From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 30 jan 1997 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 671, January 29th 1997) Habu back in form? It certainly looks like it judging from the second game of the Osho title match. Habu needed only a small opening mistake from Tanigawa to take the lead in the game and pretty much carried it over the finish line despite Tanigawa's desperate attempts to get a counter attack. Habu's anaguma did not look very solid after the first day and his hanging gold on 7h was critisized by Tanaka Torahiko, but the king was far enough from Tanigawa's pieces to keep one step ahead. An impressive win for Habu and bad news for Tanigawa, who seemed ready to attack Habu in all titles after his victory in the Ryu-O. Next game: today and tomorrow. So I will not be able to report on it before Monday... Last week was also a big Junisen week with complete rounds in B1, B2 and C2. Happiest man of the week must be Inoue. The B1 rookie beat Tamura for his eigth straight victory after a poor 1-2 start and when the result of the game between Tanaka and Naito came in (Tanaka lost) he knew that straight promotion to the A-class and the title of 8-dan (coming into effect in April) was his. A remarkable performance by someone who is a very strong player, but who himself expected to fight relegation, having a losing record against most of the players in B1. Most likely to follow Inoue to the A-class is Takahashi, who was not discouraged by his very unfortunate relegation from the A-class last year. There are only three promotion candidates left: Takahashi (7-3), Minami (7-4) and Tanaka (6-4). Takahashi needs only one more win out of the two remaining games to make a come-back in the A-class. The next round is a big game against Minami, but even if he loses that, it should not be too hard to beat veteran Ariyoshi in the final round. In B2 the situation is much more complicated. With two rounds left to play there are 7 players with a chance to promote to B1. Interestingly, of these seven, five are the top five seeds in the class: Maruyama (7-1, 5th), Nakamura (6-2, 1st), Tomioka (6-2, 2nd), Tosa (6-2, 3rd), Fujii (6-2, 4th), Ono (6-2, 8th) and Goda (6-2, 19th). All of these players are very strong and are more than capable of winning their remaining games. Interesting games are Ono-Tosa and Fujii-Goda. My prediction: the ordering will not change and Murayama and Nakamura will promote to B1. In C2 a big loss for leader Fujiwara against Kawakami. Ogura did not make a mistake and scored his 8th straight victory. He also gets another win against Takashima, who died last month. This means promotion is 99% certain for this rather unknown young player (I had to look up in Shogi Nenkan that he still only 28 years old and the winner of the third san-dan league in 1988). There are three places in C1 to be decided and there are now four players with 7-1: Hatakeyama (scored a big win over Namekata), Okazaki (beat Toyokawa), Fujiwara and Suzuki (beat Anzai). All are higher ranked than Ogura, but Fujiwara and Hatakeyama still have to play in the final round. It is even possible that the players with two losses will get a shot at promotion. I do not think Kanki will be able to cause such an upset, but Fukaura, Yagura, Kitashima and Kawakami are very strong young players. Three years in a row there have been players with a 9-1 score who did not promote, will 8-2 be enough this time to get out of the dark tunnel? In the ladies meijin tournament, Shimizu was very lucky to win the second game to level the match at 1-1. Nakai should have won the difficult endgame, but overlooked a vital move and lost. Next week more, 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