From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 19 mar 1997 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 678, March 19th 1996) This week in Shukan Shogi the final decisions in the Junisen. In both B1 and C2 the final round was played and the final promotion and relegation places for the 1996-1997 season were decided. In B1 the only question was who would go down together with Tsukada. Inoue and Takahashi had already secured their place in next year's A-junisen. There were no less than five people still in danger in this class of 13: Kobayashi, Aono, Urano, Tamura and Naito. Kobayashi and Aono had only four wins, while the others had already five. The first game that was over was Tanaka-Tamura. Tanaka won that one, so for Tamura the long wait could begin. The first bad news for Tamura was that Kobayashi beat Naito and thereby saved himself. Next, Aono beat Kiriyama, which meant that either Tamura or Urano would be relegated. However, Tsukada seem to have decided to drag Urano with him down to B2, because he won and Tamura must have sighed with relief. It is a bit hard to be relegated with a 5-7 score, but in B1 there are usually one or two players who are far better or far worse than the rest and the others make a real dog fight of it. Many A-class Junisen veterans here. In C2 there was a somewhat unusual situation before the final round. There were no decisions about promotion yet, but there were only four players who still had a chance to promote: Ogura, Hatakeyama, Okazaki and Suzuki. Suzuki did not have his chances in his own hands and had not only to win himself but also hope for a mistake of one of the others. Ogura was finished first and by beating Noda convincingly he secured his place in C1. Hatakeyama also won against a disillusioned Fujiwara, who started with seven wins, but lost the final three. Hatakeyama Mamoru finally follows his twin brother Naruyuki, who plays in B2. Suzuki had a very tough fight against Toyokawa, but managed to win an inferior position. He now had to wait for the result of the game between Okazaki and Ono. This turned out to be a big fight. Ono got the better position early on, but Okazaki managed to escape from Ono's attack and make an entering king. However, this had costed him so much material that only by avoiding Ono's king to enter, he could avoid losing on points. He got one chance to try and do that, but did not take it. After, Ono also made entering king and won comfortably on points. When the game was over at half past one, it was party time for Suzuki. The disappointed Okazaki analysed the game over and over again until 5 o'clock in the morning. Ono, very aware of the pain he had caused by winning, stayed to analyse together. Another anecdote about Tamura's quick play in this final round: When the journalist of Shukan Shogi came into the press room at five o'clock in the afternoon, he found Tamura there. "Didn't you have to play in Osaka today?", the journalist asked, wondering who had made the mistake about the playing venue. "Yes", Tamura replied, "I am already back". He had beaten Hirafuji before lunch. In the Kisei the pairings for the challenger knock-out are decided. In the first round it will be Moriuchi-Habu, Tanigawa-Goda, Nakahara-Fujii and Yonenage-Yashiki. This year's knock out is really a treat with a lot of interesting players and a lot of interesting games. Who will be the challenger of Miura. Finally, there are two new professionals. This time fortunately (for me at least) with easy to remember names: Kimura Kazuki (23) and Kobayashi Hiroshi (20). Kimura showed great strength of character by promoting from the top spot in the 3-dan league. This meant that last time he was very unlucky not to be promoted. It was also the 13th time he played in this league. Only Kitajima played longer in the league before promoting (16 times). On the other hand, Kobayashi seems to have taken it all a lot more easy and is promoted after only five times in the league. Usually there is a lot of drama on the final day, but not this time. Kimura needed only one win and got that in the morning game and Kobayashi would be promoted if he would beat rival Sato in the morning game, which he also did. Kimura's hopes for his professional live: "I want to be in a position where I can improve myself all the time". Kobayashi is a little more bold: "I'd really like to win at least one title". Let's see if he can.... 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