ParamusTournamentFormat

    Keywords: Tournament

Paramus Tournament Format is unlike any other tournament format. Before play begins, all the players are ranked in strict order. The first game is played by the two lowest ranked players. The winner of that game, then plays the player ranked third from the bottom. This method continues till all players have played. Of necessity only one player remains. That player is the winner. This format was used in the Japanese Kisei tournament before the institution of leagues. Separate knockout tournaments were held for each dan rank and the dan winners then played a paramus tournament the winner of which gained entry into the final preliminary tournament, along with the major Japanese title holders, to determine the challenger for the title.

See also Win and Continue


John F. Do you have verification that paramus is an actual word and used in such a context in English? If it is, I suspect it should be Paramus, a name. I simply call it a ladder tournament, or dan ladder in the case of the old Kisei.

Bob McGuigan: I've never seen this word used except in the old Kisei tournament where it was spelled in katakana: パラマス, which would be paramasu in romaji. I have no reason to believe the Japanese word came from English; for all I know it might have come from French, something like paramasse, but I can't find that in any of my French dictionaries. There was a discussion of the etymology of paramasu on the page English Go Terms/Discussion and a suggesation there that it might have come from bowling. This [ext] bowling tournament formats web page describes stepladder format for tournaments, which is the paramasu format, but doesn't use the word.

John F. Bob, the suggestion it is a bowling term came from me, though I got it from a Japanese lady I know whose hobby is etymology. She spent a lot of time on this on my behalf in Japanese libraries, but found it only in one dictionary, though with no guide as to the original English, Trying to chase down the bowling connection myself, I was told once that the US town of Paramus was once famous (maybe only locally) for a very long shopping mall, and shoppers went up it like a ladder. I have long since concluded that something freakish happened, such as a Japanese bowler met an American bowler from Paramus who told him the word, perhaps in jest, and it stuck. Then along came a go player to the bowling alley and... Freakish, but actually no different from calling a sponge cake kasutera.


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