Life In 19x19

2015

"In Shogi (Japanese Chess), a 14 years old boy, Fujii Sota, became professional in 2016 and since his first pro match he has got 29 consecutive wins, which set out a new record of consecutive wins just two days ago. That is an amazing record. He has still never beaten by anyone since he became a Shogi professional.
*Fujii Sota: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/…/kin-frien ... -shogi-p…/…

In Japanese go world, who holds a record of consecutive wins?

The answer is ''Sakata Eio'' 9p (the 23rd Honinbo).
He achieved "29 consecutive wins" in between Oct.1963 and July 1964.

For your reference, the second best record is 24 consecutive wins which was achieved by Iyama Yuta 9p in 2015, Rin Kaiho 9p in 1977, O Risei 9p in 1976 and Ryu Shikun 9p in 1990."

In Korea, Cho Hunhyun's record is also 29 consecutive wins and matched Shin Jinseo, 29 consecutive wins

That is big record!

Ichiriki Ryo is on 17 game and counting winning streak currently, I wonder if there are other ongoing winning streaks like that.

I think I remember that Lee Chang-ho had very big winning streak in international competitions, I don't remember what it was. I also recall that Go Seigen had huge winning streaks with the black pieces, or streaks of no losses since there might be some jigos.

Kogishi Soji had a 32-game winning streak (1919-20). Sakata's streak is 29. Ishida Yoshio scored 30 consecutive wins in the Oteai.

In Korea, Kim In long held the record of 40 but Yi Ch'ang-ho beat that by one. From memory Yi Se-tol got to 32. I haven't kept tabs on Sin Chin-seo, but in 2020 he broke Yi Ch'ang-ho's 32-year-old annual win-rate record, scoring 76-10 (88.4%).Sakata appears to still have the best annual win-rate record - 93.8% in 1964 (if you think about it, that's not far short of an AlphaGo performance!).

Ida Atsushi did something a little like Fujii Sota in that he won his first 11 or 12 games after qualifying.

I've never seen Chinese figures, but I could imagine that the dominant knockout structure (which has to be imposed because of the size of the country) rather works against winning streaks.

Sakata appears to still have the best annual win-rate record - 93.8% in 1964. If you think about it, that's not far short of an AlphaGo performance! When you factor in the fact at that time he was playing most of his games in title matches against the very best opponents, it's hard not to say he would achieve the highest peak if only we could find a sensible way of measuring such things. But, then, let's not forget that Go Seigen took him down a peg or two, though it took him two attempts. He won the final 10-game match 6-2, but that was in 1954 and arguably Sakata continued to improve thereafter.

Edit: I have just seen some new figures. It seems that Yi Ch'ang-ho's record does not stand for some reason (a jigo in the sequence?), and so the top four streaks in Korean go history are 1. Kim In (40), 2. Yi Se-tol (32), 3. Cho Hun-hyeon (30), Sin Chin-seo (29). Sin is 53-5 for the year so far to 1 June, and is on a streak of 6.