The Honinbo (本因坊) is a

Go competition This is a list of professional Go tournaments, for competitors in the board game of ''Go''. The tradition, initiated by the Honinbo Tournament in Japan, is for an event to be run annually, leading up to a title match and the award of a title f ...

and the oldest Go title in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. Sponsored by ''

Mainichi Shimbun The is one of the major newspapers in Japan, published by In addition to the ''Mainichi Shimbun'', which is printed twice a day in several local editions, Mainichi also operates an English language news website called ''The Mainichi'' (previ ...

'', the Honinbo pays out ¥32 million ($415,000 as of October 2011).

Rules

The holder of the title is challenged by whoever wins the

round robin Round-robin may refer to: Computing * Round-robin DNS, a technique for dealing with redundant Internet Protocol service hosts * Round-robin networks, communications networks made up of radio nodes organized in a mesh topology * Round-robin schedu ...

league. Players can get into the round robin league by going through many preliminary tournaments. Once there is a challenger to compete against the holder, the winner is decided through a best of seven match. The games are played over two days and each player is given eight hours of thinking time. If a player qualifies for the Honinbo league, they are automatically promoted to 7

dan Dan or DAN may refer to: People * Dan (name), including a list of people with the name ** Dan (king), several kings of Denmark * Dan people, an ethnic group located in West Africa **Dan language, a Mande language spoken primarily in Côte d'Ivoi ...

. If that same player wins the league, a promotion to 8 dan is given. If that same player goes on to win the title, they are promoted to 9 dan, the highest rank.

Past winners

References

External links

Honinbo Title

{{Honinbo Go competitions in Japan ja:本因坊#本因坊戦