Life In 19x19

Seiza on thick cushions:Cross legged:

2nd Judan game today against Murukawa, who seems to be doing better in a game with large scale, but not so tactically complex, fighting.

Update: Iyama won: Murakawa's reduction that became an invasion only lived in ko instead of cleanly, and he didn't have enough threats.

Iyama won the 3rd Judan game today against Murakawa by 4.5 points, so defends his Judan title 3-0.

Uberdude wrote:the young players like Ichiriki, Murakawa (actually only 1 year younger), Yo Seiki etc aren't taking games off him and he seems to be pulling ever further ahead of them. Some hope in Shibano. Maybe just need to wait a few years, it took Iyama some time to overcome Cho U.

Iyama is stronger than Cho U was, the competitors are less promising than Iyama was. Predictions are hard, especially about the future, but it really feels like you can bet on several years, if not as many as five any Japanese player draws even with Iyama.

Iyama begins his Honinbo title defence today, this time against Yamashita.

Update: Yamashita won by half a point.

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.

Uberdude wrote: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.

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.