From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 14 dec 1995 Subject: Ryu-O game 6 HABU KEEPS RYU-O TITLE!! Tuesday and Wednesday the 6th game of the Ryu-O title match was being played in Ishikawa-ken. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend personally, but the NHK satelite program helped ease the pain a little. Habu went into game 6 holding a 3-2 lead and needed only one win out of the two remaining games to keep his title. Habu, having black in this game, opened the game with P7f, Sato replying with P8d. Even though Habu has played Furibisha quite a lot lately, he almost exclusively uses the Ranging Rook strategy with white, so it was no surprise that this game became a Yagura. What surprised me, though, was Sato's choice of strategy in the Yagura. He played the difficult Yonenaga-ryu, a quick attack system which is not often seen at this level. Yonenaga is of course a specialist, but in general it seems that this middle game strategy is a bit suspect. As far as I could make out from Morishita's comments on NHK, it did not look like Sato was able to make his positive intentions materialize into a good attack. On the contrary, Habu seemed to be dictating the middle game, resulting in a material profit of a gold. Unfortunately, I was not able to see the late night conclusion of the game (satellite TV has not yet been installed at my apartment yet). When the NHK braodcast finished at 6.00 pm, it was clear that Habu had a big advantage. The game still went on for more than one and a half hours before Sato resigned after Habu's 161th move (this is info from this morning's Mainichi Shimbun). So, Habu has managed to keep six of the seven major titles. He will now play Ariyoshi in the Osho league on Monday to get another shot at the last title missing in his collection. Will the "shichikan no yume" (Seven Crown Dream) come true? Reijer P.S.: I almost literally bumped into Hiroki Kawada last Sunday, when he stepped out of a shop here in Tsukuba. He explained to me why there is so much interest in the functioning of Habu's brain. It seems that he is the only professional who mainly uses the right part of his brain when playing a game. All other professionals mainly use the left side of the brain (if I remember correctly, it could also be vice versa). It would support my rather unscientific assumption that the difference between Habu and the others is that Habu is psychic :-). I have not been able to find any other feature in his Shogi that makes him such special player. In any case, food for thought for neuroscientists and psychologists... -- 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