Kisei tournament setup

The Kisei tournament goes in four stages. (See below for later changes.)

Stage 1

Stage 1 consists of knockout tournaments for each dan rank. This yields nine winners (for 1-dan, ..., 9-dan).

Stage 2

Stage 2 is an all-dan knockout tournament. Participants are the winners in Stage 1 of the 1-dan, ..., 6-dan parts, the top two of the 7-dan and 8-dan parts, and the top four of the 9-dan part, 14 players in all. The playing scheme is fixed:

Round 1 - 1-dan winner against 2-dan winner
Round 2 - winner of Round 1 against 3-dan winner
Round 3 - winner of Round 2 against 4-dan winner
Round 4 - winner of Round 3 against 5-dan winner
Round 5 - winner of Round 4 against 6-dan winner
Round 6 - winner of Round 5 against 7-dan #2,
Quarter finals -
A: 7-dan #1 against 9-dan #3,
B: 8-dan #2 against 9-dan #1,
C: winner of Round 6 against 9-dan #2,
D: 8-dan #1 against 9-dan #4
Semi-finals - winner of A against winner of B, winner of C against winner of D
Final - Now two players are left, and a best-of-three match yields a winner ("strongest player") for Stage 2.

Stage 3

Stage 3 determines the title challenger. Assured of a place are the current title holders of the Meijin, Honinbo, Judan and Tengen titles, the loser of the previous Kisei title match, the winner of Stage 2, and three further players, recommended by a committee.

Stage 4

Stage 4 is the best-of-seven title match between the previous title holder and the winner of Stage 3, to determine the new Kisei title holder.

Changes

7th Kisei

Starting from the 7th Kisei, the top 2 from the 9-dan section are seeded directly in Stage 3. In Stage 2 their places are now taken by the loser of previous year's Stage 3 and number 5 in the 9-dan section.

10th Kisei

Starting from the 10th Kisei, Stages 2 and 3 are combined. The resulting scheme is: Stage 1: Per-dan sections. Stage 2: All-dan knockout tournament to determine the title challenger. This still starts with the "ladder" between the low-dan winners. Stage 3: The best-of-seven title match.

19th Kisei

Starting from the 19th Kisei, the "ladder" between the low-dan winners from the earlier setup has become an ordinary 7-game knockout tournament (between the winners of the 1-dan up to 6-dan sections, and the runners-up of the 7-dan and 8-dan sections).

25th Kisei

Starting from the 25th Kisei, the Challenger Tournament from the earlier setup has been replaced by two 6-player Leagues, followed by a Playoff, to determine the Challenger.

40th Kisei

Starting from the 40th Kisei, the earlier Challenger Tournament has been replaced by a complicated construction. There is a "C League" (not actually a league) with 32 players, and B1, B2, and A Leagues, each with 8 players, and an S League with 6 players. The winners of the B1, B2, C, A Leagues, the runner-up in the S League, and the winner of the S League then play a ladder (in this order), where the final ladder stage consists of 1 or 2 games. The winner of the ladder challenges the title holder.

Tournament details

Komi

From 1st to 27th Kisei, and in the preliminary rounds of the 28th Kisei, komi was 5.5 points. Afterwards (starting with the League of the 28th Kisei), komi was 6.5 points.

Time limits

For the Title games, the allotted time was 9h each in 1977-1994, and is 8h each since 1995 (19th Kisei).

For the League, the time limit is 5h.

For preliminary games, the time limit was perhaps initially 6h (certainly up to the 8th Kisei), later 5h (certainly from the 15th Kisei).