From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 19 nov 1999 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 815, November 17th 1999) No title match game last week, but quite a lot of other interesting shogi news. In the A class Junisen two games were played. Moriuchi played Tanigawa in a game that was very important for both players. Moriuchi (3-1) needed to win to keep the pressure on Maruyama (4-0), while Tanigawa (2-2) played for his last chance to become Meijin challenger again this year. Moriuchi grabbed the early lead in a Yokofudori game, but he overlooked a surprising bishop drop that made things very difficult. Only shortly after that, Tanigawa made another mistake and this time it was a decisive one. Moriuchi will now most likely be Maruyama's only rival in the race for challenging Sato. The second game in the A class was between Nakahara and Tanaka. This was a big game for relegation. Tanaka had a great start in the A class this year by winning his first two games. However, after losing the next two, he was in trouble again. This trouble was worse for Nakahara, who started with a good win over Habu, but then lost three games in a row. The game turned out to be a great performance by Tanaka. He found a great silver sacrifice in the middle game, which completely surprised Nakahara. However, after taking 46 minutes for his reply, Nakahara found the only way to counter. It was still Tanaka who had the lead, but it was very close. In the end Tanaka had to find another great move to win the game. Tanaka is now virtually safe from relegation, while Nakahara is in great danger of losing his place in the A class, which he kept for 30 consecutive years. In B1 round seven was played. 52-year old Kiriyama is on his way to become the surprise of this year's B1 class. Fighting relegation in the past years, he suddenly plays a different type of shogi and shared the lead with with young Senzaki, both with 6-1 scores. Both leaders improved their record to 7-1, but in very different ways. Kiriyama played a good game against Naito, where Naito made only one mistake in the middle game. This was enough for Kiriyama to decide the game in 84 moves. On the other hand, Senzaki blundered in the middle game against Fukuzaki and had to be satisfied with a horrible position. However, multiple mistakes by his opponent let him back in and finally he managed to turn around the game. Both leaders are followed by Inoue, who beat Takahashi to get to a 5-2 score. The race for promotion is still unclear, with all three players still having to face each other in the next four rounds, so even Aono, Minami and Mori still can hope for a miracle at 4-3. In B2 round 7 was played and most interest in the press room was for the game between Ryu-O Fujii and Tosa. The reason was that Tosa had a very good (perhaps even winning) position. However, Fujii found a nasty counter attack against which Tosa defended in the wrong way, so the Ryu-O escaped being knocked out of the promotion race. He is now still leading the field with a 5-1 score, but Abe, Waki, Miura and Fukaura also have the same score, so it is all still very much unclear. Maybe we will know more after the next round, when Fujii plays Abe. This seems to be his last tough opponent this year. My prediction is that Fujii will make it and that he will be joined by either Miura or Fukaura. In the Osho league three games were played. The most interesting was the encounter between undefeated Goda (2-0) and Meijin Sato (2-1). If Goda would win this game, he would be well on his way to challenging Habu. Goda had the lead early on, but a mistake gave Sato the advantage, which he carried in the endgame. With both players in byoyomi, Goda missed a chance to make it very difficult for Sato. One defence against a Sato check lead to a difficult endgame that might just have been won by Sato. The other defence lead to a quick mate. Unfortunately for Goda, he picked the latter one. Sato now has the lead with 3-1, while Goda follows at 2-1. Goda was joined by Morishita, who beat Kubo. Kubo will have lost some sleep over that, because he blundered in a position that was clearly better. Maruyama also still has a chance to become Osho challenger after beating Tanigawa, giving him a 1-1 score. Tanigawa drops back to 0-3 and seems to be the only player in the Osho league without a chance to challenge Habu. 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