is 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 is ...

. Yamashita adopted the name Honinbo Dowa after winning his first

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 ...

title in 2010.

Biography

A student of

Yasuro Kikuchi was a Japanese amateur Go player. Biography Kikuchi founded the prestigious ''Ryokusei Academy'' in 1975, which has become one of the most prolific Go schools in Japan. Some of the most famous players to come out of the academy include Kikuyo A ...

, Yamashita turned professional in 1993. He won the 19th Kisei 2 dan division in 1994. Yamashita reached the challenger finals of the Tengen in 1999. His first major title came in 2000 when he defeated Honorary Gosei

Koichi Kobayashi is a Japanese Go player. He is one of the 'Six Supers' who championed Japanese Go in the last three decades of Japanese Go. Biography Koichi Kobayashi was born in Asahikawa, Japan. In 1965, he came to Tokyo to be a disciple of Minoru Kitani. ...

in the finals of the 25th Gosei. At the time of his win, Yamashita was the second youngest player to win a major title. He also won the Shusai Prize for his play and broke the record for most games in a year with 77. Yamashita defeated

O Rissei O, or o, is the fifteenth letter and the fourth vowel letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''o'' (pronounced ), pl ...

for the Kisei in 2003, becoming the fourth youngest big-three (Kisei,

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 (t ...

) winner at 24.

Promotion record

Career record

*1993: 21–7 *1999: 55–12 *2000: 58–17 *2001: 50–19 *2004: 39–32 *2005: 33–20 *2006: 44–24 *2007: 32–25 *2008: 27–24 *2009: 38–17 *2010: 40–23 *2011: 32–20

Titles and runners-up

References

External links

Nihon Ki-in profile
(in Japanese) Japanese Go players People from Asahikawa Sportspeople from Tokyo 1978 births Living people Asian Games medalists in go Go players at the 2010 Asian Games Asian Games bronze medalists for Japan Medalists at the 2010 Asian Games {{Japan-Go-bio-stub