From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 12 dec 1995 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 614, 12/13) Shukan Shogi opens this week with the Osho league. In this all-play-all tournament between 7 players, the challenger for Osho Tanigawa is decided. As you may remember from last weeks post, only Nakahara and Habu are in the running for becoming challenger. You may also remember that it is the only major title Habu has not yet in his possesion. Therefore the Osho league is very important. After four games Habu had a perfect score and Nakahara was 3-1. In the fifth round they had to play against each other. Nakahara chose his special Nakahara style Yokofudori (Side pawn). The comments suggest that it was Nakahara who had the upper hand early on after a hasty bishop drop by Habu. However, the game remained very close until Habu made another small mistake and lost. A very good game by Nakahara, keeping his chances of another title alive. In the final round Nakahara has to play Moriuchi and Habu plays Ariyoshi. It seems Habu's chances are still slightly better, but if I remember correctly, Ariyoshi pulled a stunt against Tanigawa in the last round of last year's A-junisen, burying Tanigawa's chances to become Meijin challenger. Also in Shukan Shogi is the hattrick of Gouda in the JT tournament. Although this tournament is not a title match, it is very popular because it is very strong (all title holders plus the highest ranked players in the A-Junisen) and because it travels around Japan, being open to the public. This year's final between Yonenaga and Gouda was attended by more than 2000 fans. Gouda is not a title holder and only 6-dan, but he was invited because he was the winner of last year's tournament (and of the year before, when he was holder of the Oi title). His only chance of getting an invitation for next year's tournament was to win it again, being the first player to win this tournament three times in a row. He managed to do so by beating Yonenaga rather convincingly in a Hineribisha game. Personal news: another professional is engaged to be married to a Go professional. Nakagawa (6-dan) will marry Miyasaki (3-dan Go), who he met one and a half years ago at the Go-club at the Shogi Renmei (I hope I translate this correctly, since I did not know there was a Go section in the Renmei building). Let's hope that this does not spoil Nakagawa's chances for promotion in the Junisen. Because of a surprise loss by Gouda against Nakata, Nakagawa suddenly has promotion in his own hands. Both he and Miura are 6-1 in the C1, with Gouda, Hatakeyama and Kubo following at 5-2. Nothing is decided yet, since in round 9 the games Gouda-Miura and Nakagawa-Hatakeyama will be played. In the A-class both debutants showed their strength. Moriuchi (3-2) beat Takahashi (3-2) by gyakuten and Murayama (3-2) also reversed the position in the endgame against leader Morishita (4-1). Morishita, Moriuchi and Murayama are now all 4-2 and will be joined by the winner of the game between Yonenaga and Tanigawa. With three more exciting rounds to play, the challenger of Meijin Habu can be any of these four. I have saved the most interesting bit for last (at least for us internetters). There is a two page article in Shukan Shogi about the Internet. Discussed are three WWW pages on Shogi: The Ricoh Shogi page: http://www.ricoh.co.jp/SHOGI The NTT Shogi page: http://jw.nttam.com/SHOGI/shogi_home_j.html MYCOM home page: http://www.mycom.co.jp Of these two, the first two also have English language pages on Shogi. I think everyone is already familiar with the RICOH page, and I can only say that being able to read the Japanese part of the page makes it even more fun to read. Quick info on all major Shogi tournaments can be found here, both amateur and professional. Actually, the Ricoh home page is part of a much bigger initiative called the "Shogi o sekai ni hiromeru kai" or The Society for Spreading Shogi in the World. Thus far several members of Ricoh and some journalists are part of this group aiming to spread Shogi through Internet. The NTT Shogi page is also very interesting. It features a general introduction on Shogi and a collection of 100 Tsume Shogi problems, which I think also can be read by non-Japanese www-clients. If you can read Japanese with your www-client, have a look at the profiles of the lady professionals (pretty pictures of course included). The Mycom home page is probably of lesser interest to English readers and even to Japanese readers. It is still very much under construction and at the moment only has some general information of how to subscribe to Shukan Shogi and a preview article on the Ryu-O match which was published in the issue of October 25th. More next week, Reijer -- Dr. Reijer Grimbergen ElectroTechnical Laboratory Palcious Tsukuba 302 1-1-4 Umezono 1-24-8 Ninomiya Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki-ken 305 Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki-ken 305 JAPAN JAPAN E-mail: grimberg etl go jp Tel: +81-(0)298-54-5080 extension: 67431 Fax: +81-(0)298-58-5918