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The annual "Poconos Meijin" tournament was held this weekend in the Poconos mountains of Pennsylvania. All the players stay in a large rented house for the weekend, so lots of shogi can be played. The event functions as a combined D.C./N.Y. shogi club tournament, as all the players come from these clubs.

This year attendance was down; apparently we picked a bad weekend for several players. Still, we held a round robin of the nine attending players. Due to the low tournout, we used a slower time limit than in the past (20' plus 40" byoyomi instead of 20' plus 30"). All games are "properly" handicapped (meaning lance for 1 rank, bishop for 2, rook for 3, rook & lance for 4, and two piece for 5 ranks). Instead of just using the nominal ranks, we converted each player's current Pan-Atlantic rating to a rank with one decimal place (for example 1800 = 1.5 Dan), and rounded the rank difference to the nearest integer. I think this produces much fairer handicaps than the use of integer ranks only.

In one way, the event was nearly unique for American tournaments. Of the nine players, only three were Japanese! Of the six American players, three came from D.C. and three from N.Y.

The result was a three way tie for first place at 6-2 between myself, Greg D'Elia, and S. Ogihara. A round-robin playoff at the same handicaps resulted in Greg taking first place with two wins, while I came second with one win and Ogihara placed third. Congratulations to Greg, the recent winner of the "B" division in the U.S. championship, who is clearly the most rapidly improving American player. He played as 5 kyu a year ago and as 1 kyu this time, but if recent NY club games not yet reported are counted, he might already be 1 Dan, and this Poconos victory should put him well on the road to 2 Dan, the rank he deserves in my opinion. When asked the secret of his dramatic improvement, he "confessed" to having played about a thousand games on Shogi Club 24 in the past year!. That would explain it. I look forward to our next meeting, when I'll no longer have to spot him Two Piece handicap!

Fourth place was a tie between J. Yoshinari 4 Dan of D.C. and George Fernandez (4 Dan, but playing at 3.4 Dan) of NY. Both scored 4-4. Next was a tie between my son Raymond Kaufman 2 Dan and Kajiura 2 Dan of NY club, at 3-5. The tailenders this time were Tim Rogalski 1 Dan (last year's amateur winner) and Alex Trotter 1 kyu, both with 2-6.

Of the 33 games in which a handicap was given, the handicap giver won 20, almost exactly the 60% which we were aiming for when setting up the system. The stronger player came out ahead at all handicaps except rook, where the receiver won by 5-3. As for myself, I was glad to see that my advancing years (age 56 now) don't seem to have hurt my shogi yet, as I won 2 out of the 3 games in which I had to give Bishop handicap to 4 Dan players.

Many of the players found that 8 or ten official games in one weekend wasn't enough - they played many extra rapid games (usually 20" or 30" per move games). Some of us played over twenty games in total. One game of Chu Shogi was also played, won by George Fernandez over Alex Trotter.

All in all it was a very enjoyable weekend for all, and we are tentatively planning to hold this event twice a year now.

Larry Kaufman, Amateur 5 Dan

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