Hane Naoki

Hane Naoki (羽根直樹), born 14 August 1976, is the current Honinbo and a former holder of the Kisei and Tengen titles. He is the son of Hane Yasumasa. He is married to Hane Shigeko?

By winning an Oteai game on 25 July 2002, Hane Naoki gained promotion to 9-dan, and also set a new record for fastest promotion to 9-dan at the Nihon Ki-in: 11 years and 3 months.

He's written a book on his style recently. It's thick and slow called The Way of Creating a Thick and Strong Game; he plays catch up at the end. His rivalry with Takao Shinji is worth looking at.

In 2003-2005, he lost fifteen straight games to Chinese and Korean players in international competition, a record which was cited as representative of Japan's decline on the international stage. http://gobase.org/studying/articles/LeeHongYeol/?episode=5

Titles

• Winner of the 26th Shin Ei (1996)
• Winner of the 27th Tengen title (2001)
• Winner of the 28th Tengen title (2002)
• Winner of the 29th Tengen title (2003)
• Winner of the 28th Kisei title (2004)
• Winner of the 11th and 16th Agon Cup (2004 and 2009)
• Winner of the 29th Kisei title (2005)
• Winner of the 53th NHK (2006)
• Winner of the 63th and 64th Honinbo (2008-2009)
• Winner of Okan Tournament in 1999, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2007, 2008, 2009
• Winner of the 28th NEC Cup (2009-03-07).

• Winner of 19 titles, plus Tengen-Tianyuan Match in 2002, against Huang Yizhong.