From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 14 jul 1998 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 746, July 15th 1998) No title match game this week, so the challenger knock out of the Ryu-O tournament takes central stage. Last week two games were played to complete the quarterfinal draw. New Kisei Goda played Kitajima and Fujii played Suzuki Daisuke. For Goda this is a period in his career he should cherish, since everything comes natural and easy to him these days. Against Kitajima he again showed almost perfect shogi. Great play gave him a big advantage in the middle game. If he would have been a little more patient, the game would have been a depressing loss for Kitajima. However, Goda rushed his attack and for a moment it seemed that Kitajima would be able to stop it. Unfortunately, the disadvantage was too great and in the end Goda still won comfortably. In the next round he will face no other than Habu! That should be by far the most interesting game of the quarterfinals. Fujii had a very tough game against Suzuki. He fought back hard in a bad position and in the end it seemed that the game would end in sennichite. In byoyomi Fujii decided to go for the decisive attack and won. It was only after the game that both players discovered that a variation they both thought would be winning for Fujii was actually impossible because of an illegal move both players thought was possible! A strange end to this game, but Fujii goes through with a small embarrassed smile. He will now play Minami in the quarterfinal. The remaining two quarterfinals are Yashiki-Mori and Maruyama-Takahashi. Moriuchi should not be in high spirits these days. He is now clearly surpassed by his second childhood rival Sato Yasumitsu (the first was Habu) and even though he is considered to be one of the great talents in the game, he is still without a major title. Last week he blew another chance in the Kio challenger tournament. He played Nakahara and it was the veteran who went through to the best sixteen. Moriuchi in a small depression...? In Shukan Shogi this week also a big article about computer shogi. Mainichi Communications has brought out "Todai Shogi", the commercial version of the IS Shogi program, that won the Computer Shogi Championships in February. The overall conclusion is that the program is very strong, probably dan-level. I hope to get a copy myself soon and find out if the claims are justified (4-dan level in 10 seconds shogi!). The version works under Windows and I hope that it can be used on non-Japanese systems as well, so that with a little bit of menu translating, the program can be used outside of Japan as well. Finally, an interesting incident involving an illegal move by Shima in one of the television tournaments. On television, for clarity a set of pieces with only a single kanji character is being used. This means that a promoted silver has the same kanji as the gold. Shima played a game against Maruyama where he took a promoted silver by his opponent, put it wrong side up on his komadai and then dropped the piece as a promoted silver. Maruyama actually calculated the number of golds on the board, saw that there were five and pointed this out to Shima, who immediately resigned. Tough break for Shima. 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