It seems like the women play a lot more games when you look at the records. I think this was discussed somewhere here before (maybe this same topic or the amazon topic), but don't the female-only games count for total games? if those count, then the women just have much more opportunity to play. And for the top women, they are probably getting far into the tournament in both the regular and women's tournaments.

Overall, it's nice just to have more game records available. It seems like records for qualifying rounds are hardly ever published, due to policy or costs.

Women have more tournaments, and thus, more chances to play. But Natsumi 1-dan, female, and Masao 2-dan, male, have both played a lot less than Sumire 2-dan. The total number of games played by Sumire is high. This shows how well Sumire is doing.

Stronger players, both male and female, get to start the tournaments in more advanced rounds. So they play stronger opponents. Weaker (and also newer) players have to go through many more prelim games. In Sumire's case, I think, her performance is better than her current situation. In the next years she will get seeded a bit further in most tournaments, so she will skip the first prelims. Or at least, she will have had the chance to improve her situation.

As for your question, all official games count for the total games. But not all of them count for promotion. No female-only tournament counts. But "rookie-only" (the Shinjin O), counts.


(I am sure I already replied this. Was the post lost?)

For some reason Nakamura got to be the one to send Otake Hideo off to his retirement. Is she friends with him? This doesn't seem like a normal duty for new players. Maybe just to show her face because she has been absent from streams and Go World features lately (unless I missed it).

Sumire has had a good end of year.

She beat Shimoji Gensho 7 dan in the C prelim of the Meijin. It's the first game of the tournament. I don't know how she did last year, but she is starting from the very beggining. This win counts for promotion. How far is she from 3 dan? I don't know. She needs 40 wins (in tournaments that count...), I guess she must be around 50% of that.

Then, she beat Jo Bunen 1 dan in the semifinal of the female Honinbo. Sumire still has to win one more game, and it could be against Okada Yumiko 6 dan. They played about 1 year ago, and Okada lost a won game because she missed a big yose sequence after dame were played. There is no record, but it was something like that.

Overall, Sumire's record for this year is 42-18 (70%), an improvement over last year, at 21-17 (55%).

Next year, I'd like to see her in some main event or advanced prelims.

How can she alteady be in the semifinals of female Honinbo? I thought the last title match just finished quite recently?

That would be the 'semi-final' of her group in the qualifying tournament for the female Honinbo. The qualifying groups are small (but there are many groups) and some players enter in the second round (i.e. the semi-final) in their qualifying group.

Right, my mistake.

I meant semifinal of her group in the preliminary tournament.

Sumire is close to qualify to the main event in the female Meijin, female Honinbo, Shinjin O. Let's see how many she can get.

I found this New Year video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMm_QtxT_kg

Stars are Sumire and Watanabe Akira, shougi Meijin and competent amateur go player. They play a go game, with 6 stones, write some calligraphy and talk a bit. All is in Japanese and I could pick only a couple of words ("taihen", difficult, said Watanabe at some point )
Sumire said more than 2 words in front of the camera, and her calligraphy was better than the last time I saw it.

People, Sumire is growing.

Nice find! I've played shogi in that room.

Sumire lost by 13 BTW and agreed the handicap was too big. Her calligraphy is still awful, but her motto was "enthusiasm" and she indicated she was still keen to show her mettle in 2022. Watanabe chose a motto to indicate he still has Lofty Aspirations - but he too should consider adding improving his calligraphy to his bucket list. Just compare the scroll behind them:　日々是好日.

If you are curious, this is a saying (Every day is a good day) from Chan (= Zen) Buddhishm in late Tang China, which notoriously gives Japanese problems in reading it. In Zen it is "nichinichi kore kounichi", but in songs is sometimes "nichinichi kore koujitsu". But in ordinary Japanese it is usually read "hibi kore koujitsu" but you can hear "hibi kore kounichi" and sometimes even "hibi kore yoki hi". There was a Japanese film of this title a couple of years ago. I recall it used the reading "nichinichi koujitsu". But a word of warning in this narcissistic age. The Zen koan sense is not "let's party every day." Rather it is an admonition: let every day be a good day. (Kore doesn't mean 'this' here. It's an old way of rendering 'be' in Chinese.) As such it is, of course, appropriate for a time of making New Year resolutions, and the choice of mottoes by both players becomes more meaningful. It is these multiple layers of history, tradition, meaning and allusions that makes oriental calligraphy the great (and ever unfolding) art it is.

I was curious. So I asked some Japanese friends "How do you read this?" Not how it should be read, or what books say, but how *you* read this.
Interesting, they had problems. Some answers: "you can check online", "I don't know, let me check", "it can be nichinichikorekounichi or nichinichikorekoujitsu or others"
是 seems to be a very rarely used kanji.

About the game: I could have noticed that Sumire said 6 stones are too many, but I was lazy to check 多 (many). Not important. What I wanted to say is that there is another video where Watanabe plays Cho Chikun. They play a game of go and a game of shogi at the same time, both games with large handicaps (9 stones / rook+bishop+2 lancers). The atmosphere is very casual, and perhaps both handicaps were decided by negotiation (you go easy on me here, I go easy on you there). The point is that Watanabe is probably a better go player than he thinks.

The result of the games, btw,... you will have to see by yourself.

Today I read that Sumire beat Kato Chie 2-dan in the final game of the female Meijin and will play the league, winning of the three seats at dispute.
What? Final game? I thought that Sumire had to play Moro Arisa 2-dan first. Well, looks like they played and Sumire won. Then, Kato, who had won Izawa Akino 5-dan, played Sumire. The thing is that this all happened the same day. So probably one game in the morning, the other in the afternoon.

After this, Sumire is in a winning streak of 9. In the league, she will play Ueno Asami, Xie Yimin... the usual suspects, and more. It will be an incredible chance to test herself. Because it's a league, she will play 6 games no matter what happens. A good way to measure her level.

https://www.nihonkiin.or.jp/match/fmeijin/033.html
Wow, yeah, I see that both games were on the same day. Maybe it was a travel/schedule issue, or pandemic related.

Seems like Nakamura Sumire will sit out the first round due to the scheduling. I'm also sort of following Nyu Eiko, who has played Nakamura a few times that I've seen recently. I'm also following Xie Yimin but just on Twitter.

I wonder when the League games will be played and if any of them will be streamed on YouTube. Right now I just see the Kisei challenge scheduled. Shibano got his League games streamed. Maybe because Shibano is a fan-favorite? Sumire seems to be a fan-favorite. Or maybe for Shibano it was just quiet after New Years.

The first game of Sumire in the female Kisei tournament was broadcasted on Youtube. After that, some others too, but not many. Perhaps some of the big clashes will be in Youtube. Right now, we only have the schedule without dates, but last year all games were played in February and March. The Kisei will/could still be going on, so let's hope that they can show us some games.

For Sumire, being out of the first round might be a good thing. You can see how your rivals are doing.

Or not. who knows.

Today, Sumire beat (B+3.5) Aoki Kikuyo 8 dan in the C prelim of the Honinbo. This is an important game, I think, because Aoki is one (of 2?) of the female 8 dan in Japan, and this victory is another milestone in her progress. You might say that Aoki is not a top player, not fighting for titles, or even in the Meijin league. That's true, but she is an experienced player and playing her is not just some chore that you can easily dismiss. After this, Sumire will face Terayama Rei 6 dan who just beat Yamashita Keigo 9 dan.

Sumire loses too. She lost to Nakazawa Ayako 5 dan in the prelims of the Tachiaoi Cup (aka Aidu Hospital Cup). So she won't be in the main event this year.

This loss broke her 9 game winning game. She is 4-1 this year. Let's see if she can beat Terayama and extend her winning streak to 2. Not easy.

In fact Aoki beat a 9-dan, Kudo Norio, who won two Big 7 titles, in the Teikei Legends Cup this month (as did Kato Tomoko, who bested Ishii Kunio 9-dan.

Today, the 55 Go Awards were announced.

Sumire won the prize to the rookie of the year. Very good. I wonder if Fukuoka Kotaro came close in the poll.

The irony comes now: also today, Sumire played her first game in the Shinjin O (King of New Stars, but sometimes called Rookie of the Year too)... and she lost
The game was against Imabun Taro 2-dan, from the Kansai Kiin. Next, he will play the first round of the tournament because, for reasons unknown to me, the total players are 33, not 32. So 2 players had to play an extra game.

What are the 55 Go Awards?

Every year, the Nihon Kiin gives awards to best player, great player, longest winning streak, and a few more. This year it was the 55th term.

When Hikaru gest his shodan diploma, Waya says that they are "just an extra". The main event are the awards. These ones.

These are the Kido Prizes that were originally sponsored by Kido magazine but, since its demise, from 1999 by Go World. They were originally modelled on sumo (with now defunct categories for e.g. Technique and Fighting Spirit) but over the years the categories have been tweaked, e.g. the addition of an International Performance Prize.

These are for Nihon Ki-in players only. The Kansai Ki-in has a parallel set-up.

The awards ceremony is actually in late March (ideal host Ricky Gervais?), but a press release was issued early in Feb. The headlines splashed by the non-go media were for Iyama the Grand Champion (and also International Performance) and Sumire, who gets the Newcomers Prize (but Rina was Best Female).

There was only one non-Japanese player in this year's list (Kyo Kagen), and even that was really a runner-up prize (i.e. second to Iyama as Grand Champion).

OK, what's what I thought, thanks.

Sensei's Library has a full listing of Kido Prize winners and statistics, at https://senseis.xmp.net/?KidoPrizeWinners, based on the Japanese Wikipedia page.

Feel free to add the 2021 results, which hadn't arrived on Ja. Wiki last time I checked. Or just post them here and I'll put them in.