Longest Time Spent Thinking About A Move
Keywords: Culture & History
The longest recorded time a professional has spent thinking about a single move in a game has two categories. One is for games with time limits and the other is for games without. Please feel free to add to the lists.
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W/ Time Limits
Time | Player | Move # | Date | Event | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
5 hours, 7 minutes | Takemiya Masaki | 45 | 1988-06-29 | 43rd Honinbo final, game 5 | Takemiya didn't know a large avalanche main-line variation, so invented it on the spot. He vowed to never play the large avalanche again after this game. |
3 hours, 54 minutes | Kada Katsuji | ?? | 1976-07-08 | 1st Kisei tournament, All-Dan KO, round 1 | |
3 hours, 37 minutes | Honinbo Shusai | 110 | 1933-12-04 (1933-10-16) | "Game w/ the Meijin" | There was a 24-hour time limit, w/ Shusai having the privilege of adjourning play. It was his abuse of the adjournment? system on this move which convinced many people that the traditional system was too open to abuse and lead to the adoption of the sealed-move system. |
3 hours, 3 minutes | Rin Kaiho | ?? | 1968-05-09 | 23rd Honinbo final, game 2 | |
3 hours, 0 minutes | Cho Chikun | 43 | 1985-02-06 | 9th Kisei final, game 3 | Cho makes a careless move the move before, so reproaches himself while thinking about how to recover. |
2 hours, 57 minutes | Fujisawa Hideyuki | 93 | 1978-03-01 | 2nd Kisei final, game 5 | The game is regarded as one of the great fights in go history. The entire game hinges on whether Fujisawa can kill a group. |
2 hours, 35 minutes | Kitani Minoru | 89 | 1947-10-22 | 4th Honinbo final, game 1 | About to play the sealed move, Kitani starts to ponder and re-emerges 2 hours 35 minutes later, having missed the evening meal. No-one was quite sure why he had taken so long. Was he working out the endgame? Did he feel he was in trouble? Was he just being unreasonable? He was just refuting the obvious move and avoiding certain death. |
2 hours, 33 minutes | Otake Hideo | 47 | 1988-06-16 | 43rd Honinbo final, game 4 | Otake was considering his sealed move for the day during a strategic turning point in the game and while under a tired and hazy influence. As part of an overall decision to slow down his play (for this game) he didn't want to rush his moves. |
2 hours, 30+ minutes | Sakai Takeshi | 70 | 1999-01-28 | 47th Oza, 3rd Prelimnary | Sakai tries to read out a corner life and death problem. |
2 hours, 6 minutes | Cho Chikun | 13 | 1984-11-07 | 9th Meijin final, game 6 | Cho considers some variations during an opening joseki. |
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W/O Time Limit
Time | Player | Move # | Date | Event | Notes |
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8 hours, ? minutes | Honinbo Shusai | 147 | 1907-12-02 | Jubango w/ Nakagawa Senji, game 1 | The first game ever to be reported with an eye-witness account in a newspaper. Reporter, Kojima Kazuo. |
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Sources
[1] Record Slow Moves, Go World Iss. 54, p.55.
[2] Old Fuseki vs. New Fuseki (2011), pp. 45-6, 90, 110.