From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 7 jan 2000 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 821, First of all a happy new year to everyone on the list. I hope to be able to bring weekly reports from Shukan Shogi this year as well. Around new year there is not much action in professional shogi (not much action in the rest of Japan either...), so Shukan Shogi always has a double issue for christmas and new year. Tomorrow the first game of the Osho match between Habu and Sato will start and that will kick off the new year. Can Sato end his six title match losing streak against Habu by taking the Osho title? Of course there were some games left to play at the end of the year. In the A class Junisen Kato and Goda played the final game of round 6. Both players had 2-3 records going into the game and needed the win badly to have a little breathing space in the battle against relegation. Surprisingly, it was a game that veteran Kato played much better than his 32 year younger opponent. Goda made several mistakes and in all cases Kato had seen the better moves, which he immediately pointed out in the post-mortem analysis. This was Kato's third win in a row after losing his first three games and the oldest player in the A class suddenly looks very likely to keep his spot among shogi's elite players. On the other hand, Goda is not having much fun in his first year in the top class. His 2-4 record puts him at the bottom of the league and he will need to win at least two more games out of the last three to avoid falling back to B1 immediately. With games against Habu and Maruyama still to come, this is not going to be easy. In C2 round 8 was played and the tension starts to rise in the promotion race and the fight against relegation. Undefeated leaders Sugimoto and Iizuka had to play Kanki and Yagura respectively. Sugimoto did not have much trouble and won easily, but the game between Iizuka and Yagura was a different story. Yagura had prepared well for the game and surprised Iizuka with playing the Yagura opening (confusingly, Yagura is a Furibisha player). Iizuka was forced into a valiant attack that was just not good enough against a perfect defence and that was exactly what Yagura played. A painful loss for Iizuka, who drops out of the lead, but still has his promotion chances in his own hands. His opponents in the remaining rounds give him still good hopes for promotion. Sugimoto is now the only undefeated player and his high position in the class means that he probably only needs one more win out of the three remaining rounds. Sugimoto is followed by Iizuka, Nozuki and Horiguchi Kazushiza, all with 6-1 scores. Nozuki beat fellow Katsuura (9-dan) pupil Kanezawa, while Horiguchi took his time to figure out that a horrible silver-rook shape was actually the right way to play a difficult Kakugawari middle game. Ueyama thought he had good chances to win and attacked violently. When he figured out that this was an illusion, it was already too late. Looking at the remaining opponents of the four leaders it is difficult to say who is going to be the odd man out. Nozuki does not have his chances in his own hands, but he has by far the easiest schedule with Sekine (0-8), Kanki (1-6) and Tsubouchi (1-6) left to play. It seems unlikely that someone from the group of players with 5-2 will be able to promote to C1. The Kio challenger tournament is in its final stages. Moriuchi has already stated his claim by winning the knock-out section. In the Kio there is a second chance round from the semi-finals and Meijin Sato and Shima were the two players deciding who would get another go at Moriuchi. It was a little surprising that Shima managed to beat Sato for the second time in a row (they also played in the semi-final). Shima showed some good form in this game, controlling the Yagura fight all the way, ending it with some cool defending. Sato never really had a chance to win. Shima will now have to beat Moriuchi twice to challenge Habu for the Kio title. Finally some more exposure of shogi outside Japan. Every year Shukan Shogi has a top ten of the most important shogi events. This year the top honours do not go to Maruyama's brilliant play, Habu's defence of his four titles or the Meijin match that went to seven games for the second year in a row. Instead, the Shogi Forum is considered the most important shogi event of the past year. Prominently on the cover are Larry Kaufman and Matt Casters, proudly showing their trophies. I think the fact that Larry came within an inch of becoming world champion has impressed some people over here. 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