From: Reijer Grimbergen FU IS SAGA-U AC JP> Date: 3 jul 2003 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 1000, July 2nd 2003) This week s issue of Shukan Shogi is a special one: issue number 1000. Interviews and a lot of data about the past issues. For example, here is the number of times players where on the front page of Shukan Shogi: 1) Habu 330 2) Tanigawa 300 3) Nakahara 136 4) Yonenaga 121 5) Sato 116 Habu appeared for the first time on the cover in issue 247, which means that he has been on the cover of 44% of the Shukan Shogi issues since then. Quite a remarkable number. There is also an interview with Habu in this issue, which has some interesting quotes. Habu for example thinks that there are at the moment a number of players who are stronger than he was when he held all seven major titles. He also said that he started to really enjoy shogi after becoming a 4-dan professional. In the Shoreikai winning was everything and he really likes to take the time to think more generally about the game. He also said that he always want to play his own shogi and that he admires Oyama for his ability to play moves that a particular opponent wouldn t like. I was surprised to read that he didn t have a favorite game he played. I guess this shows how much of a perfectionist he is. Maybe someone will have the time to translate the complete interview, which will continue in next week s issue. There is also professional news in this issue. In the A class Sato beat Aono and Moriuchi had a good start against Maruyama. There was a small struggle about the seat before the start of the game between Moriuchi and Maruyama. Both want to give the other the right to the higher seat. Maruyama as a title holder could take it, but he pointed to the fact that Maruyama was higher ranked in the A class. In the end, Maruyama won this battle of humility as Moriuchi reluctantly took the seat of the senior player. A small psychological victory for Maruyama, maybe, but he couldn t convert it to a win. In B1 the second round was played and it is already clear that this year s promotion race could be a tight one. Only Fukaura and Abe managed to win their second game in a row, while Goda is the other player who is undefeated (he didn t have to play in round 1). It may all come down to these three players in the end, but with the likes of Senzaki and Morishita (who surprisingly lost to B1 rookie Kitahama) and 10 more rounds to play, everything should be unclear until the very last rounds. In the Ryu-O Moriuchi and Nakamura qualified for the challenger tournament by getting third place in the first qualification group. Moriuchi especially showed great resilience, as he had to beat Suzuki Daisuke, Maruyama, Goda and Fujii to get there. In the second group Kimura won a big money game against Nakahara to win the group. Both players had already qualified for the challenger tournament, but a difference of 2,100,000 Yen between first and second place in the group made this a game with very high stakes. 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