From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 13 nov 1996 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 661, November 13th 1996) TANIGAWA TAKES THE LEAD!!! Tanigawa crushed Habu in the third game of the Ryu-O match to take the lead by 2-1 in this best of seven match. Habu made a big mistake in the early middle game and could not avoid losing a bishop to a knight. After that he wriggled a little to make something out of nothing, but a Tanigawa in top form went straight in for the kill. Thus far this match has not shown great Shogi, but it is very exciting but Habu has a real fight on his hands (perhaps even more than he can handle in his present form). Also, the way he lost the second and third games must be unsettling. Still, Habu's genius is not in doubt and he has shown that he can win great games after crushing defeats (for example in the Oi match against Goda two years ago). The fourth game is a vital one for Habu and I will travel to the other side of Japan to see it unravel for my very eyes. In other Shogi news, Nakahara beat Takahashi to reach the best four of the Kio-sen. He will play Morishita in the semi-finals and Moriuchi plays Kobayashi in the other semi-final. From this stage on there will be a second chance for the losers. If you lose two games, you are out of the tournament. In the A-junisen Morishita took the outright lead by beating Nakahara. Morishita is now 4-1 while Nakahara drops back to 2-3 and has to fight to stay in the A-junisen for the second year in a row. It seems like either Morishita or Moriuchi or Tanigawa (both at 3-1) will be the challenger of Meijin Habu. In B1, things have cleared up after the 8th of 13th rounds has been played. Surprising leader is newly promoted Inoue who beat Tamaru, winning five games in a row to improve his record to 6-2. He is followed by Takahashi (who beat Aono) and Tanaka (who beat Kiriyama), both at 5-2. Because of the low position of Inoue, this means that he still needs to win all his remaining games to be certain to make his debut in the A-Junisen. However, if he beats Tanaka in the next round, he will only need two points out of the remaining three games. In the shinjino-sen (not a major title), Fujii took the deciding third game for his first professional tournament victory. Maruyama was not able to set improve his own record of three consecutive shinjino titles which would have been certain to stand for as long as the tournament will be held. On a sad note, Kato Jiro died last week at the age of 86. He was a former chairman of the renmei and famous for his writing on Shogi. Especially his books on the power of the pawn ("Shogi wa fu kara") are a must-read for every Shogi player. His playing career ended abruptly when he decided to retire in 1949 when he was only 38 years old. At the time he was 8-dan, then the highest professional rank. He was rewarded an honorary 9-dan title in 1978 and was honorary chairman of the Renmei from 1982. More next week, 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