Young star Yamada Kimio 7-dan won the Ryusei Cup for the first time on 4 September 1999 - a nice birthday present for himself, though five days early. 

By defeating Morita Michihiro 9-dan in a close match that hinged on a ko fight, he confirmed his position in the top ten of the ranking list for number of games won this year (30-12 record up to 10 September). 

Maybe more impressive than his final victory was knocking out superstar Kobayashi Koichi in Round 1. Except at the rarified level of the seeded titleholders who do not have to work their way through preliminary rounds, the number of games played a year is seen as a sign of success. 

Yamada has a problem of success. He is a member of the Osaka branch of the Nihon Ki-in and so has to travel to Tokyo for most of his games (had be been much older he could have pulled rank and played in Osaka, but he is only 27). 

The strain is telling: two days before the Ryusei final he was in Nagoya playing in the Judan, and after the final he was off to Korea for the Samsung Cup. 

Word is that he is going to rent an apartment in Tokyo. His results could now become even better. 

Yamada's two brothers Wakio and Shiho are also professionals, 7-dan and 6-dan respectively.  

FINAL KNOCKOUT RESULTS 1999 

The results of the last rounds were: 

Quarter-finals:

• Morita 1-0 Kato M. (holder)
• Takao 1-0 Kamimura H.
• Yamada 1-0 Kobayashi Koichi
• Kitano 1-0 Ogaki

Semi-finals:

• Morita 1-0 Takao
• Yamada 1-0 Kitano

The final game in sgf format is available here. To download, right-click and choose to save the link on your machine.

Black 9 is an important new move in match play in the long popular Sideways Chinese opening (1-3-5-7), though Morita has already experimented with it.

The Ryusei is a uniquely organised tournament sponsored by Satellite Culture Japan Inc. It is televised nationally on Sky PerfecTV, and began when cable TV (CATV) was first being laid down in Japan. 

Top prize is 5 million yen. 

Fifteen seeded players and 81 who have won through from preliminary rounds (which any pro can enter) are divided into four ranked blocks (A, B, C, D) of 24 players each. 

The seeds are based on the year's prize money rankings for both the Nihon Ki-in and the Kansai Ki-in. 

Each block is run on a Paramas system (a kind of bubble sort) where the two bottom ranked players start; the winner plays the next higher ranked player; the winner of that does likewise. 

Eventually two players from each block join a final knockout of eight players: the player who has won most games (the higher ranked if there is a tie) and the last player in who won a game. (Terms 5 and 6 were run slightly differently, with blocks of 12 players each.) 

This can cause wide discrepancies in the number of games played. In the 1998 event, for example, Yamashita Keigo 5-dan worked his way up in Block B from near the middle by winning 11 games - a record - whereas Kato Masao, who joined him in the final knockout from the same block, only had to win one game. 

The final is a single game held in September held at the sponsors headquarters in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. Thinking time is 1 minute for up to 10 moves, otherwise 30 seconds a move, in the final and the block tournaments. In the preliminaries it is 1 hour each with 1 minute a move overtime. 

Komi has always been 5.5 points. 

The word Ryusei (Dragon Star) is the name of a star in one of the 28 Chinese traditional zodiacal constellations, but puns partly on the Japanese word for satellite.