From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 23 apr 1996 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no.632, April 24th 1996) More wedding bliss on the front page of Shukan Shogi this week. Well, it is not everyday that two Shogi professionals get married. Tsukada (8-dan) and Takamura (2-d) followed the example of Ueyama and Nakai. Of the 226 people who came to the celebration there were obviously many Shogi players. If you think that a party of 226 people is a bit crowded you would not have wanted to go to the Habu 7-crown party. No less than 1200 Habu fans gathered to celebrate this historic moment in Shogi history. Among them famous actors (well, not to me I am afraid :-) ) and the minister of education. Habu promised his fans again that he will try to hold on to his titles as long as possible. The middle pages of Shukan Shogi are filled with international news. There is an article about Korean Shogi, Xiang Qi, the Hongkong elementary and middle school Shogi championships and (you might have guessed it) the American Championships. Most of the article is devoted to the situation of American Shogi with the DC Shogi Club and the New York Shogi club as the focal points of American Shogi (do they really have 40 and 30 members respectively? Wow!). There is also a report about the tournament that was won by Mr. Sango. Ishikawa (5-dan), the writer of the article, was somewhat surprised about the strength of Sango. Especially in the game against Kaufman it seemed that Kaufman lost without making a mistake. That sounds very frustrating... Still, Watanabe beat Sango in the final in what Ishikawa describes as a "nessen", a heated fight. Of course, there is also confirmation of George Fernandez becoming the American representative in this year's amateur Ryu-O. Game news: Fukaura upset "Mr.Oi" Gouda in the red group of the Oi, taking the lead with three straight wins and two to play. Gouda, Takahashi and Kansaki now have 2-1 records. Shima and Murayama are out of the race with 0-3. In the other group Tanigawa lost to Maruyama, who is the leader with 3-0. Tanigawa falls back to 1-2 and will probably not be factor in this year's Oi. Finally, in the Oza, Kansaki had a surprise victory of Morishita to advance to the last eight, where he will meet the winner of Mori-Nakahara. Well, that's it for this week. Tomorrow game 2 of the Meijin-sen will start. Moriuchi needs to win this one to avoid being blown away like Morishita last year. That will be in next week's report... Reijer -- Reijer Grimbergen Electrotechnical Laboratory Palcious Tsukuba 302 1-1-4 Umezono 1-24-8 Ninomiya Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki-ken Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki-ken 305 JAPAN 305 JAPAN E-mail: grimberg etl go jp Tel: 0298-59-1606 WWW: http://www.etl.go.jp:8080/etl/suiron/~grimberg Tel: +81-(0)298-54-5080 extension: 67431 Fax: +81-(0)298-58-5918