2020 statscast for Japan

[John Fairbairn]

Possibly interesting 6.5 komi statistics for 2020 in the Nihon Ki-in's official games.

Black won 1773 games, White won 1754 (Black 50.2%).

This continues a long tend for Black to dominate White since 2002. Black has had the upperhand in 13 out of 18 years, at one point going as high as 52.1% (2008).

However, a notable twist in 2020 is that if we exclude games played in preliminaries, so that we are left with games played by the top players (who may further may be the top by dint of their study of AI games where I gather White appears to have the edge with 7.5 komi), the wins were Black 384 and White 419. This sort of twist has been seen before, mind you, but seems especially large this past year.

Among other statscast news, Ichiriki Ryo scored a notable 80.3 record (53-13), and Seki Kotaro was runner-up with 78.4% (29-8), but Iyama was runner up on number of games won (38). Fujisawa Rina flew the women's flag high in number of wins, finishing 4th with 35-15.

Chotoku Tetsushi 2-dan had the longest winning streak (14).

Despite his stellar 2020, Ichiriki started of 2021 disappointingly, losing the first game of his Ing Cup semi-final with Xie Ke today (10 Jan). Thsi was played on the internet. Ichiriki was ahead according to AI but ran into time trouble and had to try to bail himself out twice by paying 2 points for an extra 20 minutes twice.