From: Pieter Stouten <stouten <at> SHOGI <dot> NET>
Date: 27 may 2000
Subject: Re: A World Shogi Federation and a real World Championship

I am very pleased to see the discussion on the issues around a world
federation and the "real World Championship," a term coined by Martin
Danerud. Larry also made an important point that in Chess, the real
World Champion is not necessarily the player that wins the FIDE World
Championship.

The NY Club (supported on this list, among others, by Doug Dysart),
indicated that they were very willing to listen to participants in
order to improve subsequent incarnations of the WSC. Like any
organizer, they have the absolute right to decide how to run their
tournament. To my mind, the situation becomes a bit different when
they claim to organize a WSC, but even in that case the situation is
fairly simple: whoever claims the name and registers it, legally owns
it. Ultimately, the Shogi community as a whole may regard one or the
other tournament the real World Championship. As in Chess, it may be
that some people regard the Ryu O the strongest player, while others
think the Meijin is.

There are no objective criteria by which one can establish what the
real championship is; it is ultimately mostly a matter of taste.
Larry argued that "for the first time in history, it [a world
championship] now exists" as every Shogi player in the world has the
opportunity to become Ryu O. However, this is factually not entirely
accurate, nor is it objectively true that that makes it a world
championship. If there was a 10-dan in, say, on Kiribati, but there
were fewer than 12 players there, he could not have qualified for the
WSC in New York. Also, there is the question whether a Championship
is Championship when only the best player emerges or when the best
two (or 4 or 8 etc.) players contest the final: Egoshi (Brasil) and
Ito (Thailand) may be the best two players in the world, but only
Egoshi will have a chance to prove that.

As to the issue of a "World Shogi Federation," again anybody can
start such an organization and organize a WSC. However, nobody may
accept their authority. Since NSR represents the vast majority of
Shogi players, by default they are the World Federation unless they
agree to be involved in a separate organization that they recognize
as the "World Shogi Federation."

So far, I have not indicated my personal preference. It is very
simple. To my mind, an amateur World Championship should be organized
under the auspices of a world organization, but if such an
organization does not exist, the combined inter(national)
organizations, such as NSR, USSF, FESA, etc. should agree on how to
do it and should have the ultimate responsability.

Ciao,

Pieter