From: Reijer Grimbergen <grimbergen <at> NICI <dot> KUN <dot> NL>
Date: 26 oct 1995
Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no.607, 25/10)

Unfortunately, the first game between Habu and Sato is not yet in this
week's Shukan Shogi. Even though the date on this issue is the 25th of
October, it can already be bought since Monday. This strange use of
publishing dates can be seen with a lot of Japanese magazine. For example,
Shogi Sekai number 1 can already be bought at the end of November. I can't
wait until next week's issue. Sato's glorious victory has made the Ryu-O
match very interesting indeed. However, we should not forget that Gouda had
a 2-0 lead in the Oi and lost 4 games in a row.

But now back to the issue at hand. It opens with the remarkable win of
Nagazawa over Shimizu in the Ladies Open. Nagazawa also won the second game
in this best-of-three match. It was a win in great style in a double
anaguma game. One mistake by Shimizu was enuough to hand Nagazawa her first
tournament victory in 16 years as a professional.

In Shukan Shogi also a small interview with Aono Teriuchi, who wrote a new
book "Shobu no shiten". This title is very hard to translate, since there
is hardly a proper translation for the term Shobu as it is used in Shogi.
Literally translated the title is "The point of view of winning and
losing". This is rather ugly and I do not think it covers the contents, so
I am open to suggestions. In any case, this book looks very interesting,
since it tries to explain professional middlegame and endgame positions (as
far as I can see from the small excerpt given). As you may know, my
personal opinion is that in Japan there are too many opening books being
published and hardly any books on middle game strategy and endgame. This
might be a book to fill up a small part of this gap.

In the C2 Junisen a complete round has been played, the fifth, meaning this
class is now halfway through. There will be three players promoted at the
end of the season and at the moment there are only three players with a
perfect record: Sensaki (win against Numa), Nakata (win against Anzai) and
Kitahama (win against Miyata). Young Yagura had to pass by losing to Kanki
and will probably not be promoted this year. He is a first year
professional and thus very low ranked in the C2 class. Another interesting
defeat was that of the strong Fukaura, who lost against rookie Kachimata.
It was Fukaura's second loss and his chances of promotion have all but
evaporated.

In the A-class, things have cleared up a little. Even though only four
rounds of the 9 have thus far been played, now three players have a score
of 3-1: Morishita (who beat Yonenaga), Tanigawa (who beat Nakahara) and
Takahashi (I already wrote about his win against Kato last week). All other
players in the top class have 2-2 except Ariyoshi (0-4) and, surprisingly,
Nakahara (1-3). However, I do not think Nakahara will have any problem
staying in the top class, but he will have to forget about becoming a
challenger for the Meijin once again unless he has something really special
up his sleeve. Ariyoshi, on the other hand, is almost certain to go down to
B1.

Reijer Grimbergen


P.S.: Mr. Hara pointed out that I made a mistake again last week. Murayama
did not beat Abe in last year's Shinjinou, but "Summer Prince" Gouda. I
stand corrected...