From: Larry Kaufman WIZARD NET> Date: 27 may 2000 Subject: Re: SV: Re: SV: Re: A World Shogi Federation and a real At 02:35 PM 5/27/00 +0200, you wrote: >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. I don't know whether the "weakness" or "corrupt" nature of FIDE is the issue here; the problem is that for various reasons (sponsorship, publicity, etc.) they have abandonned the tradition of having the Champion defend his title in a match with a challenger selected by some fair process. This leaves the champion free to play a challenger outside of FIDE without much criticism. The top titles in Pro shogi are all decided in this manner, and so any one of them could be a legitimate World Championship, but only Ryu-O is potentially open to all. > >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... > At the present time, I estimate my chances at about 10% against top Japanese amateurs, and at perhaps 1% against Habu in an even game. When some western player becomes strong enough to win a top Japanese amateur event or to win some even games from pros in serious competition, that will be the time to talk about a true "World Championship". For now, we should really be discussing only the "World Amateur Championship"; at least that's an event that a non-Japanese player could dream of winning (I came so close last year!). Larry Kaufman