From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 26 mar 1997 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 679, March 26th 1997) This week's Shukan Shogi is hardly worth buying. The professional season is over, and Habu has finished both the Osho and the Kio quickly, so there are not many games left. Unfortunately I have a subscription, so... :-). Shukan Shogi opens with an interview with Meijin challenger Tanigawa. Most interesting comment in that is that Tanigawa seems to suffer a little from the "Dan Marino" effect. He has not been in a Meijin title match for seven years and that has made him wonder while it was all so easy when he became the youngest Meijin ever at 21. His Shogi now is much better and much more mature than it was then, but still it seemed that the Meijin title got further and further away after he lost it in 1990. Tanigawa also more or less promises to make this an entertaining match ("It would be nice to play new Shogi in every game"). Let's see how that turns out. The main event in Shukan Shogi was the final of the NHK tournament, even though this was already televised on March 26th. Finalists were Moriuchi and Yashiki and both took the tournament very seriously as could be concluded from their comments before and after the game. Yashiki before the game: "I haven't given any thought to what opening I am going to play". Yashiki after the game: "I would have played Fourth File Rook with both black and white". Question of the television announcer to Moriuchi after the furigoma: "Moriuchi-san, you have black. Is that important?". Moriuchi: "That means I can start". Announcer to Yashiki: "Yashiki-san, you have white, any comments?". Yashiki: "That means I cannot start". The game itself was disappointingly one-sided. Morichi grabbed the early initiative and after a mistake by Yashiki the game was over in only 73 moves. Comments of the winner: "I have watched the NHK program since I was a child, so winning it is like a dream come true". All in all a good period for Moriuchi, who also made sure that Habu will not take the seven crowns again this year. Moriuchi beat Habu in the quarterfinals of the Kisei tournament in a very close game that could have gone either way. Habu usually wins those, but not this time. In the Oi tournament the two highest seats in the white group both won their games to get to 2-0. Goda skillfully used the rule that a pawn drop can not be made against Hatakeyama and Maruyama had a narrow escape against veteran Sato. This has gotten longer than I expected. I will need even more fantasy to write something next week :-). -- 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