Fukuoka Kotaro

福岡 航太朗
b. 2005-12-22
Nihon Ki-in professional, pupil of Hon Seisen

1p: 2019-04-01, 2p: 2021-01-07, 3p: 2022-01-01

He's taken down some big names:

• Yo Kagen 9p, in the Gosei preliminaries
  
• Kudo Norio 9p, in the Gosei preliminaries
  
• Rin Kaiho 9p, in the Judan preliminaries and also in the Meijin preliminaries in 2019
  
• Ueno Asami 4p, in the Kisei preliminaries
  
• Ida Atsushi 8p, in the Kisei league
  
• Fujisawa Rina 5p, in the Kisei league

He was twice Children's Kisei, as the champion of the Lower Division in 2014 (in 3rd grade) and of the Upper Division in 2016 (in 5th grade).

He won the 1st (2019) Y's Academy Cup.

In 2021 he made his debut in the main tournament of the Shinjin O, losing in the first round to fellow 2p Sakai Yuki, who is also a former Children's Kisei. The following year, he was again eliminated in the first round, by Otake Yu.

According to Go to Everyone! he currently (as of November 23) seems to have the best win / loss ratio of Japanese professionals in 2021. He has 38 wins and 11 losses, a winning percentage of 78%. This is a little better than Tsuneishi Takashi's 30-9 (77%) and Shida Tatsuya's 28-9 (76%).

He qualified into the C League of the 46th (2021-22) Kisei, where he had the best results of the low dan professionals (although that only meant going 2-5).

Fukuoka performed exceptionally well in the main tournament of the 2022 Gosei. In the first two rounds, he was matched against two giants of modern Japanese Go history, first Cho U and then Takao Shinji, and beat them both. They were ranked over 200 places higher on Go Ratings than Fukuoka. He was eliminated in the challengers' quarterfinals by another famous name: Yoda Norimoto.

In May 2022, he became one of the four members of the Ichiken study group on its foundation.