From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 24 dec 1999 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 820, December 22nd 1999) This week in Shukan Shogi the final round of the Osho league. Going into this round, Meijin Sato had the best chance to become challenger of Osho Habu. With a 4-1 score he was leading, followed by Morishita, Maruyama and Goda with 3-2. However, if he would lose he would not even be sure of a play-off, since in the Osho league only the top two players qualify for a play-off. Since Sato was ranked third after Morishita and Maruyama based on last year's result, winning his game against Tanigawa was the only way to be sure of becoming the challenger. It became a very difficult Yagura game that was close to until the end. Sato seemed to have a slight edge from the early middle game, but needed a mistake in the endgame to win the game. So, Sato will have another try against Habu, against whom he has an abysmal match record (1-6). Can he do better than two years ago when Habu beat him 4-1? Because of this result, the wins of Goda over Maruyama and Morishita over Nakahara no longer were important. The Osho match starts January 8th. The last Junisen round of this year was the 8th round of the C1 class. This also seems to be the class where promotion will be decided the earliest. Both leaders Suzuki and Kubo won. Suzuki beat Katsumata in a game where Katsumata seemed to have the lead. Katsumata must have been thinking that as well, since he had a chance to make sennichite but decided to go for a win that was not really there. Kubo showed his great form by crushing Nishimura straight from the opening. Both players now have perfect 7-0 records. There was some more good news from them, because promotion rival Sato Shuji blundered in the early middle game of the R8e Yokofudori and lost in only 59 moves to Namekata. The other player with only one loss, Hatakeyama Mamoru, also lost (against Horiguchi). This means that Kubo now only needs two wins out of the remaining three games, while Suzuki can secure promotion with only one more win. At seems that Kubo even has better chances than Suzuki, since he will not meet any of his rivals anymore, while Suzuki still has to face Namekata (5-2) and Sato Shuji (5-2). Still, it is not a wild prediction to say that both Suzuki and Kubo will play in B2 next year. Moriuchi has reached the final of the Kio challenger tournament with an impressive win over Shima. Shima underestimated a silver development move by Moriuchi and had to retreat, destroying his active defence. Moriuchi never gave him another chance to get back in the game. Moriuchi will now meet the winner of the second chance section and needs only one win from two games to become challenger of Kio Habu. In the second chance section Meijin Sato beat Fujii (who had a very bad week with three losses), so he will now play Shima to decide who can have another go at Moriuchi. The Kisei leagues this year are full of surprises. After wins by Tanaka Kaishu over Moriuchi and Matsumoto over Meijin Sato, Kimura added another upset by beating Ryu-O Fujii. Maybe upset is not really the right word. After all, Kimura is leading all professionals in winning percentage with a 31-8 season result (0.795). Finally, one more interesting thing in Shukan Shogi this week. For the first time there is a commented game between two European amateurs in the Amateur Gekitofu corner, which usually only has games between top Japanese amateur players. Ishikawa (6-dan) gives comments on the game between Arend van Oosten en Frederic Pottier from this year's European championships. A game where Arend's experience with the B4e Yokofudori wins the game almost straight from the opening. If Arend would have taken one of the two chances he had for an easy mate, the game might even have been mistaken for one between professionals (^-^). 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