Kyo Kagen 7 dan won the first game of his Gosei title challenge against Iyama.

Given how many times black tenukied on his center group, I'd say it is only justice it died

Kyo Kagen / Hsu Chiayuan 7p beat Iyama in the 2nd game of the Gosei today, by 1.5 points as black. New generation finally catching up?

Comparing to the Honinbo games with Yamashita, the fighting ended much earlier here (big fight ended and large endgame started around move 110), so if Iyama is better at fighting in time pressure than Kyo like he is vs Yamashita then Kyo avoided allowing Iyama to benefit from this.

Iyama will face Cho U, who was top dog of the Japanese Go scene in the mid 2000s before Iyama's dominance and is having some better results recently, in the Meijin title match. First game is 28th August.

Looks like a revisit to their 2008 and 2009 matches...

Cheers,
Vesa

Yup, Cho defended his Meijin against Iyama in 2008, but lost it in 2009. I believe the last title match between them was 2013 when Iyama won the Kisei for the first time (and the last of the big 7 for him to win).

Game 3 of the Gosei is now live on youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91HfohivlIk

The game so far with some LZ comments, the general trend seems to be Iyama plays slightly better, but made 2 big mistakes (allowing squeeze, and not keeping dead stones dead after a trade).

Things seem quite tedious now in the last open area of the board.

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

And Kyo wins! Iyama sacrificed (or Kyo killed) his top stones in exchange for the attack on white's bottom left, but that remained a ko (so LZ's judgement black should have kept the dead stones dead for security seems validated by the course of the game), white lived in ko there in exchange for black getting 2 moves (and ko threat removal) on his big centre though bottom side moyo, but white made nice sabaki within and cut it down to size and won by resign. So Iyama loses his septuple crown.

He did hold it for about 291 days and 40 minutes .

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

I believe it's the first time Iyama has been swept. In every other match, he scored at least two wins.

2016 Meijin: 4-3
2008 Meijin: 4-3
2014 Oza: 3-2
2011 Kisei: 4-2
2014 Tengen: 4-2
2013 Judan: 3-2

_________________
Occupy Babel!

Did he hold all the titles only for one year ? Not for two years ?

He's held the septuple crown twice. The first time he held it for about half a year in 2016, but lost the 2016 Meijin to Takao. Both spans were less than a full year.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

Sorry, 289 days and 59 minutes.

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

Obviously this thread is about Iyama but I'm surprised no-one has picked up on Kyo Kagen's achievement. Apart from the Gosei whitewash, in the current Ryusei he has just sailed through the win & continue preliminary with the maximum 11 straight wins.

In fact there were a lot of long winning streaks in this Ryusei, all by younger/newer players, and since the way the Ryusei works is that the last man standing gets a place in the final knockout but so does the player in each block with the most wins, this means the final knockout this year again looks very, very different from the more traditional Darby and Joan event. Perhaps the finals should be shown on C-Beebies/Sesame Street rather than the Go-Shogi Channel.

What I am hinting at is that maybe Iyama's glory days are over. Maybe it's time for a "Following Kyo Kagen" thread. Or, even better, "Following Fujisawa Rina." She got into the Ryusei finals by dint of four wins despite starting in the worst possible position - first (wo)man standing in her block. She had Kyo to thank for that. Normally two people would have qualified from his block (winner and most wins), but as he embodied both qualifying slots (there could be no others in his block with even 1 win), a special rule had to be applied: the player the best winning streak so far not qualifying was chosen. This turned out to be Rina - but even there was twist. She could normally expect to qualify with a 4-win record but in this case there was another player in the same group with 4 wins (and he wasn't the block winner), and so she would have lost out on prior grading. But Kyo's last win created the dea ex machina.

Incidentally, Cho U holds the record for consecutive wins in the Ryusei block preliminaries, with 12 (and Yamashita also had 11) but these were in the days when the blocks were much bigger than 11 games each. In the current structure, Kimu Sujun and Mizokami Tomochika had held the record with 10 wins (Iyama's max was 6 wins).

Even the Nihon Ki-in's English facebook post was "Iyama lost Gosei title" instead of "Kyo won Gosei title"

Kobayashi Koichi(HK), Sakai Hideyuki 8p, Yu Zhengqi 7p all in his steamroll...

I was wondering who of the young Japanese professionals would commence the beginning of the end of the Iyama era, most likely more gradual a transition than with Cho U 9p.

Kaminski0143 has a page analysing the growth of the young talents of today to the pros at their peak, and others in between. Fujisawa Rina 3p is at least class D , and there's nearly frightening stuff at the top.

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

There was a big go event called the Hankyu Igo Festival in Tokyo. I don't have time to translate it now, but there was a funny back and forth between Iyama and Shibano.

https://twitter.com/sada0324/status/1029253717453758464

IGS is relaying the 43rd Meijin title match, game 1, right now:

Chang Hsu , Iyama Yuta

On IGS, they use the Taiwanese(?) spelling "Chang Hsu" instead of the Japanese "Cho U". It used to be "Cho U" exclusively(?) on IGS, no ?
Does anyone know the logic or some recent administrative change in the Nihon Kiin that prompted this shift in how they spell Chinese-descent pro names (on IGS at least) ?