 major titles).

As for the question on coming back from 3 down situation, there are 6 post WWII title games, as far as I know. 3 by Cho Chikun 9p (1983 Kisei, 1984 Meijin, 1992 Honinbo), 2 by Rin Kaiho 9p (1973 Former Meijin, 1983 Honinbo), and one by Hane Naoki 9p (2008 Honinbo).

More records for Shibano (I itemised the rest in First Teenage Meijin): Youngest player to hold three major titles, and fastest to do so from turning pro. And, presumably, the first player to win a major title wearing a mask. When asked how it felt, he said, "Mmgmnmrmrmmbnnmm."

I'm a bit puzzled why Shibano is not getting more attention here, but he has just pulled back to 1-3 in the Honinbo. Game 4 featured a very unusual compact fight around the centre point, for a while separate from the rest of the board, after Shibano made the notorious horse's head shape (White 90).

Game 4 is traditionally seen as the decisive one psychologically in a 7-game match, and what may worry Iyama in this case is that he had a lead (according to AI) and blew it.

Game 5 today and tomorrow.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=you ... kcmXLv0v4k

Solid game from Iyama

A reminder that Shibano will start playing in the Chinese League, Division A, in July 2020. He will be part of a very strong Shandong team with Jiang Weijie, Fan Tingyu and Zhou Ruiyang. He will play his games via the internet.

Good, finally some new japapnese pros at the top. Do you know which day is the first round?

I am not sure but i think judging by number of fox broadcasts and players, first round of league was yesterday. I didnt saw Shibano game among them though.

In the meantime Shibano is doing pretty good in Kisei League B-2: he is sure of taking 1st place with score 5-1 (and 1 game not played yet) thanks to other best players scored 5-2 and Shibano had higher ranking. Next he must win Leage B1/B2 playoff, win against C league winner, win against A league winner, and win 2-0 against S league winner to challenge Iyama! So he needs 5-0 sweep, rahter hard task, but no impossible. I hope he do it and will take revenge for 4-1 in recent Honinbo match.

Shibano's game of today against Chen Yaoye (transcribed from Tygem, let me know if there are mistakes):



wrong direction? The left side seems smaller than the bottom side and the two white stones have already done their job as forcing moves?
102, losing move?

Shibano ended up playing just one game for his debut in the China League Division A, because of pressure of domestic games. He had played in the B and C divisions in previous years but this was his first time at the top level. He was disappointed to lose what he thought could have been a won game.

He did not mention 42 as a mistake - indeed, he was happy with the position then, claiming it was equal.

He was surprised by Black 81 and thought it allowed him to get a slender lead.

White 88 was wrong direction of play (should be 91).

102 was indeed the losing move, in Shibano's view.

Shibano played 2 more games against Choi Jeong last week. Looks like he lost both. That makes him like 0-5 against her now iirc. Latter game was a corner joseki that ended in ladder which ended up causing a fight in the center. He's also been playing games against some rookie named Moon Minjong recently as well.

Where those games were played? On FGS? Anyway, Shibano just lost his extremely important Meijin game, and he did it in super bad style - he made move which (according to FA) changed his winrate from 95% to 5,4% -biggest swing i saw recently, i guess he feel like Park Junghwan who did pretty much similar swing few months ago. So he is now 0-2 and his chances are not looking good. Next game starts 23-09.

Meijin game 2 was live streamed on Youtube; whichever bot they used for the stream was less dramatic than FA, but it was still around 70% for Shibano (the percentage still fluctuating, live) and dropped to ~5% after W pushed into B. Ms. Xie reacted accordingly on the live commentary.

I just saw on go4go that Shibano could have won his Ing cup 1st round game against Yang Dingxin right at the end, because Yang played self-atari of a big group in the dame stage. Howevver, Shibano didn't capture but played the last dame. I don't know if he didn't notice or chose not to take the cheap win, very sporting if so. Anyone know which? I wonder how many pros would do that? There's the famous self-atari of Nakano Yasuhiro and then his opponent Ishida Yoshio (iirc) did capture him, reversing the game.

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$$ | . O . O O X O O X O . O . O X . X O X |
$$ | O O . O X X X X . X O O O O X . . X X |
$$ | X O . O O X . . X X O X X O O X X O . |
$$ | X X O O X X . . . O X X X O O X O O X |
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$$ | . X X . X . X X X X X O O X O X X . X |
$$ | X . . X O X X O O X O O . X X X O X X |
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$$ | X O O X O . . O O O O X O X O , O X . |
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$$ +---------------------------------------+[/go]

My Japanese version has moves 345 and 347 the other way round (i.e. no self atari) and there is no mention in the press of self atari or of the record being doctored. There is, however, a claim that Shibano made a losing mistake on move 179, which should have been M6.

Assuming the record has been doctored, and there really was a self atari, I think the precedent you are searching for is not Nakano-Ishida 9which was in actual play, not the fill-in stage) is O Rissei-Ryu Shikun in 2002 (the "tinnitus" game). See my book "The Incident Room".

Ah, I was going by this comment from macelee on go4go.

I have never played a game under Ing rules, and don't know the fine print. It occurs to me that this was Shibano's first ever Ing game, and he may have been unsure about the small print, too. Could he have assumed the game was over anyway before the fill-in moves? It does strikes me, though, from what I've observed of his character, that he wouldn't think twice about doing the sporting thing.