From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 3 apr 1998 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 731, April 1st 1998) Not many important tournament games in Shukan Shogi this week, as the Shogi year (like almost everything else in Japan) ends on March 31st and starts again on April 1st. Of course there is an article about the upcoming Meijin match between Tanigawa and Sato, which starts on April 9th. It seems like a good match-up, with Sato having a better chance of beating Tanigawa than beating Habu. Both players have had a great year with Tanigawa taking the Meijin and the Ryu-O title and Sato challenging for the Oi, Osho and now the Meijin title. Other big Shogi news in even the normal papers: Yonenaga has decided to become a "free class" professional. That means that next year he will not play in the Junisen. He will play in all the other tournaments, though. So no full retirement for Yonenaga, which was not expected anyway. He is joined in the free class by Taki, who lost all games in C1 last year. The other complication is the illness of Murayama. I already reported that he would take off a year to recover. I thought this meant that he would be automatically relegated from the A-class next year. This is not true. There seems to be a rule that players can take the year off for health reasons without any impact on their Junisen status. Next year the A-class will have only nine members and only one player will be relegated. However, when Murayama returns in 1999, the A-class will have 11 members and three players will be relegated to B1. This is not unprecedented, since the late Oyama was also granted the same privilige when he had to recover from a serious illness. I thought this was because Oyama was a living legend and an exception was made especially for him. This exception now seems to have become a rule (last year in B2 Arimori also took a year off without being relegated to C1). Because Murayama will lose all his remaining games from April 1st and because he is still in the later stages of some important tournaments, Goda and Habu are the lucky players of the week. Murayama beat Moriuchi in the quarter-finals of the Kisei challenger tournament and Goda beat Fukaura. The game Goda against Murayama will not be played, so Goda goes through to the challenger final without breaking a sweat. In the first group of the Ryu-O, Murayama also has reached the semi-finals. Habu beat Tsukada last week to become Murayama's next opponent. This game will also be a "fusensho" (win without playing) for Habu, so he is the first player to clinch a place in the Ryu-O challenger tournament. In the Oi-league Sato beat Morishita in the Red group to become the only player with two wins after two games. A good start for Sato, who would like to become Oi challenger again and do better than last year. In the white group Goda beat Abe to take the lead with two wins from two games. Surprising was Kisei Yashiki's loss over rookie Kimura. Yashiki now has lost his first two games and has no chance to become Oi challenger this year. Finally, some interesting news outside Shukan Shogi. Last week the chess championships of Japan were held. The winner:....... Habu Yoshiharu! He finished first before two Japanese players and two Westerners. I find this result amazing, since I am sure that it takes an ELO rating of at least 2200 (maybe even closer to 2300) to win the tournament. Habu clearly does not put that much time and effort in chess, being the busy Shogi star that he is. The researcher in me can't stop wondering what kind of knowledge or special brain features make Habu so good at these types of games. Maybe it is the right part of the brain after all :-). Any opinions? More next week, 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