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

At 12:36 PM 5/27/00 +0200, you wrote:

>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.
>
     The Meijin could well be the strongest player, but only the Ryu-O has
some claim to being the world champion, since a non-Japanese or even a
Japanese amateur
cannot become Meijin.  The Meijin may be considered the World's
professional champion.

>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.

     Sorry Pieter, my statement was right and yours is wrong.  Any player
outside Japan was eligible for the New York event; it is only the free trip
that the imaginary player from Kiribati could not have won.  He could still
have played.

 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.
>
     This amounts to saying that a knockout is not a valid World
Championship.  While I am no fan of the knockout system, it is still a
legitimate system to choose a champion, though there are better ones.  The
Meijin challenger is chosen by a round robin of ten top players, and
historically I think the Meijin is more often the strongest player than the
Ryu-O.

>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."
>
     I agree.

>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.
>
     I agree here too.

>Ciao,
>
>Pieter
>
     Larry Kaufman