From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 22 jan 1997 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 670, January 22nd 1997), Osho-sen First, the latest on the Osho match between Habu and Tanigawa. The second game was played to a finish yesterday and because television does not think the Osho is important enough to broadcast (unless the seven crown dream is at stake :-) ), I can only give you the result. Habu won the second game as well and now leads 2-0. It seems Habu has found back his good form... In Shukan Shogi the front page is for the A-class of the Junisen. The seventh round was completed with four games last week (Sato had already beaten Yonenaga) and the most interesting game was between Morishita (5-1) and Moriuchi (4-2). Even Meijin Habu was interested and came to the Renmei building to watch the games develop live, which is quite rare. The game was a very difficult Yagura game where both players weren't very confident about their own chances. However, the post-mortem showed that Moriuchi was probably slightly better from an early stage of the game on. However, in the endgame Moriuchi gave Morishita a chance that he did not take. Morishita took a gold without much thinking where another move would have given him good chances to win. After this, Moriuchi won quickly. This means both players are now at 5-2, together with Sato. However, the man they are all chasing is still Tanigawa. He played Fourth File Rook with black against Kato (very unusual) and needed only one middle game mistake from his opponent to smoke out the anaguma. In the other games Murayama continued his bad form by losing against Nakahara and Shima came from behind to win a crucial game against Mori. Shima now has his chances of staying in the A-junisen in his own hands, while things are starting to look very bleak for Mori, who started with two wins, but then lost five games in a row. In the C1 Junisen also a complete round was played. It must have been Abe's lucky day. First, he did not have to play Taki, who mistakenly thought that the game was played in Tokyo and had to forfeit the game. Then, he saw almost all of his rivals for promotion lose. Sanada was beaten by Yashiki, Kansaki was beaten by Kitahama (who scored his first win after 6 straight losses) and leader Sensaki lost against Kubo. Also, Abe has played one more game than his rivals, so if he wins against Ito in the next round he will be certain to promote. Even if he loses, he might still go to B2, but then it will be a nail-biting final round. Nakagawa is the highest ranked player at 6-2, so he also has his chances in his own hand. Kobayashi, Murooka and Sensaki can only win their two remaining games and hope for a mistake of the others. In the ladies Meijin, Nakai stopped a losing streak of 6 meijin title match games against Shimizu. A good start for Nakai in this best of five match, and she will need even more of that to beat Lady Habu.... Finally, I like to go back to last week's Shukan Shogi. When I read it a little more carefully I noticed that Takashima (8-dan) died on december 27th. He was only 55 years old and still an active player in C2. He only played in a title match once, when he played (and lost) against Nakahara in the 12th kisei tournament. 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