From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 17 jul 1996 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 644, July 17th 1996) It should hardly surprise anyone, but it was Habu week again (it is Habu week almost every week). In Shukan Shogi Habu's picture is both on the front and on the back page, the two most important pages of Shukan Shogi. On the front page, his win in the third game of the Kisei against Miura is described. The loss in game one was clearly a wake-up call for Habu. In game three he again overpowered Miura, who never recovered from a poor decision in the early middle game. To show off his incredible ability, Habu ended the game with a 25 move tsume. On the back page, Habu's win in the first game of the Oi match against Fukaura is being commented. Fukaura tried to surprise Habu by playing P9f with his first move, the first time this move was played in a title match. After that, the game developed into a Watchtower Bishop Nakabishi opening, also very rarely seen on the highest level. Habu quickly grabbed the initiative after Fukaura allowed a rook exchange, but Fukaura is definitely not a push over a very difficult middle game resulted. Finally, with only ten minutes left, Fukaura made a mistake and Habu wrapped up the game quickly. Fukaura, having white in the second game, already has an uphill struggle... In the A-class Junisen three games were played last week. For me, all three games had surprising winners. The least surprising is perhaps that Mori beat Kato, but the surprising result is that Mori now has won both of his two games. Perhaps his talk about aiming to become Meijin challenger was more than big talk after all. Anyway, he now only needs 3 out of 7 to stay in the A-class. More surprising was that Sato lost to Tanigawa. Sato was a clear favourite to win the A-class this year, so this loss is an important set-back. In the final game veteran Yonenaga beat young star Moriuchi, who will have to step up his game if he wants to become meijin challenger again. The major knock-out of the Ryu-O also started last week with the game between the winner of group 6 Kawakami against the winner of group 5 Iizuka. Iizuka won this game without too many problems and now faces the winner of group 3, Maruyama. Still a long way to go for Iizuka... 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