From: DANERUD MARTIN <martin.danerud <at> TELIA <dot> COM>
Date: 15 may 2002
Subject: Thore defended his title

Dear shogi friends,

May 9-12, in Linkoping, the Swedish Shogi Championship play-off was
played at a game convention with a lot of games and hundreds of young
persons. The two top players (out of eighteen) from the Swedish
Championship tournament in February in Stockholm played the first best-
of-three games Challenger final. Peter Kaneko won the first game, and
Nils Carlsson won the second game. The third game was a tough and
entertaining fight that was won by Peter, who qualified for his third
consecutive Swedish Championship final.
The first game of the best-of-five games final, Thore Ångqvist vs Peter
Kaneko, was a game close to the best level where Swedish players can
perform at the moment. Thore had an opening initiative, but Peter
narrowly failed to win with a counter attack. Thore took back the
initiative, seemed to secure a free way for his king in the center, and
built up a tsume-threating attack. However, Peter fought fiercely to
counter attack again. Finally, Thore succeeded to keep his defence
together, and his tsume-attack resulted.
Unfortunately, the rest of the final was nothing like this. Thore
easily took care of Peter's rapid attacks, and his heavy and safe shogi
style secured him wins in final games two and four. He should have won
game three as well, but Peter succeeded with an edge attack in a bad
position. Thus, Thore had defended his title by winning 3 to 1 in the
final.
The Swedish team for the 2nd International Shogi Forum in Japan will
thus be:
A: Thore Angqvist
B: Peter Kaneko
C: Nils Carlsson
Team manager: Martin Danerud
Of course we will not be regarded as favourites in Tokyo, but we are
very grateful to Nihon Shogi Renmei for the invitation, and we will do
our best against the strong teams from the other nations.

Sincerely yours,

Martin Danerud

President of the Swedish Shogi Federation