Recent Hollywood hits notwithstanding, only Scots really understood what it felt like to be scourged by Edward, Hammer of the Scots. But maybe Chinese go players feel a little of the same oppression whenever they see the name of Kobayashi Koichi 9-dan of Japan. He's not quite the bogeyman of the early days of China-Japan encounters, when he was invincible and the Chinese joy at achieving their goal of beating Japanese 9-dans turned sour: there are 9-dans and 9-dans.

Now he has come back to hammer them by taking from them the Tengen/Tianyuan title the Chinese have held for the past eight years. Kobayashi failed in this mission in 1999, but at least he then put an end to a string of 16 consecutive Chinese victories in the individual games. Now he has gone one better. Indeed - feature that will please Japanese fans - he is the first native Japanese to win this match in 13 years.

Playing against Chang Hao 9-dan in Sapporo from 10 to 13 May 2000, he won the first game, lost the second but won the third - victory to Black in each case.

Here are the three games in sgf format. Click to download. Game 1 featured a novelty in the Large Avalanche joseki.

• Game 1
• Game 2
• Game 3

The match is sponsored by the newspapers Chunichi Shinbun (Japan) and Xinmin Wanbao (China), with support from Fujitsu and the respective professional go associations. I have no information on the winner's prize.

The two participants are the champions of Japan and China in a tournament whose title bears the same characters but is read differently in the two languages. It is sometimes called the Japan-China Tengen, but to avoid injuring national pride we will call it by the names of the title in each language, giving priority to the Japanese Tengen as it is the older tournament. Note that there is a similar China-Korea match (Tianyuan/Chunweon).

The match is a best-of-three, games played at intervals of one or two days.

The games are held alternately in the respective countries, the odd-numbered terms being held in Japan. Time limits are 3 hours each with 1 minute overtime. Komi is 5.5 in Japan, 2.75 in China. The games in Japan are held in regions covered by the Chunichi newspaper group. The Chinese Xinmin Wanbao is based in Shanghai.

Tianyuan is borrowed from the Japanese word Tengen (origin of Heaven) which, in its go sense of centre of the board, is attributed to the Imperial astronomer Shibukawa Shunkai (1639-1715; he was 7-dan in go).

TENGEN/TIANYUAN MATCH FINALISTS