From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 24 sep 1996 Subject: Re: This week in Shukan Shogi Sean Chasworth AOL COM> writes: > Thank you Reijer, your explanation of Shogi tournaments was perfect! I find > it interesting culturally that the titles are awarded on overall experience > as well as the quality of play at a given time. This is only the case if you consider dan-grades as titles. It is my impression that this hierarchy of grades is used to define seniority. I expect Miura, as a 5-dan title holder still has to be very polite to for example Takashima, who is an 8-dan in C2. However, not being part of the pro Shogi world myself, I have no idea how these things work. > Just one more question, however. In the Meijin tournament, how many players > are there in each of the Junisen classes? This also implies that it would > take 5 years to promote to Junisen A and challenge for the 'world' title. This was already posted by Iwakura-san last week, but let me repeat it for the record: Meijin: 1 player A-class: 10 players B1-class: 13 players B2-class: 23 players C1-class: 23 players C2-class: 51 players New 4-dans (not yet in C2): 2 players Free-class: 5 players Other pro: 13 players Total number of professionals: 141 Free class pro is a professional who has not dropped out of C2, but decided that he could make more money in another line of work or is otherwise fed-up with being a professional and decided to do something else. The category "other professionals" are professionals who dropped out of C2 and still play in other tournaments for game fees. They usually become teaching pros, travelling to Shogi clubs to give lessons for money. They also might have other part time jobs, but I am not sure about that. As for your other question: it does indeed take a minimum of five years before a 4-dan professional gets a shot at the Meijin title. > In other cultural questions, what is the level of female participation in > Shogi? Are there any top ranked women players at all? As far as I know there are at the moment three female professionals who have experience in beating a male professional in a regular tournament game: Shimizu, Nakai and Saita. Actually, it is no longer big news in Japan if a woman beats a man in professional Shogi. However, this is only a recent development. I think Nakai won the first game less than five years ago, but it might even even be less than that. There are also three young women who play in the ("men's") Shoreikai. The higest ranking is 4-kyu for 18 year old Kimura Sayuri. This is already quite old to be at that level and in my humble opinion none of these girls will make it to the (male) pro ranks. I think one of the reasons they play in the Shoreikai is that they will learn more and faster than if they would play only in women's tournaments. This will help them in there future career as a female pro. I guess this is exactly the same reason why the Polgar sisters stopped playing in women's chess tournaments. By the way, of the big three mentioned above, I don't think any would survive C2. It would be an interesting bet what comes first: a woman who enters the professional ranks or a computer that beats a professional in a game under tournament conditions :-). My guess is that both will take at least ten years.... > If this type of question on the newsgroup is in any way improper, I will be > glad to research in other ways. For now, I am grateful to learn whatever > information we all have. I think one of the main reasons for Shogi-L is to answer questions like this and as long as they are asked and I have some knowledge on the subject, I will be happy to answer. 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