On February 13, the final of the 27th Japan Professional Mixed Doubles Tournament was played at the Japan Chess Academy in Tokyo. Yuta Iyama and Ichirio, who are vying for the championship of chess holy war, meet again, and as a result, Ichirio and veteran beautiful chess player Chi nian Kaoru defeat Yuta Iyama/Eiko Niu to win the championship and 3 million yen (about 165,000 yuan) in prize money.
This is the second time that Ichiri-ryo has won the mixed doubles championship after teaming up with Ryō fujisawa in 2019, and the 23-year-old Chi nian Kaoru is also winning the championship for the second time, but her last time goes back to the distant beginning of 1997 (partner Satoshi Yuki), when Ichiritsu was not even born.
The Japan Professional Mixed Doubles Tournament is a fun Go tournament founded by the Japan Doubles Go Association in 1994, which is paired with sixteen well-known male and female professional masters every year, using a 30-second one-step fast chess format for each side to test the tacit understanding of partners. Although China and South Korea have held mixed doubles tournaments for a period of time, they have not reached the length of Japan, and now China and South Korea no longer have this type of competition.
The last time China hosted the Pro Mixed Doubles tournament was the 10th Ricoh Cup in 2015, when Tang Weixing/Yu Zhiying defeated Shi Yue/Wang Chenxing to win the championship.
The last official mixed doubles match in South Korea was the 8th SG Cup in 2018, with Kim Ji-seok/Oh Yoo-jin winning the last title. This tournament has specially invited Chinese and Japanese chess players to participate, and famous players such as Masaki Takemiya, Zhao Zhixun, and Rui Naiwei have all played in the record.
In 1994, when the Japan Professional Mixed Doubles Tournament was first launched, the dark horse combination of Shoji Hashimoto and Kazuko Konishi from the Kansai Chess Academy won the championship, and Shoji Hashimoto was nearly sixty years old, which was a miracle on earth. In the second edition in 1995, it was Koichi Kobayashi / Izumi Kobayashi who won the championship, which greatly enhanced the affinity and influence of the mixed doubles.
The father-daughter cooperation to win the championship gave great comfort to her mother, Reiko Kidani, who was sick at the time.
In the following twenty-five years, Cho Ji-hoon, Naoki Hagen, Kikuyo Aoki, and Xie Yimin won three championships each with different chess players, tied for the most, and all four were the absolute top players in Japan. Today's first person, Yuta Iyama, teamed up with post-70s female chess players Kumiko Yashiro and Keiko Kato to reach the top twice in 2014 and 2018, and although the mixed doubles tournament emphasizes cooperation, it still favors the strong ones.
Yuta Iyama, who won the championship with her big sister (pictured in 2018 with her partner Keiko Kato), did not drive her younger sister in 2022. Recently, Inoyama has been trapped in a tight schedule, except for the chess and sheng qiban battle with Yili Liao, the much-anticipated Nongshim Cup and the mixed doubles final on February 13, even on February 12, he did not have time, as the champion of the throne battle and the student throne to carry out a fixed special match every year, resulting in the two sons losing to Kurita Yoshiki.
At the turn of the century, the mixed doubles tournament followed in the footsteps of other Japanese Go tournaments on the world tour, and the final was scheduled to be held outside of Japan. For example, in 1997, he went to Hawaii, the United States, in 2001, Lin Haifeng reached the final in Taipei, China, and in 2005, he came to Beijing, China. Since its inception in 1994, the previous referees have only invited four people, followed by Kaoru Iwamoto, Hideyuki Fujisawa, Wu Qingyuan, and Hero Otake.
From 2000 to 2004, Wu Qingyuan witnessed five mixed doubles tournaments on the spot, and repeatedly said in his speech that "mixed doubles is the harmony of yin and yang", which is quite in line with his "21st century Go" concept.
In 2005, the 11th Japan Professional Mixed Doubles Tournament was held at the Chang'an Grand Theatre in Beijing, and a special Sino-Japanese friendly match was added to the winners' Tomoho Mimura/Kikuyo Aoki and Nie Weiping/Xu Ying.
When the 26th edition was held from February to March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had already broken out, the organizers cancelled the large-scale commentary session that had been invariable for many years, and the Daisuke Murakawa/Okuda-sai duo won the championship for the first time. The epidemic in Japan in 2021 is severe, and it is impossible to start at the beginning of the year as in previous years, and it has been postponed several times until November 23, and the final has waited until 2022 to arrive, and finally Selected February 13 as the final day.
Sixteen pairs of chess players sat side by side, waiting for the game to begin.
In the three-round match on November 23, 2021, Kaoru Defeated Takao Seiru/ Narumi Osawa, Naoki Hane/ Aimi Ueno, Shinji Suzuki/ Saeka Iwata, Yuta Iyama/ Eiko Ueko won consecutive victories over Daiki Seto/Eimi Koyama, Keigo Yamashita/Mika Yoshida, and Kogamoto/Emin Hsieh, all of which made it to the final.
Group photo of the four players after three consecutive victories.
The final is a standard mixed doubles game, due to different chess styles and different strengths, it is difficult to stabilize the output like a single-player game, it is easy to form a battle scene, and the winning rate fluctuates for a long time. The Iyama/Niu combination had several chances to reach a 90% or more win-win advantage, but failed to stabilize until it was too strong to be contained.
For the first time since becoming chief judge in 2005, Otake stands by the board as a retired chess player from beginning to end.
The result of the final was a 255-hand victory in the hands of Ichiri Liao/Chi Nian Kaoru.
It was originally planned that Yoshio Ishida and Yukari Umezawa would jointly explain the final, but Umezawa was diagnosed with new coronary pneumonia on February 6 and replaced by Hoshi shiho. Yukari Umezawa said on social networking sites that she had a high fever of 39 degrees 3 on February 4, but on February 10, she turned negative and is currently recuperating at home.
In addition to holding professional mixed doubles tournaments every year, the Japan Doubles Association has also organized domestic mixed doubles events in Japan for thirty years and upgraded them to international amateur mixed doubles tournaments, and at the end of each year before the epidemic, amateur chess players from all continents will gather in Tokyo to match men and women. Since 2016, the Japan Doubles Go Association has organized a higher-standard World Professional Mixed Doubles Tournament, with top players such as Ke Jie/Yu Zhiying, Park Tinghuan/Choi Jing all winning the cup. In late March 2022, the Japan Double Go Association will also sponsor a commemorative network between China and Japan, and a number of star chess players will appear together.