Sakai Hideyuki

    Keywords: People

http://www.kansaikiin.jp/profile/img/img127.jpg
Sakai Hideyuki's Kansai Ki-in photo

Sakai Hideyuki (坂井 秀至, born April 23, 1973) is a Japanese 8 dan professional. He is currently a quite successful professional, but is also notable for having gone professional at a late age after a long amateur career. He was one of the first to be awarded an amateur 8-dan diploma. In 2000 he won the World Amateur Go Championship, thus being accepted as a professional by the Kansai Ki-in in the following year. As part of the qualification procedure, he played a number of testing games against professionals, and was then awarded a 5 dan professional rank at the age of 28.

Prior to becoming pro, he was a doctor.

Amateur achievements

  • Sakai was the first Japanese amateur to beat a 9 dan in an even tournament game. His opponent was Ishii Kunio, in the 1999 Agon Kiriyama Cup.
  • Winner of the World Amateur Go Championship in 2000

Professional achievements

  • November 20th, 2003 : Sakai Hideyuki 6 dan won the 47th Kansai-Kiin First Place Tournament beating Yukawa Mitsuhisa 9 dan by 2-1.
  • In 2007-2010 he had berths in the Meijin league, with 3rd, 5th and two 4th place finishes.
  • August 27th 2010: Sakai Hideyuki 7 dan won the 35th Gosei, defeating the titleholder Cho U by 3-2. (He thus is the first Kansai Ki-in player to win a big title after Hashimoto Shoji winning the Judan title in 1974 or Yuki Satoshi winning the 25th Kakusei in 2003 (the Kakusei was discontinued thereafter) respectively. Of the professionals who qualified after age 20, he's the first who challenged for one of the top titles.)

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This is a copy of the living page "Sakai Hideyuki" at Sensei's Library.
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