From: Reijer Grimbergen NICI KUN NL> Date: 19 oct 1995 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no.606, 18/10) This week Shukan Shogi has two interviews with Habu Yoshiharu and Sato Yasumitsu, who will fight for the Ryu-O title starting with a game in Beijing next week. Habu is a bit worried about the problems he has lately of getting a good position from the opening. His endgame magic had to save him a little too often and that could be a problem against Sato who is in top form this season (his score is 23-9 so far). Sato is therefore rather confident that he has a chance to regain the title he lost to Habu last year. The only title Habu has not won (and indeed the only title he does not hold at the moment) is the Osho title. In the Osho league, deciding the challenger of title holder Tanigawa, he has beaten Moriuchi to get a perfect 2-0 score together with Nakahara, who beat Murayama. Habu was again very lucky to escape from a bad position. In contrast, Nakahara looked very strong and beat Murayama easily. Still a long way to go though, in this round-robin tournament with secen players. This week there were also many games in the Junisen. In the A-class Murayama beat Ariyoshi. Murayama is now 2-2 and Ariyoshi 0-4. For 60 year old Ariyoshi the writing seems on the wall. He will need at least three points from the last five games to save himself. In B1 Sato Yasumitsu won again (against Nakamura) and leads comfortably with a perfect 7-0. His rivals Tanaka (5-2) and Mori (4-2) also won, against Tomioka and Tsukada. Even though they are higher in the ranking and will therefore promote to the A-class in case of a tie, it seems they are only battling for second place. In B2 Ueno is the only player with a perfect score after beating Ono in the fifth round. He is ranked near the top of the class and can therefore afford to lose one game of the coming five to still secure promotion. Maruyama lost to Waki to drop to 4-1 and has to wait for a mistake by Tosa or Urano, who also have 4-1, but are higher up in the class. C1 is one of the toughest classes, having a lot of strong young players. At the moment there are five players with a 4-1 score: Gouda (former Oi title holder), Yashiki (former Kisei title holder), Hatakeyama, Miura (challenger of Habu in the Kio) and Nakagawa. All of them are strong enough to win all of their remaining games. Interestingly enough, for the sixth round Gouda will play Hatakeyama and Yashiki will play Nakagawa. Actually, these five players will meet each other a number of times in the remaining rounds, so it seems to be that two of these five players will promote. The ladies Oi has been decided in favour of Shimizu. I already said that this title match came a little early for 15-year old Yauchi and she lost by 3-0. However, she is very strong already and definitely a future title holder. The Shinjinou tournament is also very interesting this year. This tournament is for young professionals. It is a knock-out with a final best-of-three match. The final this year is between two of the strongest young players, namely Fukaura and Maruyama. Last year Maruyama won the tournament by beating Abe in the final. This year he is up against an even stronger opponent. Fukaura already won the Zen Nihon Pro tournament two years bac by beating Yonenaga. He started well against Maruyama by taking the first game. Finally, I have to apologise for a mistranslation in the last E-mail about Shukan Shogi. I mixed up two Kanji characters when I tried to translate Sugimoto's "Ai Furi Kakumei". Kakumei has nothing to do with command, but is simply revolution. The book's title is therefore simply "Double Ranging Revolution", which has a nice ring to it. Sorry I did not get this right the first time; studying Japanese is a continuing story of these kinds of mistakes. Reijer Grimbergen grimbergen nici kun nl