From: Pieter Stouten EMBL BITNET> Date: 13 jun 1990 Subject: Tournaments, time limits, grades On Tue, 12 Jun 90 08:44:43 EDT Chris Sterritt ADMS-RAD UNISYS COM> writes: >>Habu and Tanigawa have met each other 4 times. Habu has won 3 games, >>but they were all TV games with reduced thinking time. [...] > >I understand that in Japan there are games (on Sunday?) that are televised. >What is the time limit for ordinary tournaments versus the televised ones? >How do (shorter) televised games count, that is, towards tournament points >or professional standing? As far as I understand, time limits are agreed upon by the tournament sponsor and the Nihon Shogi Renmei. If a sponsor wants games to be televised he will insist on short time limits and without a sponsor there is no tournament. This implies that all kinds of time limits can be, and indeed are, employed. Final matches tend to have longer limits than preliminaries. The longest thinking time is 9 hours a player. For these reasons it is impossible to introduce an ELO-type system for profes- sionals. Some standard must be set with respect to time limits in order to accept/reject tournaments as tournaments where ELO-points can be obtained. Because sponsors of (relatively) quick-play tournaments will not agree when no ELO points could be obtained in their tournaments, no ELO-system is introduced. The Japanese Amateur Shogi Association does have an ELO-system, however. As to official professional grades: dan-grades can still only be obtained via the mechanism of promotion through the Juni-sen ranks (from C2 class: 4-dan to A class: 8-dan). For more information on grades and promotion, you can send a mail/message/file to LISTSERV@TECHNION containing the line: GET SHOGI RANKING I hope that one of the Japanese subscribers to SHOGI-L can provide more detailed information on these intricate aspects of the Shogi scene. Bye, Pieter. #### ## ## ### # Pieter Stouten # # # # # # # # EMBL, Biocomputing Programme ### # # # ### # Meyerhofstrasse 1, 6900 Heidelberg, West Germany # # # # # # Bitnet: Stouten@EMBL Phone: +49-6221-387 472 #### # # ### #### Telex: 461613 embl d Fax: +49-6221-387 306