Life In 19x19

Something odd is going on in Japan's TV tournament, the Ryusei-sen. The tournament is structured in two parts. The first consists of eight 'blocks', each a 12-player, win-and-continue league. Two people from each block move up to form a 16-player knockout final, the final winner and the player with the most successive wins. The blocks are formed in such a way that the most junior players normally start at the bottom with their more senior colleagues above them. The top of each block consists of those who did well the previous year.

A glance at the current state of the eight blocks (see below - Thanks to Mr. Kin!) shows us that after nearly five rounds, the original winner in five of the blocks is still going strong. For example, in Block A Fujita Akihiro, 22-year old 4p, started by beating amateur Hon Soggi (winner of the amateur Ryusei-sen) then plowing through Tamai Shin 3p, Murakawa Saisuke 7p (winner of last year's Agon Cup and loser to Yamashita in the playoff to decide the Kisei challenger), Mitani Testuya 7p, and most recently So Yokoku 8p.

Fujita is actually the odd man out however. Of the five streaking winners, he is the only one over 20 years of age. The others are Kyo Kagen* 1p (who was 16 in December), Yu Zhengqi 7p (our 18-year old member of the Honinbo league), Yo Chito* 1p (who was 16 two weeks ago on January 31), and Son Makoto* (who will be 18 next Friday). Collectively they have downed 4 8p's, 7 7p's, 3 6p's, and various lesser lights. On Wednesday we will see if Son Makoto can make it 5 for 5 in Block H before everyone starts looking for that sixth win. Technically, it is still possible that they would not qualify for the final knockout tournament. If they lost their sixth game and the victor there went on to also win five in a row before losing the final game in the block, the later 5-game winner would qualify for the final. In the Ryusei-sen all ties are broken based on later over earlier in the block. But practically speaking we will be seeing a lot of new faces in the final this year. Good news for the future of Japanese Go.

*Kyo Kagen (Hsu Chia Yuan)
Yo Chito (Yao Zhi Teng)
Son Makoto (Sun Zhe)

It is also interesting to see that Japan is now so heavily relying on Taiwan to supply these new talents. A quick glance shows 14 players from Taiwan in those game tables including those more established ones.

BTW, can we agree a consistent way to spell these Taiwanese players' names? I notice that the official Nihon Kiin website starts using pinyin to refer to these young players, such as Yao Zhi Teng, Sun Zhe and Hsu Chia Yuan (the first two being Chinese mainland pinyin and the last the Taiwanese equivalent).

macelee wrote:It is also interesting to see that Japan is now so heavily relying on Taiwan to supply these new talents. A quick glance shows 14 players from Taiwan in those game tables including those more established ones.

BTW, can we agree a consistent way to spell these Taiwanese players' names? I notice that the official Nihon Kiin website starts using pinyin to refer to these young players, such as Yao Zhi Teng, Sun Zhe and Hsu Chia Yuan (the first two being Chinese mainland pinyin and the last the Taiwanese equivalent).

Traditionally in Japan the names of players from Taiwan, China, or Korea in the Japanese professional associations have been pronounced using Japanese readings of the characters of the names (e.g. Rin Kaiho, Cho Chikun, O Rissei). I don't know anything about pinyin but it is interesting to look at the katakana versions of the names. For 許　家元 (Hsu Chia Yuan) the katakana "Japanese" pronunciation would be "Kyo Kagen" and the katakana pronunciation listed under the pinyin is more like "Shu Ja Yuen", which is presumably an approximation to the Taiwanese pronunciation.

Since the OP, things have continued nearly as anticipated. Although Son Makoto in Block H lost immediately, the other four players all collected six wins in a row and qualified for the finals (see the bottom of the chart below). Last evening I watched Michael Redmond finally put a stop to Fujita's run in an interesting game. It remains to be seen whether any of the remaining three can duplicate Kono Rin's 2003 feat of winning all eleven block games. If they do, only one person from that block will qualify for the final. In 2003 they filled up the final table by taking the person with the most wins that otherwise had not qualified in another block.

While I am happy to hear there is a strong up and coming Japanese contingent, the ever present skeptic in me must wonder - what are the relative time commitments to other events for each player? If you are a young pro, the t.v.tournament might be the most important thing on your plate. On the other hand I see Iyama Yuta's name at the top of one of those tables, I think he might have other things on his mind!

Mef wrote:While I am happy to hear there is a strong up and coming Japanese contingent, the ever present skeptic in me must wonder - what are the relative time commitments to other events for each player? If you are a young pro, the t.v.tournament might be the most important thing on your plate. On the other hand I see Iyama Yuta's name at the top of one of those tables, I think he might have other things on his mind!

Certainly a question for Iyama. However, much less so for virtually everyone else in the tournament. Even for Iyama note that as the last person in the block he only has to win six games to earn the 6 million yen first prize. Compare this to the Judan where as a seed into the challenger tournament he has to win four games to challenge and then 3 out of 5 to take the title match (and so will play from 7 to 9 games), which will only pay him 7.5 million yen.

I remember a conversation with Han Zenki 8p a couple of years ago where he was lamenting that he had done well in the Ryusei. The trouble is that put him high in the block the following year and hence unable to get many games in the win-and-continue format. He said that the best position was low in the block with the chance to rack up as many wins as possible before facing the tougher competition in the final tournament. Apparently the game fees for the Ryusei are not so bad. In any case this year Han sensei immediately bit the dust against Uchida Shuhei in block C so no joy there!