The first game was very very close. Nakajima, White, took lots of discs. Both players made mistakes in a very complicated endgame and in the end Shaman won.

In the second game, Nakajima was Black. He bravely took a 5, and then played incredibly well to never give Shaman a chance of winning. It kept looking as if Nakajima might have to open up the game, but he never did - a masterful demonstration of how to run the opponent out of moves.

Here is the transcript of the third and final game:

This game had the same opening as the third game of the Aoki-Shaman semi-final. Nakajima got a better position than Aoki had done. Shaman was forced to take a 5 on the East edge at move 24, and then had to break through Nakajima's wall. It looked as if Nakajima was going to win.

Moves 29-44 were a long more-or-less forced sequence ending with White having to play through Black's wall near the South edge. All White's moves in this area were going to be very loud (i.e. they were going to flip quite a few external discs), but they might at the same time extract some key black discs.

After Shaman made this breakthrough on move 44, the game would have been drawn with perfect play. This would have given the title to Nakajima, as he had more discs from the first two games. However, the endgame was very hard for Black to play accurately. Nakajima chose a line that looked like a Black win, but right at end there was an access problem, due to Black's loud move 44.

The problem becomes obvious after move 54, when Black is forced to play 55 since he has no access at the top right and no way to get play two of the three moves in the bottom left. If Nakajima had seen in advance the problem with the sequence he played, he might have found the draw. But it was difficult to find, and he did not have much time.

The final scores:

So Shaman becomes the first non-Japanese to win the title twice. There is still only one champion who won more than two titles - Tamenori Hideshi. He was the winner on five occasions, the last time in 1995 against Shaman in the final. His record will take some beating!