Iyama Yuta

    Keywords: People

http://www.nihonkiin.or.jp/player/htm/photo/000385.jpg
Iyama Yuta's Nihon Ki-in photograph

Iyama Yuta (井山 裕太 Iyama Yūta, born May 24, 1989) is the first Japanese pro who was born in the [ext] Heisei era.

Iyama was a child prodigy, the third youngest person to become a professional player in Japan as of 2008. The other two are Cho Chikun and Hashimoto Utaro. Iyama learned Go at age five after watching his dad play on the computer, and was 3 dan within a year, before becoming a pupil of Ishii Kunio. The two of them played more than 1000 games over the internet. See [ext] John Fairbairn's post for more on his early life and career.

At 16 years of age, he established the current records for youngest professional to hold a Japanese professional open title (Agon Cup), and the youngest to reach 7-dan rank. He was promoted to 8-dan for becoming the challenger for the 33rd Meijin title in 2008 and to 9-dan for winning the title in 2009, at which point he became the youngest Japanese professional to hold one of seven big Japanese titles and the youngest ever Japanese 9-dan. He demolished the record for the fastest promotion to 9 dan at the Nihon Kiin (7 years, 6 months). He is a member of the Nihon Kiin Kansai branch.

John Power said "Iyama plays thickly, waits for the opponent to attack, then tries to take the initiative with his counterattack." [ext] http://www.nihonkiin.or.jp/topics2008/topics11.html

[ext] Nihon Ki-in Profile (Japanese)

Promotion Record

  • 9-dan 2009 for winning the 34th Meijin title.
  • 8-dan 2008 for becoming the challenger for the 33rd Meijin title.
  • 7-dan 8 October 2005 for winning the Agon Cup.
  • 4-dan 2005
  • 1-dan 2002

Tournament Results


This is a copy of the living page "Iyama Yuta" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2012 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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