From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 18 nov 1997 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 713, November 19th 1997) Today the 4th game of the Ryu-O match has started, so no major title match game in this week's Shukan Shogi. There was plenty of action, though. In the A-Junisen Habu and Kato played to decide who would join Morishita at the top of the table with a 4-1 score. Habu played fourth file rook with white and Kato sacrificed a silver against a knight to promote his rook. He seemed better, but Habu found a nice way of developing all his pieces and won from there. The other game in the A-class was between Shima (3-1) and Nakahara (2-2). This game developed quickly in Nakahara's favourite Aigakari opening. In the middle game, Nakahara deliberately put his rook in an awkward spot and surprisingly won quickly from there. "Winning with a rook handicap is amazing, isn't it?" was the comment in the press room. Nakahara and Shima are now both at 3-2, one point behind the leaders. In C1 round six was played. The tension in this class is slowly building up, both at the top and the bottom of the table. This resulted in no less than three sennichite games. Usually these games take a long time, but not in the game between leader Suzuki and Murooka. Suzuki used only 52 minutes to reach the sennichite position, while Murooka had used more than five hours. This big difference in time made the replay for Murooka very tough and his middle game position collapsed when he was not able to read through all the difficult variations. Co-leader Sensaki also won against Sekine. Both players are now 6-0, but in the next round they have to play each other. This means that Nakata Isao at 5-1 also still has every chance to promote. He beat Ogura, also after a sennichite game. In the replay Nakata was in control, but he almost blew it in the endgame when he played "the worst move in my professional career" (Nakata). However, Ogura did not take advantage of the opportunity and lost. In the Osho league two games were played. The osho league is a tight affair this year, with no player with a perfect record after three rounds. The uneven number of players in the league also adds to the confusion. For example, Moriuchi and Tanigawa have already played four of their six games, while Murayama played only two. Maruyama played a good game against Moriuchi in his favourite Kakugawari opening. He ended the game with a nice silver sacrifice to go 2-1 in the league, while Moriuchi dropped back to 2-2. In the other game Sato Yasumitsu beat Tanigawa after Tanigawa made two consecutive mistakes in the middle game. Sato joins Maruyama in the lead at 2-1, while Tanigawa now has lost two after winning his first two. In the Kio tournament Goda is the first player to advance to the final, even though the second chance in this tournament means that he has to win at least two more games to become the challenger of Habu. Izuka voluntarily put a silver in an awkward place to win a pawn and was punished by a strong Goda attack. The other semi-final game between Minami and Maruyama is played on Thursday. Next week game four of the Ryu-O match between the players with serious problems to win a game lately. Shukan Shogi stats show that Sanada has lost seven of his last ten games, while Tanigawa has lost four of his last five. Reijer -- Reijer Grimbergen Electrotechnical Laboratory 1-1-4 Umezono Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki-ken 305 JAPAN E-mail: grimberg etl go jp WWW: http://www.etl.go.jp:8080/etl/suiron/~grimberg Tel: +81-(0)298-54-3316 Fax: +81-(0)298-54-5918