From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 23 apr 1997 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 683, April 23rd 1997) Morishita won a strange game to equalize the score in the Zen Nihon Pro tournament. There was no doubt that after a Tanigawa mistake in the middle game it was Morishita who had the upper hand. The strange thing was that it took not one, but several mistakes by Tanigawa before Morishita was able to clinch the game. Not a good sign for the big second game of the Meijin match that will be played this weekend. Still, all credit to Morishita, who had white but played a very positive game with an early weakening of his own position to create attacking opportunities. He followed it up with a move that could become a next move problem in the future and got the result. This means that in the next two months, Tanigawa really has two tough matches to worry about. Let's hope he does not end up empty handed... In the Kisei tournament, the semi-final game between Moriuchi and Goda was played. With title holder Miura not in particularly good form lately, all potential challengers smell the chance to take a title. Of the four players remaining, only Moriuchi never won a major title. He must have wanted to win against Goda very badly. However, it was Goda who dictated the pace of this Yagura game. Moriuchi kept the game close, but when he made a mistake in the evaluation of two moves, it was all over. So, Goda is now only one win away from challenging Miura. His opponent will be either Nakahara or Yashiki. The knock-out for the Oza match started last week. Sixteen players have qualified and three games were played. Last year's challenger Shima had a good start by beating Murayama. This was a repeat of the decisive game for relegation from the A-Junisen last month and again Murayama lost. It was a violent Ai Yokofudori game where Murayama fancied his chances almost until the end. Morishita beat Takahashi without too much trouble and Tanaka Torahiko beat Fukuzaki to get to the quarterfinals. In the red group of the Oi league Fujii kept his chances for challengership alive by beating Nakamura, who had won his first two games. Both players are now 2-1, trailing Sato who has a perfect 3-0 record. Still two games to play in this league with the game between Sato and Nakamura in the final round as a potential decider. An interesting incident last week. Tanaka Kaishu (8-dan) played his pupil Abe (6-dan) in a pre-round match for the Kio. After an hour of waiting for his deshi, Tanaka began to get seriously worried. However, just then Abe turned up in a sweater with the excuse that he overslept. He did not even had given himself the time to put on the usually suit and tie. Lucky for him, the Kio games have a 4 hour time limit, so that after the time penalty he still had an hour left. (In professional games the time a player is late is tripled and substracted from the total time.) Coming late in a game against your teacher is of course not very nice, and I wonder if Abe would have had reservations about winning the game after that. As it turned out, he did not have to worry about that, because the time difference proved crucial and Tanaka won. 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