Though we are still a long from the really meaty part of the 8th Agon-Kiriyama Cup, the early, preliminary rounds of this unique event do have their point of interest: namely the games between pros and amateurs.
The A-K Cup is the only event to allow open entry to amateurs, although the games are regulated in that in Round 1 the amateurs play pros, not each other, effectively giving the sponsors an extra event - a Pro-Am match.
The pro contingent comprised a large number of women, but there were players as high as 4-dan there.
Round 1, on 5 March 2001 at the Nihon Ki-in, saw 17 games played and the pros lost just four games, including one default. Regrettably, those losses included a loss on time by Hans Pietsch 4-dan from Germany. The other two pros to lose over the board were Kono Yukio 4-dan and Fu Kobai 1-dan, who is actually in Japan to study economics (in China she is Fu Hongmei).
In Round 2, three of the four victorious amateurs repeated their achievements, and they were joined by one of the amateurs seeds (there are two more) who came in and beat Mannami Kana 1-dan. The other losing pros were new Women's Saikyo champion Kato Tomoko, Osawa Narumi 2-dan and Kin En 2-dan.
The overall "match" score was thus 14-8 to the pros.
The Agon-Kiriyama Cup is the 1999 successor to the ACOM Cup which ran for the first five terms as the usual name of an event more properly called the All-Japan Quickplay Open Tournament. As there used to be an IBM Quickplay Open, and there still is another Quickplay Tournament, the chances of confusion were rife, and ACOM Cup was a handy way to distinguish. We can still use Agon-Kiriyama Cup, but note that the series is still being numbered in the original way, so the first event under the Agon banner is Term 6.
The event is a uniquely organised tournament. Its most distinctive aspect is that amateurs can play. Initially they made little impression, and despite some improvement have still to get beyond the first couple of hurdles. But this tournament did produce one notable result in 1998 when Sakai Hideyuki became the first amateur to defeat a pro 9-dan (Ishii Kunio) in an even-game tournament.
Top prize is 5 million yen. Second prize is 2 million yen.
An ever increasing number of amateurs (initially 12, currently 20 including the top 8 from the Mainichi's Amateur Honinbo tournament, the first two from the Women's Amateur Honinbo and the first two from the Students' Honinbo) join pros of 4-dan and below in a series of three preliminaries. The first is organised as a pro-am match, each amateur playing a pro. The top players after second and third preliminaries join the seeds (title holders) in a final knockout of 16 players.
The final is a single game held in October, usually held at a hotel in Tokyo where a live commentary is given to the public. Thinking time is 1.5 hours each in the final and semi-finals, 2 hours elsewhere in the main knockout, and 1 hour in the preliminaries. Komi has always been 5.5 points.
The original sponsors were ACOM, a consumer credit organisation, and the Mainichi Shinbun newspaper. NHK and the newspaper Kyoto Shinbun have added their support but the main change is that ACOM has been replaced by the Buddhist organisation Agon, based in Kyoto, which has sponsored many other cultural activities, including the Pacific Rim Book Prize. It has also established Chairs for Pacific Rim studies at universities in China and the USA.
The go tournament has a counterpart in China, and the winners of the Japanese and Chinese events will play each other in a match. The cup (like the book prize) is named in memory of the Reverend Kiriyama Seiyu and bears the inscription "Unmoved by the Eights Winds." The eight winds in Buddhist lore refer to the eight emotions that disturb men's hearts and minds.
Though it is unusual for a religious organisation to be so involved in sponsoring go, the links with Buddhism and go are old and strong. The first go master, Honinbo Sansa, patronised by the Tokugawa Shoguns was a monk and his name came from the name of his temple lodge.
The go schools then founded were all required thereafter to observe at least the outward appearance of the Buddhist priesthood. There have been several go players (e.g. Handa Dogen, Suzuki Sen) who have been Buddhist lay priests.
Agon is the Japanese form of the Sanskrit Agama, referring to teachings of the Smaller Vehicle doctrine.
ALL JAPAN QUICKPLAY OPEN TOURNAMENT FINALISTS
(Terms 1 to 5: ACOM Cup; thereafter Agon-Kiriyama Cup)
