There is a peculiarity that sometimes crops up in Japanese pro knockout tournaments. Let's say the expected progression is 32-16-8-4-2-1. But the round of 32 sometimes has 34 players or 36. What actually happens is that (assuming 36 players as in the 1997 Tengen), two games are played before the others, leaving 32 players active, and then 16 games are played. This means that 18 games are played in Round 1, with two of the players ending up playing two games in Round 1! In the Japanese presentation, all 18 games are labelled as Round 1. I have no idea why the Japanese do this.

I had no experience of this system elsewhere, and so had no idea how to describe it. I just made something up, like "Round 1, Extra Game."

But I have been reading a John Grisham book - my usual reading on aeroplane trips but this was unusual in that it was about basketball and not the law. I came across what may be a good/correct term for us: a "play-in game".

I thoroughly enjoy baseball and American (NFL) football but can't stand watching basketball, so while I'm well up on baseball and football terminology, I have zero knowledge of basketball.

However, the context in the book is that a basketball tournament that normally had 16 teams in a play-off was extended by adding four teams. They had to play two "extra" games before the main tournament began, one game with a fellow extra side and one game with one of the bottom two seeds in the main event (I think).

All I could find on the internet was that "play-in" games do exist in basketball, but I couldn't find a strict definition, and I couldn't find any examples of the term used in other sports.

But I do like the term. So my questions are: Have I understood the term correctly, is it used in other sports and/or is it widely understood outside of basketball? In short, is it good to use in go?

Yes, you have understood the term correctly, and I would use it (for one thing, the meaning is reasonably clear from context). I don't follow basketball much, but as I was reading the first paragraph of your post I thought "Isn't he just describing a play-in game?". You can find more information in the Wikipedia page.

Thx dfan. I don't understand why the Wikipedia page you gave didn't come up for me. I did try!

Also, I don't think this explains why the Japanese go players use this system. In basketball, t seems that a play-in game favours higher seeds (one game fewer + rest time) but conversely burdens lower seeds. On the face of it, a play-in game in a go event has nothing to do with seeding but, at least in the older terms, actually favours the players who play the extra game (an extra game fee).

dfan's link to the Wikipedia opened my eyes--I have only ever heard of a play-in game in the context of the annual NCAA (US college) basketball championships.

For as long as I can remember it was an elimination tournament that started with 64 teams. More recently there were changes in the organization of the tournament that required the invitation of another team. Of course, the money associated with participating in the tournament is significant and nobody wanted to give up a spot. Hence the event was expanded to 65 teams (later more) and the round of "First Four" was held to decide who got to play in the main event.

I've been a moderate basketball fan for decades. I can recall watching the 1972 playoffs with my father when the Lakers won.
Here is a brief history of the NBA play-in tournament, warts and all.

The NBA adopted the play-in as one of several tools in an attempt to preserve the 2019-2020 season at the height of the COVID panic. ( I use the word 'panic' in the most repectful sense possible: nobody really knew how dangrous it was, but we knew that it had killed thousands and was spreading fast. Panic was not an unreasonable response. )

The primary tool to beat the virus was the 'bubble', a cluster of hotels and other buildings - including basketball courts - at Walt Disney World in Florida. The idea was to have a massive isolated community who would be tested regularly and who would have no contact with the outside world. All of the playoff teams, along with their coaches and trainers would be there, as would the refs, security guards, barbers, etc. The playofs would be held there and isolated from the virus.

Once the logistical questions were resolved ( err...more or less ) the primary question was which teams should get to play. The usual NBA playoffs had been 16 teams, the top eight from each conference. They were arranged in a standard single-elimination bracket. So 16 teams had invitations to the bubble, to play a tournament in the usual manner.

BUT, some other teams had complaints that this was not fair. The usual NBA season was 82 games, but the NBA suspended the season in March 2020, at a point when teams had played between 63 and 67 games. Several teams still were close to being in the playoffs - maybe just one or two games behind - and had 15 to 19 games to make up that difference.
This was arguably a legitimate complaint, and the NBA did not want to lose fans, so they decided to give those marginal teams a chance to beat the lowest ranking of the top 16 teams.

Thus, the play-in tournament was added. Six marginal teams were invited to prove that they really should have been in the top 16 teams if the season had ended normally.

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The story might have ended there, but the NBA had a structural problem that was, in the long run, almost as detrimental to the sport as a virus. It was deliberately losing, AKA 'tanking'.

The NBA uses a draft to distribute incoming players in a more-or-less equitable manner. The team with the worst record in the previous year gets to chose first, the team with the second worst record chooses second, etc. So losing in one season can lead to the aquisition of a young, talented player with winning results over the next decade or so.

Tanking has been happening in the NBA for many years, and most managers had the sense to do it discreetly. There was a very quiet gentleman's agreement that a team manager would do it for one year, take his top draft pick, and then go back to trying to win.

But then, in 2013, the manager of the Philadelphia 76ers, with the wonderfully appropriate name of Sam Hinkie, threw discretion out the window. He openly tanked, even boasting that he had a process for doing so. This became known, in NBA circles, as 'the process'.

Hinkie traded away his veterans for future draft picks. Shorn of these players, the 76ers lost, and the value of their native draft picks went up.
The 76ers then started drafting some young and talented players. This should have caused them to start winning a few more games.
But Hinkie had timed his tanking perfectly. In 2014, they drafted a big and very talented player, Joel Embiid. Embiid was clearly the best player in the draft, but severe injuries that he had suffered meant that he could not contribute much for a year.
So Hinkie kept Embiid on the bench for a year to let him heal, and then another year just to be sure. The 76ers continued to lose and thereby gathered more early draft picks.

The process was seen by most fans as a form of cheating, and the league started taking a lot of flak for it. There was even a web site ( called Tankathon dot com ) which kept track of who was tanking and how much they were benefiting from it.

The league management finally stepped in and pressured the 76ers' owners to fire Hinkie. They did fire him, and he left with a record of 47-199 and a reputation for single-handedly almost ruining the game of professional basketball.

The resulting 76ers have been a stronger than average team over the subsequent years. If it were not for some foolish use of their accumulated picks - particularly one remarkable bust named Jahlil Okafor - the 76ers might have become a league-distorting powerhouse.

In short, Sam Hinkie demonstrated that multi-season tanking worked. The NBA had to do something to prevent other teams from imitating him.

So to prevent tanking too early in the season, the league wanted to give teams an extra opportunity to make the playoffs. The decided to keep the play-in tournament, so even teams that were losing late in the season still had a chance of making the playoffs.

( FWIW, the league management also made other changes to prevent tanking, most notably a lottery among drafting teams, so that the worst record no longer guaranteed the top pick in the subsequent year )

The addition of the play-in not only inhibited tanking, but is brought in additional TV revenue. So it is probably a permanent feature of the NBA.

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I could imagine a number of situations where a tournament might with to expand their pool without adding an entirely new round. The first one that comes to mind is if a sponsor wants to add a few spots for players who might garner some special interest without taking away positions from those who earned a place in the tournament by more traditional means. I know some tournaments already have spots for sponsored exceptions; this would be a way to add this to a tournament that hasn't already had that or add a few extra spots to those who had.

Likewise, there may be a tournament that has a desire to see that certain populations (young people, Western players, etc.) are always represented, and this is a way to make sure that someone from that group has a chance to make it in the main draw.

And perhaps there may be a tournament that just wants to have a few extra games, but doesn't want to double the pool to make sure there are an even number of players.