was a professional Go

player Player may refer to: Role or adjective * Player (game), a participant in a game or sport ** Gamer, a player in video and tabletop games ** Athlete, a player in sports ** Player character, a character in a video game or role playing game who ...

Biography

Ohira was born in Gifu, Japan. Taken under the wing of the prolific

Kitani Minoru was one of the most celebrated professional Go players and teachers of the game of Go in the twentieth century in Japan. Biography He earned the nickname "the Prodigy" after winning a knockout tournament. He defeated eight opponents from the ...

in 1941, Ohira quickly rose in rank. By 1947, he had obtained professional 1 dan, being promoted to 2 dan in the same year. By 1955 he was 6 dan, and by 1963 he reached the peak of 9 dan. His first big break came in 1966 when he won the Nihon Ki-in Championship, and defended it for 3 years. Along with

Takagawa Kaku , also known as , was one of the most successful professional Go players of the twentieth century. Biography Kaku Takagawa won the Honinbō title nine times in a row, from 1952 to 1960, and was subsequently awarded the permanent title of H ...

Sakata Eio was a 9-dan Japanese professional Go player. Biography Sakata became a professional Go player in 1935. His first title match was the Hon'inbō in 1951 when he challenged Hashimoto Utaro. More than usual was at stake in the match because Has ...

, and

Ishida Yoshio is a professional Go player and author of several books on Go. Biography By the time he was 8, Ishida started learning Go. He was a student at the legendary Kitani Minoru go school. Famous along with his fellow students Cho Chikun, Kobayas ...

, Ohira was the only player to win this title. In 1977, he won his first major title by winning the

Hayago Championship The was a Japanese Go competition. Outline The Hayago Championship was a hayago tournament, where each player had to make moves within 10 seconds. The tournament was sponsored by TV Tokyo JOTX-DTV (channel 7), branded as and known coll ...

. Ten years later her set a new record of successive wins, with 17. During his time, he was an active player in the

Meijin is one of the eight titles in Japanese professional shogi, and is the most prestigious title, along with Ryūō. The word ''meijin'' (名 ''mei'' "excellent, artful", 人 ''jin'' "person") refers to a highly skilled master of a certain field ( ...

and

Honinbo In the history of Go in Japan, the four Go houses were four major schools of Go instituted, supported, and controlled by the state, at the beginning of the Tokugawa shogunate. (There were also many minor houses.) At roughly the same time shogi w ...

leagues. He lived in

Yokohama is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of T ...

, Japan before he died.

Titles & runners-up

Bibliography

External links

Nihon Ki-in profile
(in Japanese) 1930 births 1998 deaths Japanese Go players Go (game) writers {{Japan-Go-bio-stub