No, it wasn't Madam Butterfly when they announced the Cho-Cho match - it was the Kyoto final of the 7th Agon-Kiriyama Cup and Cho Sonjin 9-dan against Cho Chikun 9-dan on 8 October 2000. Sonjin won and set up a further match with the Chinese Agon winner, who will be either Shao Weigang or Zhou Heyang.
It would have been perhaps too much luck for Chikun to win after his superlucky win against O Rissei in Round 1, and indeed it was a decisive loss in just 161 moves.
Earlier results not so far reported:
Round 1
Cho Sonjin 9d 1-0 Rin Kaiho 9d
Quarter-finals(27 and 31 July)
Cho Chikun 1-0 Tono Kono 1-0 Cho Riyu Oya 1-0 Sugiuchi Cho Sonjin 1-0 Kiyonari
Semi-finals(11 and 18 September)
Cho Chikun 1-0 Kono Cho Sonjin 1-0 Oya
PS Chocho is Japanese for butterfly.
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Older News From 23 July 2000: LUCKY CHO WINS BATTLE OF TITLE HOLDERS
When the Kisei and Meijin meet you might reasonably assume they know the basics of go, but in Round 1 of the 7th Agon-Kiriyama Cup, it was a red-faced Kisei, O Rissei, who threw the game against Cho Chikun away at the very end by trying what we amateurs would call a rip-off, only to end up by, in effect, passing and losing by a half-point ko.
O's discomfiture was magnified in the press room afterwards, because both players came in to give their analysis of the game, and with two such high calibre players there was a massive turnout.
It was a blow for O, too, in that this was an opportunity to get a psychological edge on Cho for their possible coming Oza title encounter in the autumn (Cho has one of the challenge final places already).
Here is the position in which O (Black) boobed. White tenukied at 8 and won the final ko in the lower right to take the game by half a point. (White 6 connects)
Holder Kobayashi Koichi 9-dan also crashed out in Round 1 to Sugiuchi Masao 9-dan.
Other first round results so far: Tono Hiroaki 9-dan 1-0 Nakaonoda Tomomi; Cho Riyu 4-dan 1-0 Honda Kunihisa 9-dan; Oya Koichi 8-dan 1-0 Kurahashi Masayuki 9-dan; Kono Rin 5-dan 1-0 Sakai Masaki 7-dan; Kiyonari Tetsuya 9-dan 1-0 Yamada Takuji 5-dan.
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)
