From: Larry Kaufman <lkaufman <at> WIZARD <dot> NET>
Date: 26 may 2000
Subject: Re: A World Shogi Federation and a real World Championship

At 09:18 PM 5/26/00 +0200, you wrote:
>The main task of the World Shogi Federation should be to arrange the World
Championship
>of shogi. Of course, the top professional players should be automatically
qualified. Maybe there
>should be qualifications for one Japanese amateur and one non-Japanese
amateur
>(maybe arranged by the New York Shogi Club!). The World Championship
should maybe be
>arranged every four years in order to show its importance compared to
national, continental,
>and professional tournaments.
>
>                                                            Martin Danerud
>
     Actually, for the first time in history, it now exists!  I refer to
the Ryu-O tournament.  The winner of the event in Armonk gets to play in
the Amateur Ryu-O next year; the winner of that event gets to play in the
Pro Ryu-O, and so in theory any player in the world could become Ryu-O,
which can be considered the real World Champion.  Of course the event in
Armonk should have had the word "Amateur" in the title, to avoid the
implication that the winner is the overall world champion.
     Before this year Ryu-O only invited players from selected regions, so
it was not really a world championship until now.

     Larry Kaufman