From: DANERUD MARTIN TELIA COM> Date: 27 may 2000 Subject: SV: Re: SV: Re: A World Shogi Federation and a real Dear Larry and Alexander, > Well we have a World Chess Federation (FIDE), but their World >Championship is not recognized as the legitimate one by most of the world's >chess fans. The coming match between Kasparov and Kramnik will be >considered the real championship despite lack of any proper governing body, >because they are the two highest ranked players according to a system >widely recognized as fair (Elo ratings), and also because it is contested >for the largest amount of money. Yes. Once again you acknowledge my first contribution to this discussion. In chess we have this sad situation because of the weakness of the corrupt World Organisation. One extra difficulty in the boardgames is of course that the potential champions have strong wills and egos, which emphasizes the need for a strong World Organisation. > The Ryu-O is contested for the largest amount of money of any shogi >title, and any player in the world can now theoretically win it, so >regardless of how the title translates it is the only event in the world >that might be perceived as a true World Championship. It is sanctioned by >the Shogi Federation of Japan, which represents over 99% of the world's >players, so I don't see how it fails to meet your criteria for being a true >world championship. OK, folks, the following is a so called analogy: Sweden has dominated the short history of the floorball game (played indoors with plastic hooked sticks and a light plastic ball in an icehockey-sized arena). The first three World Championships have been won by Sweden. However, now a couple of countries (Finland, the Czech Republic, and Denmark) are getting closer, and the last World Championship final between Sweden and Finland was a close contest. But there IS a World Organisation and a real World Championship. Even though the majority of the floorball players of the world are Swedes, the other countries do NOT play a separate tournament, and the foreign champion team is NOT invited to play in the Swedish league... Alexander Nosovsky wrote: >I just can not understand why it is not possible... No, to common sense there is no explanation, but the real reason is the following: Our Japanese shogi friends are the kindest people on earth. We all know them to be joyful, nice, and generous. But basically (and I think to some extent correctly) they do not trust us. If shogi will become a truthfully international game, they are afraid that we (the gaijin, the westerners etc) will change the game and violate its traditions. They are afraid that we will introduce Swiss pairing systems, new names or symbols of the pieces, a set of exact rules, or whatever may be a violation of the old traditions. You may just read the contributions to Shogi-L, and it is easy to see that there are many ideas like these around. In his nice contribution "Shogi as Culture", Teruichi Aono expresses this type of concerns indirectly by referring to judo. When he visited Sweden in 1998, he expressed such concerns more directly regarding shogi. http://www.shogi.or.jp/english/aono/sasc1.htm Aono also indicates that shogi is especially suitable to the Japanese people. This thought is well spread in Japan. Then imagine the embarrasment if, say, a black person from Nigeria became the World Champion of shogi! OK, maybe it would do if the person was given a Japanese name, like the Hawaiian natives who are sumo yokozuna, and then include him in the professional circuit. But maybe that would not be that realistic with a black person... Best regards, Martin