From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 23 jan 1996 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 619, 1/24) Shukan Shogi opens this week with the decision in the Kio challenger knock-out. As you may remember, Murayama and Takahashi had to play a decisive game to determine the challenger of Habu. Shukan Shogi describes the game as a boxing match. Winning the furigoma, Murayama won the first round. By choosing a risky opening strategy in the Yagura, followed by a questionable move, Takahashi had to give the second round also to his opponent. Murayama got a strong attack going and Takahashi was down for the count. However, when it was time to finish Takahashi off, Murayama placed a "mispunch" (I don't think this is a proper boxing term, but the Shukan Shogi journalist used it, so...). Takahashi's king escaped and a 9-dan does not often need more than one chance. Takahashi thus the challenger in a match that starts on the 10th of February. In the Kisei League, Yashiki almost certainly qualified for the 8 person knock-out by beating Miura in a game that was decided by gyakuten. Miura will get another chance to qualify against Arimori. More important was the complete round that was being played in the C2 Junisen. As in C1, described in last week's article, the leaders made no mistakes. Kitahama beat Mushano to keep his perfect record (8-0), Sensaki beat Kiritani after a sennichite, Nakata beat Kubota and Oshima beat Maruta. Sensaki, Nakata and Oshima are all on 7-1. Kitahama, Sensaki and Nakata are very strong players and do not have too tough opponents for the final two rounds, so they are the strong favourites for promotion. Too bad for Fukaura, who has to wait another year. Shimizu is quickly becoming the Habu of the Ladies. Her defeat against Nagazawa in the Ladies Open can be called an incident, because she seems to have no trouble shaking off Nakai in the Meijin match. The second game was a tough fight taking 160 moves, but finally Shimizu won and is now two up with three to play. In the A-junisen two games were played. I already reported the win of Moriuchi over Nakahara, but even more sensational was the Tanigawa loss against Ariyoshi. Relegated Ariyoshi decided to go out with a bang and win his first game in seven rounds. Tanigawa's hope for another Meijin title have now all but disappeared. In any case, Tanigawa will be glad to see Ariyoshi go down to B1, because last year he pulled a similar stunt by beating Tanigawa in the final round, thereby blocking Tanigawa's route to the play-off. Bad karma for Tanigawa perhaps. Today the second game of the Osho will be played to a finish. It is now 4 o'clock in the afternoon, so I have no result yet. I hope to give you the result and some small comments tomorrow. What I can say is that Habu chose Shikenbisha (Fourth File Rook) and that Tanigawa used the Bogin (Climbing Silver) to attack white's position. More later... 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