From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 1 oct 1996 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 655, October 2nd 1996) Two down, four to go! After Habu lost the Kisei title to Miura, he has successfully defended his Oi title against Fukaura and last week he beat Shima in the third game of the Oza to defend this title as well. After the Kisei one and a half years ago, Shima again had the frustrating experience of being whitewashed by Habu. In the first game Shima had a chance to win and that missed opportunity seemed to have broken his spirit. In the second game he lost quickly and also in the third game an early Habu lead was carried into the endgame. When Shima missed an unusual defence as his last fighting chance, the game was over. After a lifetime Kio and a lifetime Kisei award, this brought Habu his third honorary title, that of honorary Oza. This because he has won the title five times in a row. And with some impressive figures as well: 15 wins and only 1 loss. Also, he is in the middle of an eleven game winning streak in the Oza title matches. In the A junisen last week the game between Morishita and Yonenaga was played. The winner of the game would take the lead in the Meijin challenger race, so no wonder the game turned out to be very tense and tight. In a complicated middle game (Yonenaga played right side king against Morishita's Yagura) an overplay by Yonenaga gave Morishita a slight advantage but Yonenaga fought back to get into a position where he had a chance of gyakuten (reversing the chances). However, he missed the opportunity in byoyomi and Morishita won. Morishita is now 3-1 and Yonenaga has dropped back at 2-2. Tanigawa continued to show good form in the Osho tournament. He won his first game in the osho league against Moriuchi. Tanigawa seems to have worked himself out of the slump he was in since the Osho match in January. If so, we might look forward to a really exciting Ryu-O title match. Murayama(8-d) also won his first game against Maruyama(6-d) and will be looking for his second appearance in the Osho match (three years ago he lost 4-0 to Tanigawa). Finally, the quarterfinalists of the Kio match are all known. Takahashi plays Nakahara, Morishita plays Goda, Shima plays Moriuchi and Kobayashi plays Kamia. Except for Kamia and Kobayashi, all players have title match experience, so except for the absence of Tanigawa (lost to Aono in the first round) and Sato (lost to Kubo in the first round), there are no real upsets in this tournament yet. 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