From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 30 jan 1996 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 620, 31.1.96) A very interesting Shogi week indeed. Shukan Shogi naturally opens with Habu's second victory in the Osho-sen. Again, a very difficult game. As Awaji 8-dan commented "Three hours of post-mortem are necessesary". Unfortunately, I can not determine whether or not Habu and Tanigawa actually spend so much time after the game discussing it, but it shows the complexity of this game, and indeed of this match so far. Only one small mistake by Tanigawa seemed to determine the outcome of this game. In the endgame Habu showed his awesome power by calculating that losing two moves to pick up an idle rook would give him a one move victory, an exception to the proverb "In the endgame speed is more important than material". Habu has never lost a match were he took a 2-0 lead, so it seems we are in for the fulfilling of a dream... In the A-class Junisen two games were played. Morishita beat Takahashi to join Moriuchi at the top position at 5-2. Takahashi now lost three games in a row and falls back to 3-4. He is still very much in danger of relegation. Murayama was not able to join Moriuchi and Morishita. He lost to Kato. Murayama is now 4-3 and interestingly enough he also still has to worry about relegation because he is only at the number 10 spot. He needs another win to be sure of staying in the A-class and still has some tough opponents in Shima and Moriuchi. Kato is also still in trouble at 3-4. with Yonenaga and Morishita still to come. In B1 a full round was played (the 11th). Sato, already promoted, thrashed Tamaru to keep a perfect record (10 out of 10). More important was the game between Mori (7-2) and Kobayashi (5-4). A victory would make a come back to the A-class for Mori almost certain. It was clearly a big game with a lot of nerves, but after getting a slightly worse position in the middle game, Mori still managed to win after Kobayashi defended incorrectly against an attack at the head of the king. This means that Tanaka is Mori's only remaining rival. Tanaka beat Tsukada to get to 6-4. Only by losing both of his last games and Tanaka winning his, Mori can blow it. It seems this class is not so interesting anymore. The same goes for B2. Leaders Inoue and Urano won and are now 7-1. Only rivals are Tosa and Maruyama at 6-2. However, Inoue and Urano are higher ranked in the class, meaning they only need one more win for promotion. Updated results can of course be found on my home page. 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