From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 25 sep 1996 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 654, September 25th 1996) Full rounds in B1, B2 and C2 this week, so more than half of the professionals played games that could decide their fate as a professional. In B1 Tanaka Torahikohad thus far been cruising, winning his first four games. However, in this round he met his match in Kenji Kobayashi. Mr.Fourth File Rook answered Tanaka's anaguma by making an anaguma himself. The position was unclear for a long time with Tanaka seemingly having a little edge. However, Kobayashi played a brilliant move in the endgame to win the game. Tanaka still has the lead with 4-1, but is now closely followed by Fukuzaki (who beat Kiriyama) and newly promoted Inoue (who beat Urano) at 4-2. No end to the sorrows of Tsukada. He lost his sixth game in a row and is already three points away from a non-relegation position. Only a miracle can keep him in B1. In B2 things more or less go as expected. The promotion race seems to be going between Fujii, Gouda and Maruyama, who are widely regarded as the strongest young players in B2. Fujii beat Maruyama in the previous round to take a lead and he consolidated that position by winning against Kodama in this round. Murayama bounced back from his loss by beating Awaji. Goda beat Tosa to keep a perfect score at 4-0. Spoilers are possibly Kamia, who is the only other player at 4-0 and Nakamura, who has the top spot in B2 and now is 3-1. I usually do not regard B2 as a strong class, but I might be mistaken. If Goda manages to promote straight from C1 to B1, he would only be the third player in history to do so. Only Takahashi and Murayama managed to get out of this "weak" class without delay. In C2 still a number of surprising leaders. Least surprising perhaps is young Yagura, but Fujiwara and veteran Miyata were not among the bookmaker's preseason choices. Still, all three won their third game in a row, even though Miyata needed a little help from his opponent to get out of trouble against Ueyama. They might be joined by Hatakeyama, who is now at 3-0 and still has a game to play. With these leaders, I think players with only one loss like young stars Namekata, S.Sato, Kitajima, Toyokawa and Suzuki still have a lot to play for. Because of the importance of the Junisen not much other stuff this 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