From: Larry Kaufman <lkaufman <at> WIZARD <dot> NET>
Date: 27 may 2000
Subject: Re: World Shogi Federation and a real World Championship

At 11:31 AM 5/27/00 +0400, you wrote:
>Hello Shogi Fans
>
>I have some ideas for real WC.
>I just can not understand why it is not possible to have 10 players
>round-robin Tournament with 5 Japanese (Pro-players) and 5 winners of
>Qualification Swiss Tournament (places 1-5) (without Japanese players).
>Japanese have to decide about 5 places by themself.
>In Qualification Tournament have to be 3 players from Each country member of
>World Shogi  Federation.
>Then it is possible add some strong players or increase represantative from
>strong Shogi countries like Brasil may be till 5 members and decrease weak
>till 1 or 2 players depending the results of previouse Qualification
>Tournaments.
>
     This might indeed make sense in the future, when and if the
non-Japanese players demonstrate enough strength for it to be worthwhile.
As we saw in Armonk, even low-ranked professionals (4-6 Dan) can play five
national champions simultaneously, give them all a bishop handicap, and
score 90%.  Furthermore, all of the winners were really Japanese (living
abroad); no non-Japanese won a single game in this competition!

Larry Kaufman