From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 20 nov 1998 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 764, November 18th 1998) This week in Shukan Shogi no title match game, but a lot of Junisen action with games in the A, B1, B2 and C1 classes. In the A class a big game between childhood rivals Habu and Moriuchi. For both players a game they really wanted to win, but for different reasons. Moriuchi had won three out of his four games and was still very much in the race for challenging Meijin Sato. Habu, on the other hand, had a surprising losing record of 1-3 and needed the win to stay out of relegation trouble. Moriuchi showed his will to win by playing the game in traditional kimono, a style usually only used in title matches. It became an epic battle of which the first part ended in sennichite and the replay looked like it might end in jishogi for a long time. However, in the end Moriuchi could take a lot of Habu's pieces, leaving him without the required number of points even when he would get an entering king. So, Moriuchi keeps close to leader Tanigawa. Together with Kato and Maruyama, they will decide the challenger of Sato. A big upset in B1. Leader Goda lost to Tamaru, who thus far had lost all of his games. This is a serious blow to Goda's promotion chances, since co-leader Tanaka beat Mori and he was also passed by Aono, who beat Fukuzaki. No wonder Goda did not leave the playing room together with his opponent after the game, but stayed at the board contemplating his endgame mistake. So, with still four rounds to play, B1 has suddenly become very interesting. Tanaka has only one loss and Aono and Goda each have two losses. They are followed by the former title holders Takahashi, Minami and Nakamura (4-3). Both Aono and Goda can not afford to lose another game. The situation in B2 seems to be much clearer. Leaders Naito and Fujii won again to extend their perfect score to 6 games. Only Abe and Sensaki have a 5-1 score. Both are lower ranked than Naito and Fujii, so a 2-2 score from the remaining games is probably enough to secure promotion, while a 3-1 score is definitely sufficient. Naito seems to have the easier schedule, but has to play Abe in the final round. Fujii has tougher opposition with Sensaki and Nakagawa still to play, but I expect that the Ryu-O title will give him even more confidence to win these games. In C1 leader Suzuki lost to former Kisei Miura, which leaves only Kanzaki (beat Ishikawa) and Sato Shuuji with a 6-0 score. However, with strong players like Yashiki, Miura, Suzuki, Ogura and Fukaura on 5-1, predicting the promotion candidates is very hard. Especially because of a final round game between the two leaders. This means that Yashiki has promotion in his own hands as well. In the Osho league Morishita took another big step towards another title match appearance by beating Maruyama. He is now the leader in the league with 3-0. Nakahara continued his good run in the Osho league by beating Tanigawa and is now 3-1. Meijin Sato kept his chances alive by beating Nakamura and is now 2-2. Still a lot of strange things can happen. Only Tanigawa at 0-3 has no chance to challenger Habu this year. More next week, Reijer -- Reijer Grimbergen Complex Games 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