From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 25 dec 1997 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 718, December 24th 1997) The professional Shogi players are getting ready for the holidays like everybody else in the world, so as a preparation last week there were a lot of important games. In the A-Junisen there were two games. Habu (4-1) and Shima (3-2) played for staying close to leader Morishita and the chance to become next year's Meijin challenger. Kato (3-2) also could dream of another title, but he had to play Moriuchi, who at 1-4 desperately needed a victory. The results were as expected. Habu beat Shima straight from the opening and now joins Morishita in the lead. Moriuchi is too strong to go down to B1 and he beat Kato to get to 2-4. This means that behind the two leaders there is no player with a plus score. The A-class seems to have become a two horse race with all other players having to worry about relegation to B1. In C2 round number 8 was played and there were some major upsets. The biggest shock was undoubtedly promotion favourite Fukaura going down to winless Numa. Fukaura is now 5-2 with ten other players and no longer has his chances in his own hands. Leader of the pack is still Sato Shiyuuji, who extended his winning streak to eight by winning a tough game against Kinoshita. With his high position in the class and some other results going his way, he is now almost certain of promotion. One win from two games is enough, but even two losses will probably see him through. Sato will be joined by two other players and the two players having the best chance now are Okazaki and Katsumata. Okazaki dramatically missed promotion in the last round last year, but that does not seem to have discouraged him. He beat Mori to get to 6-1 and can even drop one of his remaining games to promote to C1. Katsumata is a different story. He is also 6-1, but a bad junisen run last season means that he can not afford to drop a single game in the remaining rounds. With Yagura (who has still a good chance of promoting) in round 9 and Tamura in the last round, there will be a lot of pressure. In the Osho league the final games were played. Leader Sato Yasumitsu had to win against Takahashi to be certain of becoming the challenger of Habu. If he lost there was even a chance of him missing out on the play-offs, since only the top two players would play a play-off game and Tanigawa, Maruyama and Nakahara all could still end up with 4-2 scores. THe first game to finish was the game between Tanigawa and Nakahara. Tanigawa won after a clever-looking combination by Nakahara backfired. Maruyama had to play Murayama, who did not manage to produce the form that made him osho challenger a couple of years ago. Murayama had lost all games, but showed that he is a very strong player by beating Maruyama. This meant that Sato was certain of a play-off, even if he lost. However, he made no mistake against Takahashi and will now have another chance against Habu. In the Oi match last summer he did not have a chance and lost 4-1. Let's see if he can do better in January. The other tournament that is reaching its conclusion is the Kio tournament. The final of the winner's section between Minami and Goda was played. Minami is a former Kio title holder, but that was eight years ago. Against Goda he showed that he might have find his way out of his slump, because he played a solid game where Goda did not have much of a chance. Minami could have finished the game quickly, but a small mistake gave Goda the chance to prolong his own agony without changing the final result. This meant Goda had to play in the second chance round where Izuka was waiting. Izuka was clearly better in most of the game, but Goda hung in there and this time his toughness was rewarded by some Izuka mistakes. Goda now has to play Minami again for the right to challenge Habu. Goda needs to win two games in a row, while Minami only needs to win one game. In the next two weeks there are not many professional games scheduled and I am not even sure if there is a Shukan Shogi next week, so the next report might be in two weeks. In any case, I wish all the readers a good 1998 with lots of opportunities to play our great game. Reijer -- Reijer Grimbergen Electrotechnical Laboratory 1-1-4 Umezono Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki-ken 305 JAPAN E-mail: grimberg etl go jp WWW: http://www.etl.go.jp:8080/etl/suiron/~grimberg Tel: +81-(0)298-54-3316 Fax: +81-(0)298-54-5918