From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 13 feb 1997 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 673, February 12th 1997) Before I start with the old news, I want to give you the result of the first game of the Kio match between Morishita and title holder Habu. Habu continued his string of good results by beating Morishita and now leads the match 1-0. Haven't seen any moves, so further comments have to wait until next week. In Shukan Shogi most of the attention is for the next to final round of the A-Junisen. Before the round everybody in the class still was fighting for the Meijin challengership or against relegation. This mad this a very tense round, especially for Yonenaga and Nakahara. They are the only players with long Shogi careers (more than 30 years) who have never been relegated in the Junisen. There were strong rumours that they would retire when they would be relegated to B1. For Nakahara the risk did not seem that big this time, but Yonenaga had to play relegation rival Mori: a big game. Yonenaga won this game and is now safe. Mori had a good start with two wins, but lost the remaining games and is relegated back to B1. Another important relegation game was between Kato and Murayama. If Murayama would have lost this game avoiding relegation would have been almost impossible. However, he managed to beat Kato, which means he has his chances in his own hands again. Kato has to play Moriuchi in the last game and can not afford to lose, a tough task indeed. When we look up the table, the biggest game of the round was of course between Tanigawa(6-1) and Morishita(5-2). Tanigawa played some brilliant Shogi again to win this game and now at least has a play-off with Moriuchi to look forward to. This is because Moriuchi beat Nakahara to get to 6-2 and the other remaining candidate Sato lost to Shima. Shima now won three of his last four games and seems to have saved himself from certain relegation. Sato will have to wait at least another year to get a shot at the Meijin title. The situation in the A-class is now as follows: Challenger will be either Tanigawa or Moriuchi. Relegated will be either Murayama, Kato, Nakahara or Shima (in order of likelihood). In C1 also a decision. Abe, who was considered the other great talent in the year Habu became a professional, finally managed to get out of C1. In what was his last game in this class (because of the uneven number of players) he beat Ito Hatasu and is out of reach of the others at 8-2. There are now four players at 7-2 and one game to play. Nakagawa (beat Kubo), Kobayashi (beat Horiguchi), Murooka (beat Sanada) and Sensaki (beat Nishimura). Nakagawa is probably the strongest among these players and with a game against the off form Horiguchi in the final round, he will probably accompany Abe to B2. Other Shogi news: 1) Hatakeyama beat veteran Sato Yoshinori in the white group of the oileague. It was already a kind of a miracle that Sato came this far, but it seems that he is not capable of anymore surprises. 2) Yashiki beat Takahashi to qualify for the final eight of the Kisei title. Takahashi now has to play Tanigawa for the other spot in the finals from group C. 3) Nakai seems to have found an answer to the play of "Lady Habu" Shimizu. Again a very tough endgame decided the third game of the Ladies Meijin match. Nakai is now one up with two to play and we might see the fall of the "other Habu" as well. That's all for this week. If you have your own copy of Shukan Shogi, do not forget to admire the picture on page 7. You might think that Takahashi Yamato is the best part of this picture, but there is another very handsome face there :-). 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