Hane Naoki
Hane Naoki (羽根直樹), born 14 August 1976, is a former holder of the Honinbo, 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.
His style has been noted as thick and calm, aiming for long games with the goal of maximizing his thickness in the endgame. He wrote a book on his style called The Way of Creating a Thick and Strong Game. A noted rivalry was with Takao Shinji.
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 More recently he was however the only Japanese player in the 11th Nongshim Cup in 2009 to score wins at all, beating Yun Chun-sang and Park Yeonghun.
Titles
- Winner of the 26th Shin Ei (1996)
- Winner of the 27th to 29th Tengen titles (2001-2003)
- Winner of the 28th and 29th Kisei title (2004-2005)
- Winner of the 11th and 16th Agon Cup (2004 and 2009)
- 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, 2011, 2012, 2013
- Winner of the 28th NEC Cup (2009-03-07).
- Winner of the 36th Gosei (2011-08-29).
- Winner of 21 titles, plus Tengen-Tianyuan Match in 2002, against Huang Yizhong.
News
In 2011 he won the Gosei from Sakai Hideyuki, challenged for the Honinbo (Yamashita Keigo won 4-3) and Oza (Cho U won 3-0). He ranked second in wins among Japanese players.
Trivia
In 2008, he beat Takao Shinji for the Honinbo title after losing the first three games. As of 2011, this has only happened six times between the Meijin, Kisei and Honinbo titles.