Nope, sorry. I tried to remember before sending my post, but I couldn't. Probably some Japanese website, or perhaps the John Power report (AGA journal). But I don't know.

Yeah, some spiky hair will do it! How about a new hero outfit?

ち



Kidding. It's this a hikaru shirt reference?

Yeah. They appeared to dress almost identically in the last two games of Gosei. Maybe those some expensive suits, and that pink shirt they were both wearing, that is fine but it makes it harder to identify the hero. Only if the hero wore a t-shirt with a big letter five A plaid shirt would also do it! Peter Parker, Kent Clark, Thor Odinsson and Hikaru Shindo all wear plaid shirts. You always know when everyone is very uptight that the plaid shirt guy is a hero in the story.

Btw what is the next Iyama - Ichiriki matchup?

A yeah, I have seen Hikaru with the 5, (五) which is "go"　(ご, not "chi" ち which looks like 5).

Well, which Shibano defeating Iyama that gives him 2 losses and so he might have trouble making it into one of the 2 spots given to the top S-league players in the Kisei.

And what title is next? I need a ryhme to remember. It's Kisei (Jan-Mar), Judan (Mar-APr), Honinbo (May-Jul), Gosei (Jun-Aug), Meijin (Aug-Nov), Oza (Oct-Dec), and Tengen (Oct-Dec).

Meijin is challenged by Shibano. Ichiriki is out of the running to challenge Iyama's Oza title (it will be either Shibano, Anzai Nobuaki, (Kansai) Yo Seiki, or (Kansai) Seto Taiki). Iyama just got his 2nd loss in Kisei S-league against Shibano. With 2-league the top 2 will make it to the final bracket. With 3 of 5 rounds played, Shibano will be atleast 3-2 and best Iyama can do is 3-2. Kyo is 2-1 right now and will play Iyama. Murakawa will also play him.

So... maybe they won't be playing. Which is fine because we've all seen them play quite a lot.

To bring this back to Ichiriki, he lost to Ida Atsushi as mention in the "League" thread. Sad for Ichiriki personally, but I can't be too sad for the Kisei.

It would be really interesting to see Ichiriki vs. Shibano in the Kisei.

If that happens, we need to place a bet

The situation in the S league is that Shibano Toramaru is at 3 - 0, Kyo Kagen at 2 - 1 and everyone else is 1 - 2. That means Iyama is still in the game with 2 games to go and one of them with Kyo Kagen. The tie breaker is I believe the the initial seed and Iyama is the first seed and would take the second place qualification if he were to tie for the second place.

I didn't know about the tie breaker. He has a good chance still.

But honestly, please anyone but Iyama. I'm happy to cheer for Iyama over any of these younger guys but I don't know how many more games I can watch between Ichiyama after this past year.

Shibano, you got this!

Shibano did challenge Ichiriki but failed to unseat him.

I realized just now that Ichiriki is on what appears to be 13 game winning streak!

It is even more exciting! His next game is the first game in the Honinbo title match with Iyama, the next after this decides who challenges Iyama for Gosei and the third is the second game of the Honinbo title match. At least this is the schedule on the Nihon Kiin webpage as of now.

OK, it's not the best chance to win all three to keep the streak going. Thirteen is also an unlucky number

I always think I understand time zones until they confuse me again but the game should starts in 24 hours.

If you are following this, you might like to know that the Nihon Ki-in's version of it is that his streak started on 6 March (the Honinbo League). I say "version" because they omit tv tournaments. I imagine that this is because games like the Ryusei and NHK are played sometimes months before being broadcast but the Ki-in is not supposed to release the games or their results until then. This caused a bit of a stink some years ago when Cho won a tv title to set up a record number of titles, and the news of that got out early. I don't think this affects Ichiriki, though.

Ichiriki leads the winning-streak table (next is Mutsuura) and also leads the number-of-wins and winning-ratio tables. As of 21 May, he was on 23-4. But what I found most interesting was that the next name in the wins table was Ueno Risa (yes Risa) on 20-6, and Sumire was on "only" 15-10 (and Ueno Asami on 15-6).

The other males making waves or wavelets in various statistical ways, apart from Mutsuura, are Suzuki Shinji, Kono Rin, Oba Junya and, of course, Shibano Toramaru (6th on wins, but only on 14-11). Iyama does not appear in any of these lists.

That is similar to what I gathered from https://gotoeveryone.k2ss.info/win-loss/2023/ichiriki/ which isn't official but also doesn't exclude TV games. The record that I can find on the Nihon Kiin webpage doesn't go back more than a few weeks for each player. The Kansai Kiin webpage lets you search for results since 2017.

I thought I remember seeing the NHK games in the players schedules on the Nihon Kiin page but it must have been on 'gotoeveryone'.

Ichiriki is going for the 14th win big time!

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$W
$$ +--------------------------------------+
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .|
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . O O X X . X X .|
$$ | . . . . . O . . . . . . X O X X O O .|
$$ | . . . O . . . . . , . O . O O O X . .|
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . .|
$$ | . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .|
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .|
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .|
$$ | . . . X X . . . . . 1 . . . . . . . .|
$$ | . . . X O O . O . , X . O . O O . . .|
$$ | . . X O . . . . . O X X O . X X O O .|
$$ | . . . . . O O X . O X O O X . O X X .|
$$ | . . . X X X O . X X X O . . . O X . .|
$$ | . . . . O X O . . X O . O . X X . . .|
$$ | . . . X X O O . X . O . . . . . X . .|
$$ | . . X , . X O . . X O X X X X , . . .|
$$ | . . . . O X O . X . X O O X O O . . .|
$$ | . . . . . X O . O X X O . O . O . . .|
$$ | . . . . . . . . O . . . O . O . . . .|
$$ +--------------------------------------+[/go]

He spent maybe 70-80 minutes on this move but Cho Chikun showed it on stream just in time for it to be played before giving too many variations. Takao Shinji had also shown it in an earlier position. I don't know if this is something obvious to former title holders or what they were saying

What's a plaid shirt?

Any type of shirt with any kind of tartan or checkered pattern, no matter if it's stylish or looks like drapery. Named after matching blankets from Scotland that legends will have were worn in lieu of cloths or draped as cloths, depending if you see the ancients as being half naked or half dressed. It's not how they wore it or the type of fabric that is important but the pattern.

The winning streak is growing! Ichiriki won the Gosei challenger decider, extending the streak to 15(?), and now he is about will face off Iyama in the Honinbo. The game starts in 20 minutes or so.

More Ichiyama! Did you think those days were over?

The 4th game of the Honinbo will be on 20-21 of June, and the first of the Gosei, 27 of June too. So unless Ichiriki wins 4-0, both matches will overlap. Different time conditions, and very different mind state.

Besides, Iyama is 2-0 in the Kisei, and has already beaten Shibano. To me, he is again in the best position to challenge for Kisei.

It seems to me that Ichiriki is in a rising trend and Iyama is slightly declining. In a few months, the situation at the top of Japanese go might be very different.

I'm not sure if Iyama is declining. Except in the sense that everything that goes up must come down. Even then he is not far from his peak mamumamu rating. When he reached peak mamumamu (can I omit the word rating?) he dropped below the current rating in only 6 months. That is not much if we think of the time to gain or lose rating as a measure of how different these ratings are.

His game in the Quzhou-Lanke Cup was very impressive, he got a lead early and maintained it through most of the middle game, it was close to 12 points at times (according to my updated katago) but he appeared to only lose the game when trying to clinch it during what must have been byo yomi. Both players appeared to increasingly play less precise, which I assumed was a sign of byo yomi fatigue. There was never the Iyama group, instead it was all precise and objective play in some very tough positions.

Ichiriki on the other hand is rising. He is really close to his peak mamumamu and with the winning streak he might surpass it already in the June edition, which also marks a whole years since last time he had higher rating then Iyama. If he keeps extending the winning streak, a 50-50 prospect with each game at this point, he will rocket up in the international ranking too.

Mamumamu, what a satisfying unit of measurement.

I can say that I think if Ichiriki Ryo wins takes the Honinbo from Iyama Yuta, it is definitely the end of the Iyama Yuta era and the beginning of the Ichiriki Ryo era.

Ichiriki won. Extending the winning streak to 16

I only watched so much of the game, it looked like Iyama wanted to go for a big fight in the center that probably wasn't objectively favorable and Ichiriki obliged. This lead to Ichiriki getting advantage that he needed to prove on the second day. It wasn't all walk in the park for Ichiriki but he ordered a cake for the second day snack. The cake can be found in the Nihon Kiin webpage report as well as a picture of the very intimidating playing hall. They also had coffee and a basketball cream bun for breakfast

The game hasn't been uploaded on goteveryone yet.

Iyama broke Ichirki's streak by winning their game in the Kisei. Leaving the streak at 17 wins, nothing record breaking and the excitement is over. The fans must wait awhile for the next winning streak, Ichiriki also lost a game in the Meijin league (against Kyo Kagen) yesterday.