original title：趙治勲 私の履歴書（20）頂上決戦
Original article: The Nikkei
Author: Cho Chikun, Honorary Meijin
Koichi Kobayashi, my lifelong rival, is completely different from me. He is unbelievably honest, while I tend to be sarcastic and laid-back. Our playing styles also form a stark contrast—he is the optimist, while I am the pessimist. Even with the same opening, Koichi Kobayashi always feels that he has the advantage, whereas I always feel that I am at a disadvantage.
In 1989, I reclaimed the Honinbo title, and my first defense match the following year was against Koichi Kobayashi. Eight years earlier, we had faced each other on the same stage, and I successfully defended my title then, while also holding the "Meijin-Honinbo" titles, which gave me the upper hand.
However, this time the situation was entirely different. At the end of the previous year, I had lost the Tengen title to Rin Kaiho, and just before the Honinbo best-of-seven series, I lost the Judan title to Masaki Takemiya, leaving me with only the Honinbo title. In contrast, Koichi Kobayashi held the Kisei, Meijin, and Gosei titles, clearly giving him the momentum.
More importantly, Koichi Kobayashi had a strong personal reason to win the Honinbo title. He had married Reiko, the daughter of our mentor, Kitani Minoru.
Kitani Minoru had a special attachment to the Honinbo title, and as his son-in-law, Koichi Kobayashi must have strongly wanted to fulfill this wish for him. Although I was also a disciple of Kitani, I considered myself a somewhat disreputable one, so my feelings were entirely different.
Moreover, Koichi Kobayashi had the opportunity to achieve the "Dai-Sankan" (the Grand Slam of holding the top 3 titles). Before him, I was the only person to have simultaneously held the Kisei, Meijin, and Honinbo titles, so this was an opportunity he could not overlook.
In the best-of-seven series that began in May 1990, I won the first game but then lost the next three, putting me in a precarious position. However, a victory in the fifth game changed the momentum, and I went on to win the sixth and seventh games, successfully defending my title.
The following year, Koichi Kobayashi was once again the challenger. This time, I lost the first two games but then won four consecutive games from the third game onwards, defending my title once again.
In 1992, Koichi Kobayashi once again won the league and became the challenger. This marked the third round of our titleholder showdown.
This time, I lost the first three games. Koichi Kobayashi might have thought, "This time, it's finally mine." But the match's outcome remained uncertain until the end. Starting from the fourth game, I won four consecutive games, successfully defending my title for the third consecutive year. This was the third time I achieved the remarkable feat of winning four consecutive games after losing the first three.
For Koichi Kobayashi, he had seven opportunities—just one more game would have made him the Honinbo and allowed him to achieve the Triple Crown. These seven opportunities included three games in the first best-of-seven series and four games in the third series. Yet, in these evenly matched battles, I won every time, which seems statistically improbable and can only be described as miraculous.
Some have speculated that Koichi Kobayashi, being born in Hokkaido, struggled to cope with the heat during the rainy season or that he was overly concerned with achieving the Triple Crown. However, I believe it was a whim of fate or the Goddess of Victory.
If the respect I gained for Koichi Kobayashi after the Kisei match following the accident brought me luck, that might be true. If I had only been thinking, "I must not lose to him," the Goddess of Victory might not have smiled upon me.
As a side note, up until now, our overall record stands at 67 wins and 63 losses in my favor. Our 130 matches set the record for the most matches between the same pair of players. In the seven major title matches, we faced each other 10 times, with me winning 8 of those. Of these, I won all four encounters in the Honinbo title matches, which is particularly important to me.
Reading Cho Chikun series makes me eager to come back to those classic games and review them even though they were played way before AI.