From: "'Shigeki Masui'" BANET NET> Date: 30 may 2000 Subject: Re: News from Shogi World Championship We, New York Shogi members are very thankful for many shogi friends sending us the warmest letter of appreciation and support of the tournament. Including messages from Messrs. Geuns-Meyer, Doug Dysart, Larry Kaufman though Shogi-L, the tournament have received 18 letters of appreciation. All of these letters will be presented to the committee meeting to be held the day after tomorrow. We will highly appreciate if any of the participants send us your comment about the tournament. Please let me have a chance to clarify one very important subject: Although I highly appreciate many letters and mails addressing to myself, the key of the success of this tournament was the efforts of all of the Ny Shogi Club members. Through the course of the preparation of the tournament we discovered many talented members among ourselves and at last 14 of the club members (as you see in the last page of Album on HP) stood up one after another and took care of every new problem we encountered. As my job was public relation and communication, my name became popular to many of you but I am not the one who really produced this epoch making tournament. It was not me who dreamed to organize the Shogi World Championship. Many members such as Mr. M. Hayahsi and S. Ogihara have been dreaming of this tournament for more than 10 years. I am just one of the 14 members who made their dream to come through. When we wanted to open new web site, we found a specialist among our members, he took care of all IT and HP and could not play any single game of shogi during the tournament. When we had to design our web site and shocked to learn the high cost of designing, we found a top New York designer among ourselves who volunteered to design HP, Program and T-Shirts and banners at free of charge. When we needed a specialist to conduct the tournament we found a perfect person who was a captain of one of the strongest college teams in Japan. He could not play any single game of shogi at all during tournament. One of our member made several telephone call to Moscow to convince US Embassy to issue visa to the Russian representative, he spent large amount of time to obtain a letter from Mayor of New York, some of us called more than 350 companies and asked their donation like a beggar. Wives and families of the members volunteered sight seeing for the wives of the players, some of them got up early in the morning to cook rice and miso-soup when they learned that some of Brazilian players were suffering unable to eat Western meals without rice and miso-soup. Many members volunteered a driver job to back and force airport to hotel. Do not laugh at them, youngest one was 63 years old and 76 years was the oldest except Egos. Some of them volunteered to take pros to baseball stadium and some of them went to Jazz Club with pros. Toward the end of the tournament we found that we are working all together as a unity and smiling and hugging each other. We found the great satisfaction among ourselves that we could work all together to achieve the goal. Please look at the faces of their joys in HP, http://nyshogi.com. Shigeki Masui Director of Communication of The Tournament. Hans Geuns wrote: > The Shogi World Championship was one of the most pleasant and best > organized tournaments I ever participated in. So I can only agree with > Doug Dysart's enthusiastic report and with Shigeki Masui remarks: as far > as I'm concerned it also was a splendid success. It was also very nice to > see some of my old European Shogi friends again, and to meet a few new > Shogi players for the first time. > > When, a few weeks before the tournament, I saw on the NY Shogi Club > website that the venue was in Armonk, I was a little bit worried about the > way to get there from JFK Airport. But Mr. Masui took care of that: he > sent a van to the airport to pick me and my wife up and he made sure that > the cost would not be too much. The same van had been shuttling to and > from the airport all day to pick up arriving players. On the whole the > organization of the tournament was excellent and I'm sure that all > participants and visitors had a great weekend. > > Hans Geuns-Meyer > ---------------- > > On Wed, 24 May 2000, 'Shigeki Masui' wrote: > > > The Tournament has ended with great success. > ... > > > The tournament committee will wait for the comments of the players who > > actually participated in the tournament as it is the most important for > > the tournament committee rather than the misleading comments about the > > location of the tournament made by a couple of none participants. > > > > > > The tournament acknowledge that as of May 21, 2000 Mr. Katsumasa Egoshi > > is the strongest amateur shogi player outside of Japan and that he is > > invited to the Amateur Ryuo-Sen in 2001. > > Shigeki Masui, Executive Director of the communication of the > > tournament. > >