From: Reijer Grimbergen FU IS SAGA-U AC JP> Date: 23 aug 2001 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 905, August 22nd 2001) Last week it was O-bon here in Japan, the main summer holidays when most Japanese either return to their hometowns to honor their forefathers (the old fashioned way) or go to Hawaii and spent a week at the beach (the modern way). The professional shogi world is no exception and only a few significant games were played last week. Shukan Shogi had trouble filling its pages, so this is going to be a short report: * The most important result came from the Ryu-O challenger tournament where Kimura played Hatakeyama Mamoru for a place in the challenger finals. Kimura is blazingly hot this season with a winning percentage close to 90%. However, Hatakeyama didn't show any signs of being impressed by this and got a very good position out of the opening. Still, Kimura made it very difficult for his opponent and slowly managed to get back in the game. Hatakeyama did everything to keep his advantage, but once the flow of the game was going Kimura's way, there was no stopping him. Kimura showed that his winning percentage is no coincidence and now gets a chance to show what he's really capable of as his opponent in the three game challenger final is no other than Habu. * In the Asahi Open the last amateur had to retire from the tournament. Young Kato had quickly made a name for himself by convincingly beating Anyoji and then showed his fighting spirit with a win from a lost position against Kanzaki. In the third round he played former A class member Kobayashi Kenji and this was supposed to end Kato's phenomenal run. In the end this was how it turned out, but Kobayashi had to really work hard for the point. In a double anaguma game things were close until the very end and only when Kato overplayed his hand in an attempt to win with one move difference Kobayashi managed to combine attack and defense to win. This year ten amateurs were invited to play in the Asahi Open tournament. In the first round the amateurs won two games: Kato and pro killer Yamada. In the second round only Kato survived and he is now also out of the tournament. Total result for the amateurs: three wins and 10 losses. I wonder if this result will improve in the coming years. There is nothing more to report, so more next week, Reijer -- Reijer Grimbergen Department of Information Science Saga University 1 Honjo-machi, Saga-shi, 840-8502 Japan E-mail: grimbergen fu is saga-u ac jp URL: http://www.fu.is.saga-u.ac.jp/~grimberg/ Tel: +81-(0)952-28-8821 Fax: +81-(0)952-28-8650