From: grimberg ETL GO JP Date: 20 oct 1997 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (retry) and Ryu-O match game 1 My last week's report seemed to gotten lost somewhere, so here is it again. Also, last Friday the first game of the Ryu-O match between Tanigawa and Sanada was played. I was on a holiday, so I only saw very little of it. Tanigawa had white, played Shikenbisha and won. The going will now even get tougher for the young challenger. Reijer ============================================================================== Tomorrow the first game of the Ryu-O match between Tanigawa and Sanada will start and an important part of Shukan Shogi is a preview of this match. Of course Sanada is the underdog in this match and Sanada plays the role well. He points at the difference in experience (Tanigawa was already Meijin when Sanada entered the Shoreikai), the fact that it is his first title match and that he has played Tanigawa in only one game before. That was in a quick shogi game, so Sanada actually feels like they meet for the first time for a "real" game. He has no idea of what to expect from a two day game, but is looking forward to the generous time given to each player (8 hours each). To put it all even more clearly: "Even if I lose all four games I will gain an awful lot from playing against Tanigawa". Sanada is clearly trying to put all the pressure on Tanigawa, but I know Tanigawa knows how to deal with that. In the Kio-sen, the remaining eight player were decided last week. Yonenaga and Maruyama played for the final spot in the quarterfinals. Yonenaga selected the central rook strategy, but after both players had built an Anaguma, Yonenaga allowed his opponent to take the initiative and never was allowed a chance to come back in the game. An impressive win by Maruyama, who has a good shot at the challengership this year. He will have to play Nakahara for a place in the semifinals. The first semifinalist is also known. Last year's challenger Morishita played his last game as a bachelor against Izuka, who married 5 months ago. There are people who claim that marriage is bad for your shogi (I am one of them :-) ), but Izuka seems to be the opposite. After marrying his winning average went through the roof and is now over 70%, the fourth highest of all professionals (behind Nakagawa, Hiura and Goda). Against Morishita he again showed way. Izuka took the lead in the middlegame and never looked back. Izuka is now certain of two chances to get to challenge Habu. In the Kio the loser after the quarterfinals gets a second chance. In the Osho, Sato Yasumitsu made his first appearance against Nakahara. Nakahara had won his first game against Takahashi and would have liked to keep the pressure on Tanigawa, who showed great form by winning twice in a row two weeks ago. Sato, on the other hand, is looking for another appearance in a title match after losing the Oi match badly a couple of months ago. His debut in the Osho league went according to plan. Some skillful endgame play (including a bishop sacrifice that Nakahara could not accept) gave him the victory and a good start. In the C2 class of the Junisen, five games were played to make up for the uneven number of players. Most important game was between Sato Shuji and Ueyama. Both players had a 100% score, even though Ueyama had only played three games, while Sato played four. Sato won this vital game and now is the leader in the C2 class with five straight wins. He has been close to promotion a couple of times, but this is starting to look very good for him. His good position in the C2 ranking will most certainly give him promotion with a 9-1 score and probably 8-2 is also good enough. His remaining schedule does not look to difficult. In other games Ono Yaichio beat Kawakami after almost letting his opponent slip away in the endgame ("that would have been the fourth time in five game this year" was Ono's relieved comment), Kitajima lost to Kosaka and Miyasaka beat Sato Yoshinori. The longest game was between Matsumoto and Miyata, which needed a replay after sennichite. Matsumoto won this game, but veteran Miyata did not seem to care too much. After the game was finished at two o'clock in the morning he felt like he could play another couple of games. For me it is "only" nine o'clock in the evening, but time to go home. More next week on the first game of the Ryu-O in Australia. ============================================================================== -- 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)298-54-5919 Fax: +81-(0)298-54-5918