Chinen Kaori 3-dan retained her title Women's Kisei title by winning the DoCoMo Cup against Kato Keiko, now also 3-dan.
The best-of-three final began in Hiratsuka on 19 January 2001 with Chinen winning the opening encounter. Kato came back in Game 2 at the cable TV studios in Ikebukuro, Tokyo on 26 January, but Chinen finally rebuffed the challenger by taking the decider by 2.5 points, also in Tokyo, on 2 February.
Chinen has been perhaps the most succesful women's title-match player of recent times yet has not risen above 3-dan. In this she resembles Ryu Shikun 7-dan among the men (though he's in a slump at the moment after a 45-12 record in 2000). Chinen, of course, lost her Honinbo title last year, but has now shown she has the strength of character to come back on the rebound.
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Older News From 24 January 2001: KATO KEIKO TO CHALLENGE CHINEN
The challenger in the 4th Women's Kisei for the DoCoMo Cup will be Kato Keiko 2-dan. She will play holder Chinen Kaori 3-dan in a best of three final which began in Hiratsuka on 19 January 2001. Games 2 and 3 will be in Tokyo on 26 January and 2 February, but results are held back pending broadcasting.
Kato reached the title match by beating Konishi Kazuko 6-dan in the challenger's final. The event began in early September 2000.
The full name is the DoCoMo Cup Women's Kisei Tournament. The sponsors are NTT DoCoMo (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation), suppliers of public telephones.
Prize money in Term 1 was 5 million yen for the winner, then was reduced to 3.5 million yen.
The main event is a 16-player straight knockout culminating in a best-of-three final. Games are broadcast weekly on SKY PerfecTV! Channel 320
(a go and shogi channel).
The preliminaries are open to all female pros but are designed to give 11 players from the Nihon Ki-in (9 from Tokyo, 2 from Osaka or Nagoya)
and 2 from the Kansai Ki-in. The other three places are seeded for title holders. In Term 1 the winner of the knockout became the holder after a
best-of-three final. Thereafter the knockout ends in a single game to find a challenger to the holder.
Time limits are 30 seconds a move plus a total of 10 minutes long-thinking time made up of 1-minute units. Komi is 5.5 points.
NTT DoCoMo is the to mobile communications arm of the sponsoring company NTT. DoCoMo is a pun on dokomo = everywhere. The word
Kisei means Go Sage and has traditionally been regarded as a supreme accolade for a go player. It goes back almost 2,000 years to Han times in
China (as Qisheng; Korean: Kiseong). In this case it is an imitation of the main (men's) Kisei tournament.
WOMEN'S KISEI FINALISTS
Year
Term
Winner
Score
Loser
1998
1
Kobayashi Izumi 2d
2-0
Kobayashi Chizu 5d
1999
2
Kobayashi Izumi 2d
2-1
Sugiuchi Kazuko 8d
2000
3
Chinen Kaori 3d
2-0
Kobayashi Izumi 4d
2001
4
Chinen Kaori 3d
2-1
Kato Keiko 3d
FAMOUS MOMENTS
In Term 2, by becoming the challenger Mrs Sugiuchi Kazuko 8-dan became, at 73, the oldest player, male or female, to appear in a title match. Since her opponent, Kobayashi Izumi was just 23, the gap of 50 years between them was also a new record for a title match.
Click here to download an sgf version of Game 2 of that series in which Sugiuchi also became the oldest player to win a game in a title match.
