From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 27 nov 1996 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 663, November 27th 1996) What is the matter with Habu these days? Shukan Shogi's analysis of the fourth game of the Ryu-O match shows that again he made an unusual high number of mistakes, especially in positions that called for digging in and hoping the opponent will make a mistake. His magic endgame tricks seemed to have abandoned him. Last sunday he was crushed in an NHK game by Sato Yasumitsu, losing yet another one of his titles. Of course, all credit to challenger Tanigawa, who plays some of his best Shogi in years and that might be more than enough to take the Ryu-O title from Habu. With a 3-1 lead there is not much that can go wrong, but it has happened in the past that such a lead was not enough to win the title. Still, Habu will have to lift his game considerably to have a chance. Tomorrow is game 6, let's see what happen. Sorry I do not have time for a deeper analysis of game 5. Last week was also a Junisen week with games in A, B1, B2 and C2. In all classes not more than four games remain to be played, so the fight for promotion and avoiding relegation is now really starting. In the A class the only remaining game of the fifth round was being played between Kato and Sato Yasumitsu. Both were at 2-2, so this game was very important. The winner would still be in the race to become challenger of meijin Habu while the loser would have to fight relegation. Kato chose the same kind of kakugawari bogin attack he used to defeat Morishita with in last year's final round of the A-class. Not surprisingly, Sato (who is feared for his opening prepartion) had studied the game well and was ready. An early escape of the king from the black attack gave him the time for a rather unusual two way use of a tokin, which travelled from 3h to 2g and in the end finally to 7h ("A tokin is faster than you think") secured Sato's victory. In B1 the big game was between Inoue (6-2) and Tanaka (5-2). Because of the low position of newly promoted Inoue he had to win this game to stay in a promotion position. Inoue got the early lead, but in a difficult middle game he did not find the optimal moves and Tanaka got a chance to get back in to the game. He played a very normal tokin move to promote which turned out to be bad. Interestingly enough the same sort of move that cost Habu the fourth game of the Ryu-O match. Inoue made full use of the second chance to get the better position and won. Takahashi is now in second place with 6-2, beating Fukuzaki. Third is Minami, who beat Kobayashi. Next round is Minami-Inoue. If Inoue wins that game, he will be almost certain to promote. In B2 a big upset. Sole leader Goda (5-0) lost to Waki, who was 2-3 until that game. This means Goda is no longer in a promotion spot, since Maruyama (big win over Nakamura), Ono (beat Awaji), Kamia (even bigger win over Fujii) and Hatakeyama (beat Ishida) made no mistake. With big guns like Nakamura, Tomioka and Fujii waiting with 4-2, from now on every loss can be fatal. This class is very interesting indeed. In C2 Yagura was the only one of the three leaders who lost. Okasaki (4-1) overtook Yagura by winning a double anaguma game. Fujiwara and Kokura kept their perfect record intact by beating respectively H.Ito and Matsuura. Big upset of the round was the loss of the great talent Namekata against Ueyama, who was still without a win. After the game Namekata almost immediately left, clearly upset about this big loss. Fujiwara and Kokura are now followed by Hatakeyama, Okasaki, Yagura and Suzuki. In the Kio Morishita reached the final by beating Nakahara. Nakahara now has to win against Moriuchi in the second chance to keep his hopes of yet another title alive. In the Osho league a big game between Murayama (3-0) and Tanigawa (3-1). This turned into a real "mud slinger" with chances changing almost every move in the endgame. Both players in byoyomi, both kings in danger. Finally, it was Tanigawa who made the decisive mistake after more than 160 moves of play. Murayama again showed his great composure in byoyomi and found very difficult attack and defense moves. This means that he needs to win only one out of his two remaining games to be the challenger for the Osho title. He will certainly do better than last time, when he was whitewashed by Tanigawa. 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