54th Honinbo title

Preliminary finals

We give the finals of the Last preliminary tournament.

date	black	white	result	#mv	sgf
1998-06-18	Ishida Akira	Yoda Norimoto	B+2.5	221	sgf
1998-07-16	Yamada Kimio	Ishida Yoshio	B+R	147	sgf
1998-08-13	Otake Hideo	Cho Sonjin	W+R	196	sgf
1998-08-20	Yamashiro Hiroshi	Ryu Shikun	W+2.5	245	sgf

League

In the first column the white player, on the top row the black player.

#	player	result	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
1.	O Rissei	4-3		W+R		W+R		W+R		B+R
2.	O Meien	1-6			B+R		B+R		B+R
3.	Hikosaka Naoto	5-2	B+R			W+R		W+0.5		B+R
4.	Kobayashi Satoru	1-6		W+4.5			B+R		B+4.5
5.	Yamada Kimio	4-3	W+R		B+R			B+R		B+R
6.	Ishida Akira	4-3		W+5.5		W+R			B+R
7.	Cho Sonjin	5-2	W+2.5		B+R		B+3.5			W+1.5
8.	Ryu Shikun	4-3		B+4.5		W+R		B+4.5

Demotion Playoff

The bottom four players are demoted: O Meien and Kobayashi Satoru and two more. Three players with 4 wins played a demotion playoff. Ishida Akira and Ryu Shikun lost.

date	black	white	result	#mv	sgf
1999-04-05	Ishida Akira	Ryu Shikun	W+R	180	sgf
1999-04-08	Yamada Kimio	Ryu Shikun	B+R	219	sgf

Challenger Playoff

Both Hikosaka Naoto and Cho Sonjin had 5 wins. They played a challenger playoff won by Cho Sonjin.

date	black	white	result	#mv	sgf
1999-04-05	Cho Sonjin	Hikosaka Naoto	B+R	219	sgf

54th Honinbo Title

date	black	white	result	#mv	sgf
1999-05-12,13	Cho Chikun	Cho Sonjin	B+6.5	239	sgf
1999-05-24,25	Cho Sonjin	Cho Chikun	B+R	203	sgf
1999-05-31,06-01	Cho Chikun	Cho Sonjin	B+7.5	231	sgf
1999-06-10,11	Cho Sonjin	Cho Chikun	B+0.5	284	sgf
1999-06-22,23	Cho Chikun	Cho Sonjin	W+2.5	254	sgf
1999-07-05,06	Cho Sonjin	Cho Chikun	B+R	163	sgf

Cho Sonjin won 4-2.