From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 29 apr 1998 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 735, April 29th 1998) No commented games in Shukan Shogi this week, so I can take it easy for a change. Here are the main results of the games played this week: 1) Morishita not only became a father last week (of a 3484 gram boy named Daichi), but also reached the quarterfinals of the Oza tournament by beating Abe. It was a typical Morishita game, where he got the advantage early after Abe's new move in a known middle game position did not pay off. After that Morishita could have tried for the win in the mutual attack, but he chose to slow down Abe's attack before attacking himself. This was the right choice. Morishita now plays Minami for a place in the semi-finals. 2) Goda is well on his way to another challenger game after beating Kisei Yashiki in the white group of the Oi league. It was Goda's fourth straight win and (a little surprising) Yashiki's fourth straight loss. With one game left to play, only Abe still has a chance to keep Goda from winning the white group. 3) Shimizu gets the chance to take back one of the titles she lost last year. She beat Usui in the play-off game to decide the challenger of Ladies Osho Saita. Shimizu had to work hard to come back from behind in this game, but in the end her endgame strength was too much for young Usui. Also in Shukan Shogi a further explanation of the free class. There are a few additions I need to make to the explanation I sent to the list more than six months ago. One is that I thought that players who voluntarily decide to join the free class can get back in the Junisen whenever they want. This is not true. Once the decision is made, there is no way back. Only players who drop from C2 and players who take the back door of the 3-dan league like Ina did this year, can get back into C2 if there winning percentage is high enough. The second note is that of forced retirement. The general rule is that no free class player can be a member of the free class for more than 15 years and can not be a member after he has reached the age of 65. However, some years can be added to that depending on the Junisen from which a player comes when entering the free class. For example, from B1 it takes 8 years of consecutive winless records to drop out of C2. These 8 years are added as a bonus to the number of years one is allowed to stay in the free class. Suppose a player decides to join the free class after dropping to C1 and he is 44 years old. Since it takes five years to drop from C2 from the top of C1, this player is allowed to stay in the free class for a total of 20 years, until he is 64 years old. I hope this all makes sense, because I find the system quite complicated. More next week, Reijer -- Reijer Grimbergen Complex Game Lab Electrotechnical Laboratory 1-1-4 Umezono, Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki-ken, 305 JAPAN E-mail: grimberg etl go jp URL: http://www.etl.go.jp/etl/suiron/~grimberg/ Tel: +81-(0)298-54-3316 Fax: +81-(0)298-54-5918