From: Reijer Grimbergen NICI KUN NL> Date: 6 oct 1995 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi At the moment there is no title match being played, so Shukan Shogi is filled with some diverse news: On the front page a build-up for the Ryu-O title match between Habu and Sato. Their last twelve games have been for the Ryu-O title and both have won a match with 4-2. The overall score of Sato against Habu is 9 wins and 11 losses, which is a very good record indeed against Habu. Another encouraging sign: the challenger has almost always been succesful in taking the title. Only once in the 7 times the match has thus far been played did the title holder manage to keep his title (Tanigawa beat Morishita in 1991). For those of you in the area, the first game of the Ryu-O will be played in Beijing on October 20th and 21st. Fifteen year old Yauchi thus far finds Ladies Oi Shimizu hard to beat. The "women's Habu" as Shimizu is referred to in Shukan Shogi convincingly beat young Yauchi in the first game and also won (albeit less convincingly) the second game and now only needs one more win to keep her title. For those interested in professional Shogi for women: there is a lot going on here. There are some very young new stars and there are even two girls who have entered the Shoreikai, the competition for aspiring (male) professionals. Nakai and Hayashiba also briefly played in the Shoreikai, but never managed to get to dan-level. For those of you opening your games with P2f: don't do it again! Analysis of 2200 professional games has shown that with P2f black wins only 48% of the time, while with P7f black wins 53% of the time. Shukan Shogi therefore jokingly headlined "Is P2f a blunder?" last week. Shogi professionals are now trying to build a database of Shogi games similar to that of chess. They still have some distance to cover, though. The chess base contains more than 400.000 games. Last week, another round in the B1 and B2 Junisen was played. The B2 Junisen might be very boring this year. Favourites for promotion Inoue and Maruyama have already taken a clear lead with 4 wins. It seems that their mutual game, scheduled for the last round, might not be a thrilling finish as was expected. In the B1 Sato Yasumitsu proved his splendid form by beating Tanaka Torahiko, thus creating a two-point gap between him and the number 2. I think 3 points out of the last 6 games might be enough to secure his promotion. Finally, in the top Junisen class (where the challenger for Meijin Habu is decided) one games was played. Shima beat Moriuchi, giving them both a 50% score out of 4 games. This pretty much puts Moriuchi out of the contest. Favourites Tanigawa, Yonenaga and Morishita still have to play their fourth game. It looks as if this class will be very tight this year. Seven points out of nine game might even be enough to avoid a play-off. This is the second week I am sending professional news to the list. I am intending to keep that up for a couple of more weeks. However, I am wondering if I am assuming too much knowledge about the professional Shogi world. After all, I have been following professional Shogi for almost ten years, so... Reijer