From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 5 jun 1996 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 638, June 5th 1996) HABU TRICKS MORIUCHI AGAIN!! Ok, this is not in Shukan Shogi and Iwakura-san already reported the result, but I have to tell you a little more about game 5 of the Meijin-sen, because this was exciting stuff. Up until now, I have not been able to see the end of a close title match game live on television, but yesterday this finally happened. The NHK broadcast started at 9 last night, just when the really interesting part of the game was starting. At that time Moriuchi seemed to have an overwhelming advantage. Mori (9-dan) and Tanigawa (9-d) were tripping over each other finding hisshi and mating variations for the challenger. Only problem: Moriuchi had only 15 minutes left and Habu had more than 40 minutes. Mori is one of the few Japanese professionals who goes straight to the point and said that there was a 99% chance that Moriuchi would win. But time ran out on Moriuchi and he was not able to find a mate or a hisshi. He dropped a silver without being able to calculate whether it was mate or not (Tanigawa and Mori also could not completely work it out) but Habu could: he took 10 minutes to calculate that it was no mate and played his own hisshi. Moriuchi managed to escape from that, but to do so he had to sacrifice so much material that Habu had another, completely different mate. End of game, end of match. Mori's final comments: "It was a 1% chance, but Habu made it work". Let's see if next week's Shukan Shogi agrees with him. This means that Moriuchi has to try again next year in the A-Junisen. In Shukan Shogi this week the opening game of the A class is being commented. A game between Murayama's Static Rook Anaguma and Tanigawa's Fourth File Rook. It was a game played at Murayama's pace most of the time and when Tanigawa missed a variation where Murayama would have had to play a difficult rook sacrifice to keep his advantage, the game was over. It is of course only the first game, and because of the strength of the A-Junisen two or three losses is probably enough to become the challenger, but a bad start is the last thing Tanigawa wanted. The middle pages of Shukan Shogi have an interesting statistical analysis of the games played in the 1995 season. From this data it can be seen that even though the number of professionals is still rising (from 81 in 1973 to 131 in 1990 to 140 in 1995), the number of games is slowly going down: from 2,474 in 1990 to 2,225 now. The average pro plays 31 official games a year. Black keeps a slight edge: 52.8% of the games end in a black win. This figure has been rather constant over the years. In the 25 year analysis printed in Shukan Shogi, this figure has never been over 54% and never below 50%. It seems that the difference between black and white is mainly psychological. For example, last year Habu scored better with white than with black, the difference being only marginal (83.9% with black and 83.3% with black). Other big scorers with the white pieces: Sensaki (80.0% and only 66.6% with black!) and N.Hatakeyama (77.8% with white and only 60.9% with black). Final interesting info in this article: it seems that the Kisei will no longer be played twice a year. I do not know if that means it will be a best-of-seven match from now on, but we will find out soon. The main knock-out of the Ryu-O is also taking shape. Takahashi, Tanigawa, Hiura and Moriuchi had already qualified from group 1 and 2, and this week the qualifiers from group 4, 5 and 6 were decided. In group 4 Inoue continued his good form by beating N.Hatakeyama, in group 5 Iizuka started the season well after a disappointing year by beating Kubota and in group 6 Kawakami might have put an end to his start-up trouble as a professional by beating veteran Kiritani. Only three spots are still vacant and will be decided this month. Final news from the ladies Osho: Nakai has won the second game of the match. Shimizu made a big mistake in defence and Nakai now has every chance again to defend her title and keep Shimizu from winning all the major women titles. That's all for now, 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