From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 16 sep 1999 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 806, September 15th 1999) A big upset in the Ryu-O tournament. Favourite Maruyama lost the third and decisive game in the challenger final against young Suzuki Daisuke. Therefore Suzuki now has to quickly buy a formal kimono to wear in his first title match. Again the Ryu-O tournament proves to be a stage for a new young star to present himself. Sanada (lost against Tanigawa two years ago), Fujii (beat Tanigawa last year) and now Suzuki all have taken the Ryu-O tournament to show what they are capable of. Suzuki is clearly capable of a lot of things. To get to the final, he had to beat Tanigawa and Moriuchi, and this year he completed his fifth consecutive promotion in the Ryu-O tournament. He would have played in the top group as a 5-dan whatever his result in the challenger tournament. As it is now, he might even do better than that: not play in the top group because he is the title holder. Suzuki had to fight hard to get there, though. The final game of the challenger match took 165 moves to finish and for a long time Maruyama was dictating the game. However, Suzuki slowly crawled back in and finished with confidence. For a moment he seemed to have blundered in the final moves, but he managed to find another, more difficult, way to win. At was also a Junisen week last week with games in A, B1, B2 and C2. In the A-class Shima and Nakahara both had won their first game and lost their second game, so they had to play a very important game. The winner would keep hopes of challenging for the title, while the loser would await a tough season with a long battle against relegation. Odds were not very good for Shima, since he had lost the five previous games they had played in the A-class. He fared better this time although it did not look like a textbook win. Nakahara opted for an odd looking middle game position which should have given Shima good play. However, when Shima made a mistake things were unclear for a long time until Nakahara was a little impatient in taking a rook. This gave Shima a good attack and from then on it was not too difficult anymore. Interesting detail, Nakahara had still one and a half hours of thinking time left when he resigned. It is a bit early to speculate about the retirement of the 52 year old Nakahara, but he is in a little bit of trouble considering his low position in the class. In B1, there were no players with a perfect score left after round 4. This class may really be a close race this year, since after round 5 there are only 3 players with a 4-1 score: Inoue, Kiriyama and Senzaki. Furthermore, they are followed by only two other players with a positive score: Aono and Kamiya. Inoue is looking for a quick come-back to the top class after his unfortunate relegation last year. In a difficult middle game against Kobayashi he showed that he was the strongest player by punishing a single mistake by his opponent. Kiriyama scored a surprising win over Minami, but there are no comments on that in Shukan Shogi. It would be a miracle if 51 year old Kiriyama would make a comeback to the A-class. It is more likely that Inoue will be joined by Senzaki, who beat Naito. In B2, Urano continued his remarkable recovery after a 2-8 disaster last year by scoring his fourth straight win. He is co-leading the class with Ryu-O Fujii, who crushed Tanaka Kaishu in only 56 moves in a new variation of the Fujii system. Tanaka unwisely opted to move in the Anaguma early and was overwhelmed by Fujii's quick attack. Third place in the class is for Abe, who is also without loss, but played only three games so far. Newly promoted Fukaura dropped back after losing to Waki and is now 2-1. Players on 3-1 are Tomioka, Izumi, Waki and Miura. Next round: Fujii-Miura! In C2, the group of leaders after round 4 suddenly has become much smaller. After round 3 there were still eight leaders, but this has dropped down to four now. Sugimoto is the top promotion favourite, but he had to work really hard against Anzai. At 1:50 in the morning, after 178 moves Sugimoto finally could relax. It was Anzai who had the lead for most of the game, but Sugimoto made it really hard and after a couple of small mistakes by Anzai he found a way to squeeze out the win. Izuka and Kobayashi both had three wins from three games and it was Izuka who managed to stay on top of the leader board. The battle of the two teenagers Yamazaki(18) and Matsuo(19) also was between two players with a perfect score. This game was won by the younger Yamazaki. An interesting game, since Yamazaki played a very risky move in a position in which he was clearly better and almost gave it all away. In the endgame both players made mistakes, with Matsuo making the last one and losing the game. The fourth leader after four rounds is Horiguchi, who beat Chuza and is showing that his remarkable play in last year's NHK tournament (he lost the final to Habu) was not a coincidence. We have two new professionals and quite a big contrast. Akutsu Chikara is only 17 years old and won the 3-dan league after a rocket start of 9 consecutive wins in only his second try. He was leading comfortably all the way and even though it became a little too close for comfort in the end, favourable results in the next to final round made his promotion certain with one game to play. He also won that final game to show his superior play. He seems to have the talent to become a title holder one day. Akutsu is the only pupil of Taki, 7-dan and might already be stronger than his teacher, who is not winning many games anymore these days. In contrast, Anyouji Takanori is 25 years old and took 11 years to clear the Shoreikai, spending three and a half years in the 3-dan league. Two 3-dan league tournaments ago he had the nightmare experience of having his promotion chances in his own hands on the final day, only to fail miserably and lose both games. He seemed to have learned from this experience, coming from behind this time to win both games and overtake both Hashimoto and Miyata, who were ranked higher than Anyouji. He was clearly very relieved about making the rank: "I have dreamed so much about this day, that it still feels like a dream". Anyouji is one of the many pupils of Mori Nobuo. Back on schedule with the Shukan Shogi posts. 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