From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 18 jan 1996 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no.618, 1/17) First, I apologize for this being late, but yet another national Japanese holiday messed up the postal delivery. There are about twenty national holidays throughout the year (talking about hard-working Japanese, eh :-)), so this will probably not be the last delay. Anyway, Shukan Shogi opened with the 1st game of the Osho, naturally. It seemed that matters were even more complicated than I thought before and this game turned out to be a good lesson in professional psychology. The comments in Shukan Shogi are uncharacteristically unclear, but this is probably what happened: the game was unclear for a very long time, even after the point I mentioned last week. Actually, Tanigawa seemed to have the upper hand most of the game, even though the position appeared to be worse for him. Interestingly, the bishop drop B'4f was considered to be Tanigawa's desperate try for gyakuten by Mori, 9-dan during the game. Further analysis seems to show that Tanigawa still had the advantage at that point and that in fact Habu's answer G5f was the shobute. Furthermore, even Tanigawa himself did not have much confidence in his position and answered G5f with an ill-advised Bx3g+, giving black the opportunity to get a strong attack going. But even then, Tanigawa was still in the game and missed a strong defense that would have made the position very complicated indeed. Tanigawa's comment was clear: he said that he had already psychologically resigned the game and therefore missed the two opportunities. Lesson to be learned: think positively, even when you are playing Habu! I was completely wrong about this game, but I find comfort in the thought that I was in the company of many famous players who were also wrong. Shogi is really difficult! The other tournament that is now in its final stages is the Kio sen to decide the challenger of you-know-who. As I have reported before, the Kio is a special tournament because every player reaching the last four gets a second chance. Winner of the normal knock-out was Takahashi and winner of the loser's second chance round was Murayama. This meant that Murayama had to play Takahashi again and had to win twice to become challenger. A difficult task indeed, but Murayama has pulled of the first half by winning the first game. Murayama won a difficult endgame where both players were in byoyomi (1 minute in professional play). This means the next game decides the winner of the Kio challenger's knock-out. In C1 a complete round was played without surprises. All top players won, Miura beat Sanada, Nakagawa beat Shiyoshi, Gouda beat Murooka and Hatakeyama beat Nakata. Miura and Nakagawa are now 7-1, Gouda and Hatakeyama 6-2. Two of these four will qualify, with only a theoretical chance for Yashiki at 5-3 with only two rounds left to play. Next round: Nakagawa-Hatakeyama and Miura-Gouda! Especially the last game should be one of the top games of the year. In the A-junisen only one game was played. Yonenaga beat Shima and at 4-3 is still a contender to become challenger. His last games are relatively easy (Kato and relegated Ariyoshi) and being only one point behind the leaders, there is still a good chance of a play-off between players with three losses. Shima dropped to 3-4 and still has to worry about relegation to B1. Only Kato has not yet scored his third victory and Shima still has to play Murayama and Tanigawa. Finally, in the Ladies Meijin title holder Shimizu beat challenger and former Meijin Nakai in an Ai-gakari game to take the first game in this best-of-five match. Shimizu is also announcer for the weekly TV program Igo-Shogi Weekly and I was impressed by the ease of her presentation (even when she had to announce her own victory :-)). Beautiful, intelligent and a very strong Shogi player *sigh*. Shimizu-san, ai-shiteru mo ii desu ka ;-). 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