Tengen - the title

Tengen is the fifth of the seven big titles in Japanese professional Go. The winner's prize is ¥13,000,000 currently, sponsored by six local newspapers. Tournament website. All professional players of the Nihon Ki-in and Kansai Ki-in can participate. Tengen ("origin of heaven") is also a Japanese go term used to designate the central point of the go board.

The Tengen shares most of its structure with the other big titles in Japan - the winner of a preliminary tournament (in this case a single knockout tournament) plays a best of five match against the previous year's title holder. This has been the case since the 6th Tengen in 1980. Prior to that it was a match between the final two players from the knockout tournament, making it much more difficult to be a repeat title holder (as Kato Masao was able to achieve in 1978 and 1979).

Due to the importance of the Tengen as one of the "big seven" titles in Japan, there are several paths of automatic rank advancement through it in the Nihon Ki-in new promotion system. Challenging for the title warrants a promotion to 7-dan, actually winning the title promotes to 8-dan, and finally winning the title twice gives an immediate 9-dan promotion.

Prior to 2002, the winner of the title played against the Chinese Tianyuan in the Tengen-Tianyuan match.

Winners and Runners-up

The title match usually starts in October. See also Tengen, Go to Everyone

[1] Prior to the 6th Tengen in 1980, the title holder was required to play in the preliminary matches under the same conditions as all other participants. Therefore, repeating as Tengen was significantly more difficult before the 6th Tengen.