Kim Cheayoung was shocked . . . I'm not sure if she made a slip in game?

Kim Cheayoung is Korea's third player.

Wu Yiming beat 5 players: Nakamura Sumire 2p, Lee Suljoo 1p, Suzuki Ayumi 7p, Heo Seohyun 3p, Xie Yimin 7p.

The Female Honinbo is grinding on.

The L19 household names are all still in play: Asami, Sumire, Suzuki, Xie and Nyu. They won't meet each other for a long while yet.

Their meeting order is set to be:

3rd round: Asami vs Suzuki
Semifinals: Asami or Suzuki vs Sumire, and Xie vs Nyu
Finals: Asami or Suzuki or Sumire vs Xie or Nyu

I didn't get the memo but Hoshiai Shiho vs Ueno Risa is being streamed live: https://youtu.be/yLJ8EsZ0Hu0

Ichiriki and Iyama are playing game 3 of the Honinbo title match and Hane Naoki is playing Yamashita Keigo live at the same time. So I guess Risa is popular then.

Terayama Rei is doing commentary. Just a bit so far. I'll have to see more tomorrow. I was reading more about him recently and reviewed his games in the 63rd NHK Cup back in 2016. He ended up against Cho U in the final.

I noticed they have a recorder and no clocks. Maybe because it's the main tournament? Thinking back, I have seen clocks used in section A of qualifying in other tournaments. I wonder if it's general practice in all of the league/main games have time keepers.

Ueno Risa beat Hoshiai Shiho in the 2nd round of the female Honinbo. Cdavis wanted to see Rina play Sumire in the next round... well, it might happend. Sumire will play Kato Keiko 6-dan if a few days.


The other Ueno played Yokota Hinano 1-dan in the first round of the Senko Cup (the Japanese one). Too much for Yokota. In this tournament, Xie Yimin, one of the usual suspects, is out. Lost to Iwata Saeka 1-dan.

Oh, and let's see if Bugcat is right with the female Honinbo games.

If I interpreted the tweet right, Fujisawa Rina did not make it to the final 4 in the Tengen Tournament, losing to Otake Yu.

_________________
A good system naturally covers all corner cases without further effort.

You are right.

According to this:
https://twitter.com/KK_joryu/status/1532274410195140608

Rina made some kind of mistake that cost her the game.

It would be nice to have had her in a semifinal, but good work. Not too long ago, it was hard to believe that there would be Amazons in the last stages of the main tournaments. But now, there are several, and winning games. More to come soon.

Asami beat Terada Shuta in the Shinjin O, so she's through to the semifinals. Her next opponent will be either Takei Taishin or the dreaded Otake Yu.

If Otake becomes the slayer of Amazons, won't that make him Hercules?

Fun tidbit: currently Otake is #228 on Go Ratings and Ueno is #229, with one point between them. What does that make Otake's winning chance?

Rina played today her first game in the C league (Kisei). She won against Tsuruta Kazushi 6-dan.

She is playing the league because last year she kept her seat after finishing 3-2.

For those who don't know, a reminder: a result of 4-1 (and of course, 5-0) means a promotion to one of the B leagues (there are 2).
A result of 2-3 or worse, means demotion.

So, Rina made a good start. How good, compared to last year? Actually... equally good! Because Kazushi was also her 1st round opponent last year, and she won too.

Can she improve to 4-1?

Now I think about it, Ueno Asami being superior in fast games makes her well suited to the women's Korean Baduk League; hopefully next year SARS disappears and foreign players will be allowed.



Fujisawa now seems to be doing better than Ueno even in standard tournaments. Between Mamumamu0413 and Goratings she's about 20th in Japan, and I thought it just the effect of women-only domestic tournaments inflating the rating, but Mamumamu's ranking of 23rd seems accurate



Hahaha!

Rina got another good result. She beat Hashimoto Yujiro 9-dan in the last game of the A prelim of the Honinbo. She will play the last prelim, for a seat in the league.

She won't be alone. Ueno Asami is already waiting there, after winning her last game against Tsuneishi Takashi 5-dan. Takashi seems to be one of the strong young players out there, so this shows her level.

In the past, other women have been close to play in one of the big leagues. Close, not there.

The A prelim is about to end. We will have the last draw very soon.

Back on the 13th there was a live steam for a game in the women's Honinbo main tournament: Koyama Terumi vs Nyu Eiko. Rin Kanketsu did commentary and had his buddies over as usual. I didn't have a chance to watch the steam yet. Just posting in case anyone else missed it.
tournament page: https://www.nihonkiin.or.jp/match/fhoninbo/041.html

At the beginning of the year Nyu Eiko made it to the main Gosei tournament, playing against Yoda Norimoto. I hope she keeps doing well.

Two important games today.

First, Fujisawa Rina beat Ueno Asami in the second game of the Tachioi Cup (aka Aidu Chuo Hospital Cup). Ueno won the first one, but Rina won the second, after a semeai ended with a big loss for black (Ueno). She tried to fight back, but the game was over.

This is a 3-game match, so next 24th, we'll know the winner. Personally, I'd like Ueno to win.

The second game was played by Hoshiai Shiho and Numadate Sakiya 7-dan. This was the last game in the A prelim of the Judan, and Hoshiai won (B+2.5). It looks like a game that needed very good positional judgement. Numadate plays in the B Kisei league, so not an easy opponent. Good for Hoshiai, who is 1 or 2 games away from the main event. A first time for her.

Thanks for the notes. Looks like the next match is beginning in a day. Same time as the Gosei title match. I'm always interested to see how many people watch the match.

Fujisawa Rina has been getting a lot of airtime lately. Her Senko tournament match is being streamed in a few days as well.

edit: And I just noticed that she is on the cover of Go World for July.

So, the final game was played.

The outcome (I am glad to say), is that Ueno Asami won. In the end, it was a typical hammer win, with an unexpected kill. I didn't see it coming until it was too late.

I wanted her to win, because I like it when tournaments are won by different players. It's better for comepetition and for fans, I think. In the future, when certain player wins titles, perhaps I will have a change of heart

About this game, something interesting: quite early, there was a ko fight, and Rina made a decission that AI didn't like at all. Ueno had a won game (...) very soon. After some time, the game was even, and even Rina was ahead. But soon, the hammer set things right.

I saw the game was running but I only caught the first part of the Gosei and haven't finished watching either match. I have to say, though, that I completely agree that it's more fun to have several title holders and at least different players challenging titles. In the main tournaments, I was very happy to see Seki Koutaro take a title. It's good to have Ichiriki's face back under title-holders.

The Aizu Central Hospital (会津中央病院) match is one of the top titles. At least that's what Go World makes me think as Ueno will get her face there at the back. But Ueno is strong, has been strong, and she's already the female Kisei. What I think was really exciting was seeing Nakamura Sumire challenge the Meijin. I'm still surprised by that actually.

So who's next? We saw the Meijin and now Aizu. Kisei was a while ago. Women's Honinbo and Senko cup are in the main rounds, discussed here already. I see now that Nyu Eiko beat Ueno Risa. Would be nice to see Nyu in a women's title match.



Side topic but John Power just put out a comprehensive report on Japanese Go (https://www.usgo.org/news/2022/06/the-p ... s-updates/) and I was wondering if the Aizu Central Hospital match was the "Hollyhock" ("tachiaoi") and yes that is the "立葵" part of "会津中央病院・女流立葵杯". I think I first read that from Power as that's what he calls it in the article.

Ueno Risa has just (2022-06-21) been promoted to 2-dan for achieving 30 wins.

Oh, great!

I am glad to read this. I just checked her NK profile, and there are a lot of white dots. This year she is 15-6 so far. 71% winning rate. One of the best in Japan.

Risa is very young (just turned 16, 2 days ago), and although she had some interesting wins, her results were so-so. This year she is doing better. Did she just finish junior high school? Maybe she can focus more on go?

Also, Risa has to bear 2 important burdens: she is the young sister of the rising Ueno Asami, and she became pro with Nakamure Sumire, who has been having great results, and became 2-dan more than 1 year before.

Comparisons are hateful.

Fujisawa Rina posted a picture of the "Hollyhock" flower that the Aizu central hospital tournament is named after: https://twitter.com/rinafujisawa/status ... 2912544768


Meanwhile, @twi_mako posted a portrait: https://twitter.com/twi_mako/status/1522085349350322178

Two important games today.

In the last prelim tournament of the Honinbo, Ueno Asami and Fujisawa Rina made their first appearance. If I am not wrong, Suzuki Ayami has played before (and reached the last game), but this is the first time that 2 Amazons play.

Asami lost to Hikosaka Naoto 9-dan. I saw only a bit, and she was fighting for her life. A big group was cut and part died, part barely lived. Better luck next year.

But Rina won. She beat Nakamura Shinya 9-dan. You might remember him from "Raising Nakamura Sumire"... and not many other stories. I am happy for Fujisawa. She will play Murakawa Daisuke 9-dan and then, perhaps, Otake Yu 6-dan (this is my prediction). It would be great to see her playing in the Honinbo league.

The Nakamuras must be not very happy with Rina...