Tengen (天元, center or origin of heaven) is the center point on a Go board. For the position, see the article about Go terms. It is also the name of a Go competition in Japan.

Tengen Competition (天元戦)

The Tengen competition is a Go competition used by the Japanese Nihon-Kiin and Kansai-Kiin. The Tengen is the 5th of the 7 big titles in Japanese Go. It uses the format like the other tournaments. There is a preliminary tournament, which is single knockout, where the winner faces the holder in a best-of-five match. Before the 6th Tengen, the format was different. Instead of the title holder waiting for a challenger, it would be the two players left from the single knockout tournament who then played a best-of-five match to determine the holder.

Past winners

Player	Years Held
Fujisawa Hideyuki	1975
Kobayashi Koichi	1976, 1985, 1986, 1998, 1999
Shimamura Toshiohiro	1977
Kato Masao	1978 - 1981
Kataoka Satoshi	1982, 1983
Ishida Yoshio	1984
Cho Chikun	1987, 1988
Rin Kaiho	1989 - 1993
Ryu Shikun	1994 - 1996, 2000
Kudo Norio	1997
Hane Naoki	2001 - 2003
Yamashita Keigo	2004
Kono Rin	2005, 2006

Trivia

• The only player to repeat before the 6th Tengen was Kato Masao.

See also

• Honorary Tengen