From: Schnider UTANET AT> Date: 6 nov 2002 Subject: Level of Shogi in Europe Dear Shogi friends! There were a few mails concerning the level of play in Europe and I want to give my opinion on this point. At the international Shogiforum I got the chance to play a few games with professionals and also to analyse with them. I was quite impressed by their knowledge and the speed of their calculation - I donīt think we can catch up with strong Japanese male professionals in the near future but our level is not that bad either. On rook handicap I easily beat Aono, 9dan, in an exhibition match and other Europeans have won rook handicaps too. At bishop handicap we have some chances too. And if this is not enough to aquire at least good amateur status I also won on even against a Japanese woman professional - I spoke with other Europeans about that and for example Eric Cheymol has also won even games against woman professionals. So even tough it is clear that our level of play is weaker than in Japan we are definitely quite strong amateurs. One more thing I experienced comparing European and Japanese players. When playing against Japanese amateurs (from 2dan to 4dan, also some 5dans) I got a worse position after the opening in nearly all my games, and this does not happen to me in Europe - Japanese know a lot more about joseki (probably because of better access to books, and magazines) - but when it comes to fighting and endgame calculations they are weaker than Europeans with the same rank. I won around 70% of my games against 4-Dans and all even games against weaker japanese amateurs because of these better calculation abilities. Gert Schnider, 5-Dan