From: Reijer Grimbergen fu is saga-u ac jp> Date: 26 dec 2003 Subject: These weeks in Shukan Shogi (no. 1024 and 1025, December 17th and The Ryu-O title match finished prematurely, which means that Shukan Shogi opens two times in a row with the retirement of Yonenaga, one of the Shogi greats. His final game in the Osho league (a loss against Goda) was the final official game of a magnificent career in which he made 48 title match appearances (5th on the all time list) and won 19 titles. He also won 16 other tournaments. He played 1904 games in his professional career and won 1103 of them. However, more than the figures, his flamboyant character made him a charismatic figure who was one of the few shogi players also known to people who did not care much for shogi. This will not change after the end of his active career, so I am sure that we will here from Yonenaga again. The Osho league finished with a bang as leader Tanigawa lost to Morishita. This second loss in a row for Tanigawa meant that Moriuchi and Kubo managed to catch up. Moreover, because the Osho league only allows a two-player play-off, Tanigawa did not even get the right to play for challenging Habu. Moriuchi and Kubo will decide the challenger on December 29th. In the A class, three games of round 6 were played. Rookie Suzuki scored an important win against Miura. Not only does this virtually secure his place in next years A class, he still has a chance to become Meijin challenger because his next game is against leader Moriuchi. Tanigawa also stayed within striking distance of Moriuchi with a win against Shima. Shima now finds himself at the bottom of the class with 1-5 and will need a miracle to avoid relegation. The same goes for Aono, who also is 1-5 after an important loss against Fujii, who is now 2-4. Aono could have won this game and will probably regret his late mistake dearly in March. In B1, round 10 was played and Fukaura virtually clinched promotion with a win against promotion rival Goda. Followers Abe and Takahashi lost, which means Fukaura now needs only one win from three games to make his debut in the top league. The fight for the second spot is still open, with Kitahama having the lead at 7-2 before Senzaki, Abe and Takahashi at 6-3. Before the start of the season, it was almost unthinkable that Kitahama would promote, but with all the other players stumbling and a relatively easy schedule, I now think that his promotion chances are better than 50-50. In B3 the 7th round was played and we are back at the situation after round five with Namekata and Horiguchi Kazushiza in the lead. At that point I expected them to just run away from the field which jinxed them in dropping their next game. I might jinx them again, but I still think they will both promote to B1. However, for Namekata there is still one important hurdle to take, as he will face Kimura in the 9th round. If he loses that game, Minami might pick up the pieces and get back to B1 after one year of absence. In C1 the 7th round was played and Yashiki finally seems destined to say goodbye to this class in his 14th attempt. He beat Nakata Isao, who was one of the players chasing him with one loss. Yashiki remains unbeaten and is now only followed by Toyokawa, Nozuki and Watanabe. His remaining schedule looks quite reasonable with Ouchi, Naganuma and Murooka and he needs only two wins from those three games. The question seems to be: who will accompany Yashiki to B2? In C2 also the 7th round was played and rookie Yokoyama finally lost his first Junisen game and it will have hurt him that he lost it against fellow rookie Nishio. This now means that Chiba is the only unbeaten player after seven rounds. He will need to keep winning, though, as he is followed by Yamasaki, Iijima, Miyata, Anyoji and Yokoyama. Because the first three are ranked higher than Chiba and there are only three promotion spots to C1, the pressure on Chiba is still very much on. His next game is against Anyoji, which will be very important. I think C2 is still too close to call, although I expect Yamasaki with his high Junisen position, his terrific form this season and his relatively easy schedule to take one of the promotion spots. In the Kio tournament, Fukauara kept his chances of becoming challenger alive by beating Sato in the losers play-off. Fukaura now needs to win two games in a row against Tanigawa to challenge Kio Habu. This is my last Shukan Shogi report of 2003. I hope you enjoyed them and although 2004 promises to be an even busier year than 2003, I hope I can keep sending the reports on a more or less regular basis. Best shogi wishes for 2004, 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 --^---------------------------------------------------------------- This email was sent to: shogi-l shogi net EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a2i6Ys.a7fLMV.c2hvZ2kt Or send an email to: shogi-unsubscribe topica com TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html --^----------------------------------------------------------------