The playoffs, play-offs, postseason or finals of a sports league are a competition played after the regular season by the top competitors to determine the league champion or a similar accolade. Depending on the league, the playoffs may be either a single game, a series of games, or a tournament, and may use a single-elimination system or one of several other different playoff formats. Playoff, in regard to international fixtures, is to qualify or progress to the next round of a competition or tournament.
A tournament is a competition involving at least three competitors, all participating in a sport or game. More specifically, the term may be used in either of two overlapping senses:
- One or more competitions held at a single venue and concentrated into a relatively short time interval.
- A competition involving a number of matches, each involving a subset of the competitors, with the overall tournament winner determined based on the combined results of these individual matches. These are common in those sports and games where each match must involve a small number of competitors: often precisely two, as in most team sports, racket sports and combat sports, many card games and board games, and many forms of competitive debating. Such tournaments allow large numbers to compete against each other in spite of the restriction on numbers in a single match.
A double-elimination tournament is a type of elimination tournament competition in which a participant ceases to be eligible to win the tournament's championship upon having lost two games or matches. It stands in contrast to a single-elimination tournament, in which only one defeat results in elimination.
The Thomas Cup, sometimes called the World Men's Team Championships, is an international badminton competition among teams representing member nations of the Badminton World Federation (BWF), the sport's global governing body. The championships have been conducted every two years since the 1982, amended from being conducted every three years since the first tournament held in 1948–1949.
There are a number of formats used in various levels of competition in sports and games to determine an overall champion. Some of the most common are the single elimination, the best-of- series, the total points series more commonly known as on aggregate, and the round-robin tournament.
A wild card is a tournament or playoff berth awarded to an individual or team that fails to qualify in the normal way; for example, by having a high ranking or winning a qualifying stage. In some events, wildcards are chosen freely by the organizers. Other events have fixed rules. Some North American professional sports leagues compare the records of teams which did not qualify directly by winning a division or conference.
Cho Chikun25th HoninboHonorary Meijin is a professional South Korean Go player and a nephew of Cho Namchul. His total title tally of 75 titles is the most in the history of the Japanese Nihon Ki-in. Cho is the first player to hold the top three titles—Kisei, Meijin, and Honinbo—simultaneously which he did for three years in a row. Cho is the first in history to win all of the "Top 7" titles in Japan which he achieved by winning the Oza in 1994. Cho U in 2011 and Iyama Yuta in 2013 would duplicate this feat, both by winning the Kisei. He is also one of the 'Six Supers' Japanese players that were most celebrated in the late twentieth century, along with Rin Kaiho, Otake Hideo, Takemiya Masaki, Kato Masao and his classmate and arch-rival Kobayashi Koichi. He is the author of several books on Go.
Rin Kaihō or Lin Haifeng is a professional Taiwanese Go player who made his name in Japan. He is, along with Cho Chikun, Kobayashi Koichi, Otake Hideo, Takemiya Masaki and Kato Masao, considered one of the 'Six Supers' that dominated Japanese Go world in the last three decades of the twentieth century.
The season structure of the National Hockey League (NHL) is divided into the pre-season, regular season, and the Stanley Cup playoffs. In the pre-season, which is generally held during the last two weeks of September, each team plays several not-for-the-record exhibition games. In the regular season, which generally runs from early October through early April, teams play 82 games which determine their standings. The three highest-placed teams in each division and two wild card teams per conference enter the playoff elimination tournament to determine the Stanley Cup champion.
Yuta Iyama Kisei, Honinbo, Meijin is a Japanese professional Go player. In April 2016, he became the first player in Japanese history to hold all seven major titles simultaneously. In January 2018, Iyama became the first professional Go player to be awarded Japan's People's Honour Award.
Kisei (棋聖) is an honorary title and Go competition. The title, meaning Go Sage in Japanese, was a traditional honorary appellation given to a handful of players down the centuries. The element ki can also apply to shogi, and there were also recognized kisei in the shogi world.
In sport, a bye is the preferential status of a player or team that is automatically advanced to the next round of a tournament, without having to play an opponent in an early round.
The 1st Kisei was the birth of a new Go tournament. Since this was the first year of the tournament, there was no set challenger or holder. From the 2nd edition on, there has been a playoff between challengers. At the time, it was the highest paying tournament there had ever been, and would be until the creation of the Ing Cup. Fujisawa Hideyuki's win would mark the beginning of a six-year defense of the Kisei title from 1977 to 1982.
The titleholder system is the most common type of structure used in professional tournaments in the game of go and shogi.
The 30th Kisei was held from May 2005 to February 22, 2006. The players to have qualified through preliminary tournaments are Toshiya Imamura, Atsushi Kato, Hideki Komatsu, and Kunihisa Honda. The players to have returned from the previous year are Satoshi Yuki, Norimoto Yoda, Cho U, Tomoyasu Mimura, Keigo Yamashita, O Rissei, O Meien, and Kobayashi Satoru. Players who end with the two lowest records in the each league are eliminated from automatic berth into the next tournament.
The Stanley Cup playoffs is an elimination tournament in the National Hockey League (NHL) consisting of four rounds of best-of-seven series to determine the league champion and the winner of the Stanley Cup. Eight teams from each of the two conferences qualify for the playoffs based on regular season points totals. The final round is commonly known as the Stanley Cup Finals, which matches the two conference champions.
The NBA playoffs is the postseason tournament of the National Basketball Association (NBA) held to determine the league's champion. An annual best-of-seven elimination tournament, the NBA playoffs are held after the league's regular season and its preliminary postseason tournament, the NBA Play-In Tournament.
Hsieh Yimin is a Taiwanese-born professional Go player in Japan. She holds the titles of Honorary Female Honinbo and Honorary Female Meijin, and currently holds three major female titles in Japan: Female Meijin, Female Kisei and Female Honinbo.
The League of Legends division of Cloud9 (C9) is a gaming team based in Los Angeles, California, and competes in the League Championship Series (LCS), the top-level professional league for video game League of Legends in the United States and Canada.
