From: Larry Kaufman COMCAST NET> Date: 28 oct 2002 Subject: Re: Congratulations ----- Original Message ----- From: "bogin" YAHOO CO JP> To: TECHUNIX TECHNION AC IL> Sent: Monday, October 28, 2002 7:00 AM Subject: Congratulations > I'm not from Europe but I agree wholeheartedly. Congratulations Mr. > Schnider. Attaining 5dan is truly an wonderful accomplishment. It's > something that I can only dream of attaining here in Japan. At the Japanese > Shogi Federation branch in Osaka, in order to go from my current rank of > 2dan to 5dan, a Japanese player would have to go 32-0 or 45-6 (12-2, 15-2, > 18-2) including handicap games against increasingly higher dan competition. > This would include handicap games (giving and receiving) as well. Even a > small losing streak of losing more than 2 out of 3 would mean that one > would have to start back at 0-0 again. If this isn't difficult enough, one > would also have to achieve these results within a given period of time. If > one is in active for more than 2 months then they would have to start at > 0-0 again as well. So, to be able to attain such a rank in a single > tournment is truly incredible. Hopefully, in future years the Japanese > Shogi Federation will allow foreigners who reside within Japan to also > participate in such tournaments. That will probably be my only chance of > attaining that high of a rank. > > Bill Gaudry > It's not quite as hard to earn 5 Dan in a Japanese club (such as Osaka Shogi Federation branch, where I've played often in the past) as you might think. It's true that you must score 18-2 as a 4 dan, but when you play lower-ranked players, the handicap is too small. Against a 3 Dan you only concede playing first, and against a 2 Dan only a lance, a very small handicap among amateurs. So if you are really of 5 Dan strength, meaning that you score about 3 out of 4 against 4 Dans, you will probably earn the rank relatively quickly if you play at the club several times a week. In my own case, I originally earned the 5 Dan rank in the same way as Gert, by winning an international shogi tournament (in the mid-80s, in Los Angeles) in which the rank was automatically awarded to the winner. I felt slightly embarrassed, because I knew that it was basically a promotional tool to award the rank to a Westerner. For a Japanese to earn 5 Dan in a tournament, he would have had to win a much stronger event than the ones that Gert or I won. So I determined to raise my level of play to the point where I felt that I could play as 5 Dan in Japan and score well enough. I eventually did play at that rank at both the Tokyo and Osaka Shogi Federation branches, and scored perhaps 70%, on one occasion winning the Osaka weekly handicap tournament. Only then did I feel that I had truly earned the rank. Gert is a very strong shogi player, perhaps the strongest in Europe (though that remains to be proven), and I hope and expect that he too will feel motivated to prove himself worthy of the high honor the Japanese Shogi Federation has bestowed on him. Now that we have an effective rating/ranking system in the West, he no longer needs to go to Japan to do this, but can do so by dominating the European shogi scene in the next couple years. If he can consistently score about 3 out of 4 against the 4 Dan players in Europe, he will have justified his rank. By the way, it is even possible to earn 6 Dan at the Tokyo and Osaka branches of the Shogi Federation. I made some efforts in this direction years ago, and while the strength of my play and the length of my stays in Japan were both insufficient for the task, I believe that if I actually lived in Japan I would have been able to qualify eventually. But since 6 Dan is usually reserved for national champions, earning the rank in club play might just be an embarrassment! Larry Kaufman