From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 13 jan 1996 Subject: First game of the osho-sen (SPOILER) HABU DRAWS FIRST BLOOD! "He is only three points away from victory". I do not know if this is a typical Dutch tennis comment (from it`s stupidity I would think so :-)), but I was reminded of this when I saw the end of the Osho-sen yesterday. Of course there is still a long way to go, but Habu has landed the first punch in his second quest for the seven crown dream. The first game went as follows. Habu won the furigoma again (one of the reasons I think he is psychic) and therefore was black. During the first game nothing much happened. I was even allowed to chat a little with the players during playing time when Iida-san and I went to say hello. The game was exactly the same as a game between Habu and Gouda in the Osho league (November 27th) and I am sure the players were very much aware of that. It is not a good idea to arrive at a two day title match on the first day, but I had no choice, being already half-way on the previous day (Tanigawa Toshiaki had invited us to an year opening party at Sugi no Yado, a great Shogi hotel in Kanagawa). So, Iida-san and I went fishing (a great hobby of his) without catching much and afterwards he humbled me by winning a two-piece handicap match by 2-1 (there goes my coveted 4-dan grade :-(). However, the second day more than made up for this. The game became very complicated very quickly. Both bishops were under attack and sacrificed and the position was very unclear. Even the 9-dans Katsuura, Mori and Aono could not agree on the position. However, when the smoke went up, it suddenly became clear that Habu had better judged the position. His attack was much stronger than Tanigawa's and now Aono and Mori could find the winning lines much more easily and correctly predicted most of the endgame moves. It seemed that Habu made a slight mistake with B'4a (for those fortunate to have the game score), but he denied Tanigawa's Shobute and then suddenly the game was over at a quarter to five. Tanigawa resigned early, but rightly. Judging from the variations I saw in the comments (both in the analysing room and in audience room), the only mistake seemed to be Tanigawa's +P4g, which might have been better replaced by S'5h. Still, this was also far from clear and hopefully Shukan Shogi will have more on Monday, which I will of course report to you then. Reijer -- Dr. 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