From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 14 jan 1999 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 771, January 13th 1999) At the beginning of the year, the professional season is a little slow to start up, like most things in Japan. However, there were some people already very busy. For example, Meijin Sato had to play twice in the Kio challenger tournament. After having lost to Kobayashi in the main knock-out, he now got a chance for revenge in the second chance round after he had beaten Shima and Kobayashi lost to Fujii. Kobayashi has an amazing 5-1 record against Sato, so this was far from easy. However, this time he played a very good game against Kobayashi's Anaguma and when Kobayashi miscalculated the defense against the classic attack on 8c, it was Sato who got a big advantage and despite Kobayashi's desperate efforts won the game. This meant a showdown between Meijin Sato and Ryu-O Fujii for the right to challenger Kio Habu. A great match-up in which Sato has to win two games in a row, while Fujii needs only one win. The opening: of course the Fujii system. Both players showed deep opening preparation, with Sato moving the king from 8h to 7h instead of moving into the anaguma. Sato's opening preparation seemed just a little better and a surprising knight sacrifice gave him a position with great pressure against Fujii's king. This turned out to be decisive, with Sato in the end winning by one move. So, now the score is tied and the winner of the decisive game today (January 14th) will be challenger for the Kio title. Habu started the year badly. First he blundered away the game against Nakagawa in the first group of the Ryu-O tournament. This meant he will now have to play from the second chance round and that relegation is more likely than qualification for the knock-out finals. He also lost against Maruyama, who improved the disastrous 1-11 record he had against Habu a little by winning there game in the Zen Nihon Pro Tournament. As a result, Habu will not defend his title in this tournament this year. This is all for this week. Next week everything will be back to normal with the start of the Osho title match between Habu and Morishita and games in the A and C1 Junisen classes. 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