From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 1 may 1997 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 684, April 30th 1997) Not in Shukan Shogi, but I really need to comment on the strange second game of the Meijin match. I was at the big festival in Tokyo to watch the developments. It is very rare that a title match game is played in the weekend so I took advantage, together without about 2,000 other people who decided to spent this glorious day indoors. Comments to the game were given by a number of professionals, but especially Yonenaga again showed what a great entertainer he is. The strange thing about the game was the suddenness by which it was over. Of course, the professionals agreed that after Habu's S*4h white's attack was dead and black had the advantage. True, the questionable B*9b seems to make matters worse, but there was still a lot to play for in the position. However, Tanigawa seemed to be fed up with it all and chose a very quick way to lose. Maybe he did it for me. At nine in the evening I began worrying about making it back with the last train, since the game seemed far from over. At 9:15 Yonenaga said it would probably take another hour. At 9:30 Tanigawa resigned. Even when he loses he does me a favor :-). Let's see what Shukan Shogi has to say about the game next week... This week in Shukan Shogi a special on professional biorhythm. Not much conclusive evidence from the comparison between Habu rivals Moriuchi, Sato Yasumitsu and Goda, other than that Moriuchi is the most constant player. However, did you know that Aono 9-dan plays best in the autumn? I did not believe it either, but over the last five years his win-loss percentage is 80-91, but in September it is 14-7. Now, that is a significant difference. Another interesting fact is that Ueyama, 6-dan, who has been struggling in C2 for years, has a strange preference for round 6 in the C2. In the last ten years his scores in the other rounds have never been over 5, but in round 6 he won 9 out of 10. His only loss: against Moriuchi. Science or coincidence? Also in Shukan Shogi this week an interview with Yamashita, the programmer of computer Shogi champion YSS. He tells how he chose to follow his dream of building a shogi program to beat Habu. In order to do this, he quit his job at Fujitsu to work at the program full-time for a year. His gamble worked out for the best as we now know. From April he entered a game company to develop AI Shogi 2. He thinks he will be able to make a program to defeat Habu in 2010. Habu himself thinks it will take a computer until 2015 to beat him. Now back to the professional shogi scene. In the kisei Yashiki beat Nakahara in the semi-final. This means that either Goda or Yashiki will challenge Miura for the Kisei title. A title match without either Tanigawa or Habu, that is a very long time ago. If I am not mistaken, the last time was exactly four years ago, when Yonenaga beat Nakahara to clinch his first Meijin title at the age of 50. Then it were two veterans battling, now we will see a match between two young guns. In the Oza tournament two upsets. Goda beat Tanigawa to get to the quarterfinals and Hatakeyama Nariyuki beat Aono (9-dan). Other players there are Minami (beat Kamia), Morishita (beat Takahashi), Fukaura (beat Mori) and Shima (beat Murayama). They will be joined by either Nakahara or Abe, who play this week, That's all for now. I hope to have some comments on game 2 of the Meijin next week. 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