Win and Continue

Win and Continue is a form of go where a series of games is played, with the winner retaining their place and being challenged by a new opponent.

Current

The most popular use of this today is in the win and continue team tournament format, where teams compete to be the last team standing, but the format is also suitable for individual play.

The Japanese Ryusei tournament uses the win-and-continue (stepladder) system for its “block tournament” before the main 16-player single elimination.

Past

The old Kisei tournament format used this format. Before the institution of leagues, separate knockout tournaments were held for each dan rank and the dan winners then played a win and continue ladder, where the first game was played by the two lowest ranked players, in order to determine the challenger for the title.

(This format have been called paramasu パラマス in Japanese from the 1960s, because the stepladder system was used in TV bowling shows shot at the Paramus Bowling Center (New Jersey, USA).)

Kitani Minoru famously managed to win 10 matches in a row from 1934 onwards in a newspaper sponsored win-and-continue tournament labeled “Who’s the strongest player in Japan?” (after 10 matches, the series was stopped for lack of opponents)

Kogishi Soji scored 32 successive wins in a newspaper win-and-continue games from 1917 to 1920.

Taiwan Mingren tournament used the win and continue format from 1992 to 2001.

Kita Fumiko, the leading female player of her day, sensationally beat five strong male players in a row in this format in 1911.

External links

• See also 'stepladder' on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tournament