From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 31 oct 1996 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 659, October 30th 1996) && Ryu-O TANIGAWA STRIKES BACK!!! Let's forget Shukan Shogi for a second and concentrate on the second game of the Ryu-O match that was finished yesterday. As you can guess from the title, Tanigawa won this game against the odds (1-0 down and playing with white), thus levelling the match and with everything to fight for. The way in which he beat Habu reminded his fans (that is me for example :-) ) of his old "Lightning Speed Endgame" self. The game was a Bishop Exchange Opening that resulted in a middle game where neither player had any good attack. It was my impression Habu tried to force the position by playing a standard knight attacking move in a non-standard attacking position. Tanigawa defended and picked up the knight a couple of moves later. Still, the position was very unclear and TV commentator Urano seemed to favour Habu's position slightly. However, suddenly Tanigawa pulled some great endgame moves out of the hat. Probably Habu did not chose the optimal defence, because suddenly his castle was completely in ruins and his king on the run. The game ended with a sad position for Habu: his king completely defenceless against the attacking pieces and Tanigawa's king still solidly defended by three generals. Let's see what next week's Shukan Shogi makes of this game (and see if my first impressions were wrong again :-) ). According to this week's Shukan Shogi I was wrong about game number 1. Tanigawa made a mistake in the early middle game and seemed to be losing quickly. However, his gold drop on 8i in the endgame showed that as far as this stage of the game is concerned, he is on top form again. Instead of having an easy win, Habu still had to be very careful to avoid gyakuten. In the words of the Shukan Shogi commentator Habu was then probably still half a step ahead. But pressured for time and probably very tired because of the time difference between Los Angelos and Japan (16 hours), Habu showed his real class. He did not make a single mistake and won by one move. Still, with the result of game 2 as above, this match is still wide open. Game 3 will be played on the 7th and 8th of November. In C1 round number 6 was played, even though for most players this was only their 5th game. Leader Murooka (4-0) suffered his first loss against Ito Hatasu. This means the new leader in the class is Kansaki, who reached a 5-1 record by beating veteran Sekine. He is followed by Nakagawa (beat Kitahama, who now has five straight losses in C1 after promoting from C2 last year), Sanada (beat Ishikawa), Hiura (beat Sakurai), Murooka and Sensaki (beat Shiyoshi). I think two of these players will promote to B2, even though Abe at 4-2 also still has a chance. Other news this week: 1) Maruyama beat Fujii in the 2nd game of the Shinjino to level the best of three match. The final game will decide whether Maruyama will win his third Shinjino title in a row or if Fujii will win his first tournament. 2) Nakahara beat Tanigawa in the Osho league. Nakahara now is 1-0 and Tanigawa has 2-1. Takahashi beat Moriuchi to stay in touch with the lead at 1-1. Moriuchi is now 0-2 and pretty much out of contention. 3) Shukan Shogi's own tournament, the Ladies Open, was won for the fourth time by Nakai. She beat young star Usui in two straight games. 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