This game was played today.

Ueno Risa will challenge Fujisawa Rina for the female Honinbo title. It's a best of five games match. Fujisawa is strong in this tournament. What will happen?

A lot of buzz around Sumire these days, but more things happen.

Today was the first game of the final match of the Shinjin O. Ueno Asami 5-dan beat Yo Chito 6-dan. It's a best of 3 match, so Asami will have two chances to win the title.

Let's remember that 2 years ago, Asami already played the finals. She lost 2-1, winning the 2nd game, so this year she is already in a better position. This would be the first time a woman wins this title, but not the first time she wins a mixed tournament. She already won the Hiroshima Aluminum Cup. Actually, is the current title holder.

Second game of the Shinjin O, and last.

Ueno Asami 5-dan won the game, very convincingly, with her usual hammer style. Little chance for Yo Chito 6-dan.

The name of the title in "King of the New stars", with "king" coming from "O (王)". According to my limited knowledge of Japanese, usually substantives don't have gender, but some, related to people, have. "Queen" would be "Joo (女王)", adding the kanji of woman (女). By default, kings (monarchs/emperors in general) are men. Big surprise.

Will Asami be called Queen of New Stars? Will the name of the title change?

There is a female Honinbo, a female Kisei, and so on, with female only players, and female only title holders. And there is a Honinbo, and a Kisei, and so on, where all players can play, but so far, only with male title holders. The name of the titles doesn't imply "man". Some day, there will be a female Meijin, and also a female who is Meijin.

What is happening is that Ueno (the younger one!) is giving Fujisawa a run for her money.

The match is 1-2 and chances are that there will be a new title holder soon. But I still think that experience is important and Rina can keep the title.

Well... the female Honingo is over. Fujisawa won the 2 remaining games, and kept the title.

Ueno Risa 2-dan did a lot better than I expected. I probably, better than many other people expected. Rina is stronger than Risa, the gap is still wide. But the match was really close. In the last game, after Rina was way ahead, Risa was close to make a comeback with a ko fight. But the ko didn't turn well for her, and Fujisawa won the game, and the title.

Risa's teacher is Fujisawa Kazunari 8-dan. Rina's father. They probably know each other. And maybe, Ueno Asami gave her some hints too.

It's interesting to see that, according to go4go, their current record is 6-2 for Rina. Sumire's record against Rina is 2-3. But Risa is 0-5 against Sumire. In comparison, Risa does better against Rina than against Sumire.

More Fujisawa-Ueno (Risa).

This time, Risa took revenge and won in the semifinal of the female Kisei. Her next rival will be... Ueno Asami!

If I remember right, it will be the second official game between them. If Asami wins, then it will again the same match as last year. If Risa wins... it would be incredible, youngest title match ever!

I expect Asami to win. Sumire thinks she got weaker (err...) after winning the title last year. Let's see how, one year later, will be her performance.

The final game of the tournament has just finished. Let's see... first, I have to order some potatoes... (will anybody here get the pun?)

Ueno vs. Ueno. And the winner was... Ueno! The younger sister, Ueno Risa.

So, surprise, it will be a title match between Sumire (14 yo) and Risa (17 yo). Youngest ever.

Looking forward to it. Risa has never beaten Sumire in an official game, so the defending title holder has better odds. But to make it there, Risa has had to beat Fujisawa Rina and Ueno Asami. Quite a feat. I'd say that it won't be easy for Sumire.

Fujisawa Rina 6-dan will become tomorrow Fujisawa Rina 7-dan. This promotion comes after being first in prize money in the 6-dan range.
Last year she was promoted to 6-dan for the same reason. Reminder: female only tournaments don't count, so it's the same for all players.

Also, Tsuji Hana becomes 3-dan. Probably, her advancement to the kisei C league helped her a lot.

The female Kisei is over.

Sumire won the first game, quite convincingly. According to JK's analysis, before move 100 it was over. It was not a surprise, at least for me. I thought that Sumire was clearly the favorite. After that game, it was 7-0 for Sumire.

Then, in the second game, Risa won. Perhaps Sumire was nervous, perhaps she thought it was done, or perhaps Risa, seen herself nearly done, could play relaxed. And won, first win ever against Sumire.

And in the third game, it was quite one-sided. Sumire had very little chance, falling behind very soon. Like in the first game, the result was clear before move 100. Although Risa has made serious mistakes before, not this time, and Sumire eventually resigned the game and her title to her fellow classmate, Ueno Risa 2-dan. After all odds, there is a new female Kisei.

A few days ago, Ueno Ayami beat Kono Rin in her first game (2nd for Kono) of the Tengen, main event.

Kono Rin is currently rated #10 in Mamumamu, Asami is #32. Only this makes it a good win. But also, it's Asami's first win in the main event of any of the big 7 tournaments.

Congrats.

Ueno Asami won against a Player ranked next Hsu Chiayuan, and then Xie Erhao ranked between the top four of JapanTaiwan, below Xu Hauhong and ichiriki Ryo but above iyama Yuta and Shibano Toramaru



Apparently 5 years in the making, and the winning teams of each national women's League will compete for in a match to determine the World Women's League Champion ^^

Hoshiai Shiho 3-dan made it to the C league of the Kisei.

Last year, it was Tsuji Hana 2-dan. And although she didn't stay (only Fujisawa Rina has beeen there for a few years), it's nice to see different name appear in the main tournaments, not only the usual names.

With 2025 here, we have some updates in the Army.

Ueno Asami is now 6 dan. She had the 2nd best position in the ranking of money prizes amongst the 5 dan. Her record in 2024 was 52-22 (I don't know if international games are included here).

Also, from the Army, Cho Kosumi and Yanagihara Saki are the new 2 dan, promoted thanks to the money ranking.

But Cho's promotion (first place, Yanagihara was second) sound strange to me. Her record was 12-18, and in her profile, it's all loses since September. Even so, first place...? One wonders, where did she win all that money? How much do you need to win to be first? How did all other 1 dan do? Yanagihara's record was 20-19.

I'm disinclined to actually check this, but I think the likely explanation is that almost all the 1-dans have poor win-loss records, and she may have been the best of a poor crop. The 1-dans who did well will have probably been promoted in the course of 2024, because of numbers of wins or title wins, and they are all automatically excluded from the prize-money promotions (likewise for other dan grades).

For prize money it will matter where the games are won. In her case she won games in qualifiers for Meijin, Oza, Tengen and Honinbo. There are qualifiers C, B and A in that order, and she made it to qualifier B for the first 3 and qualifier A for Honinbo.

One can often looks at the number of games as indication of tournament success. This is because most of the tournaments are knock out tournaments and players are entering a similar number of tournaments and, very importantly, the competition gets much tougher with every round. Now say if someone entered 18 knock out tournaments (which I think wasn't the case here), they are guaranteed 18 loses (unless it goes on over to the next calendar year or something to similar effect happens) and could only have 12 wins if they either won 2/3 of games in the first round or made it through multiple rounds against ever tougher opposition in some of the tournaments. In this scenario it is good for a 1 dan to have 12 - 18 and it would undoubtedly help greatly with the prize money standings if many of the wins happened to be in some of the higher paying tournaments.