From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 20 mar 1998 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 729, March 18th 1998) Last week the final decisions in the Junisen as the final round in B1 and C2 was played. In B1 Maruyama and Murayama were already promoted. I have heard that Murayama might not play in the A-class next year. I was told that his health problems are caused by cancer, which is bad enough but especially for someone who is only 28 years old. Due to his illness, Murayama has lost a lot of weight in a very short period, which was clear from the NHK tournament game he played against Habu last weekend (and lost badly). Murayama might take a year off to try and recover and I sincerely hope he will be able to beat that terrible disease. In B1 there was still one relegation spot to be decided and four players who were in danger: Naito, Aono, Kiriyama and Mori. Naito was in the toughest position, being ranked lowest and having to play Maruyama. Maruyama won, which was a great relief for Aono, who lost to Murayama. This meant that Maruyama was the first player ever to clear B1 with a perfect score. Also, the two oldest players in B1, 62-year old Ariyoshi and 58-year old Naito were relegated and the two youngest players, 27-year old Maruyama and 28-year old Murayama were promoted. In C2 there were no surprises as the two players who had their chances in their own hands managed to win their final game and accompany Sato to C1. For Okazaki this was a tremendous mental effort. Last year he also had his chances in his own hands in the final game, which he lost to Ono. This year his chances for promotions seemed small after a loss in the third round against rookie Kobayashi. Still, he managed to hang in there and now did get promotion to C1. The other player to promote is Fukaura. Fukaura has been considered to be too strong for C2 for a long time. He already was challenger in a title match (the Oi title two years ago) and he scores more than 60% wins every year. It is an indication of the problems of getting out of C2 that this was the first time in his five years as a professional that he had a chance to promote in the final game. There was something to worry about though, since his opponent was Namekata, who is also considered to be one of the strongest young players. In the game, however, Fukaura did not have much problems. He had the lead early on in the game and after a mistake by Namekata it was over quite soon. The only other interesting news in last week's Shukan Shogi is that Ina Yusuke has decided to accept the chance for promotion to 4-dan and becoming a free class player. Even though the conditions of promoting from the free class to C2 are severe, he fancies his chances there more than in the 3-dan league. Ina is the first 3-dan player who gets this chance according to the new rules. It will be interesting to see if he can also become the first player to get to C2 from the free class. 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