Sakura Ishimoto
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Sakura Ishimoto | |
|---|---|
 Ishimoto at a human shogi event in November 2019 | |
| Native name | 石本さくら |
| Born | January 27, 1999 |
| Hometown | Suita, Osaka Prefecture |
| Career | |
| Achieved professional status | September 1, 2016 (aged 17) |
| Badge Number | W-57 |
| Rank | Women's 2-dan |
| Teacher | Nobuo Mori (7-dan) |
| Tournaments won | 1 |
| Websites | |
| JSA profile page | |
Sakura Ishimoto (石本 さくら, Ishimoto Sakura; born January 27, 1999) is a Japanese women's professional shogi player ranked 2-dan.
Ishimoto was born on January 27, 1999, in Suita, Osaka Prefecture.[1] She first became interested in shogi when she was a fourth-grade elementary school student after seeing some classmates playing the game. She decided that she wanted to learn how to play the game and started attending a local shogi school shortly thereafter.[2]
In 2010, she finished runner-up in the girl's division of the 4th Elementary School Student Girl's Meijin Tournament as well as in third place in the 3rd Elementary School Komehime Meijin tournaments as a sixth-grade elementary school student.[3][4] Two years later in 2012, she won the girl's division of the 33rd All Japan Junior High School Student Invitational Shogi Tournament as a second-year junior high school student.[5]
Ishimoto was accepted into the Japan Shogi Association (JSA) Kansai Branch's training group system.[2] Although still an amateur player, she defeated a number of women's shogi professionals in the preliminary rounds of the 3rd (2013) and 4th (2014) Women's Ōza tournaments.[2][6][7][8][9] In 2016, she was promoted to Class B1 of the training group system when she was a 17-year-old third year senior high school student, thus meeting the criteria for the rank of provisional women's professional 3-kyū. She petitioned the JSA, with shogi professional Nobuo Mori as her sponsor, to be allowed to compete as a women's professional and was awarded the rank of 2-kyū and full professional status based on her prior performance in the 2013 and 2014 Women's Oza tournaments.[2][10]