From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 4 dec 1997 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 715, December 3rd 1997) This week two important Junisen rounds as the main focus of attention. In B1 round 9 was played and Maruyama was again unstoppable. He won his eight straight game by beating Fukuzaki. Fukuzaki choose an inferior move because he did not like a certain variation which Maruyama would not have played and that was something that made his position very difficult to defend. Both players played very fast and the game was already decided before the dinner break. Maruyama now only needs two points out of the remaining four games to make his debut in the A-class after only one year in B1. The only question seems to be who will accompany him. There are three players still having a good chance. Best chances has Minami, who beat Tamaru to get to 6-2 and is also well-positioned in the class (number 4). Murayama, who beat Kobayashi, has played an extra game and is now 6-3. He is in the top spot in the class, so if Minami drops a game and Murayama wins all his games, he will promote back to the A-class. Finally, Nakamura also has a chance to make it to the A-class. Two years ago he also was in B1, but dropped out after only one year. In his second attempt he is faring much better and by beating Ariyoshi he now has a 5-3 score. I think Minami is the favourite here since he is showing some good form lately, but strange things can happen in the final rounds. In B2 the sixth round was a bad one for leaders Tsukada and Ono. Tsukada lost a difficult game against Kodama, while Ono missed a win in the endgame against Goda. For Goda this was his fifth consecutive win after losing in the first round. More importantly, the results of this round mean that Goda now has promotion in his own hands, since he has to play Tsukada in round 8. Tsukada also has the chances in his own hands, since higher positioned Urano lost to Nakagawa. Nakagawa kept his own hopes for promotion alive by this win. With games against Goda and Tsukada coming up in the next two rounds, he will play a key role in the promotion fight. One step ahead of everyone else is still Hatakeyama Nariyuki, who won his sixth straight game against struggling Ouchi. B2 is a tough class with a lot of strong players, so I expect this one will go down to the wire. In the osho league Moriuchi and Nakahara played their fifth game (of a total of six). With both at 2-2 before the game, the loser would drop out of the race for challenging Tanigawa. It was Nakahara who controlled the game, but in the end it was very close. Nakahara had calculated correctly that his king was in serious danger but could not be mated and won. In the bottom group of the Ryu-o tournament four amateur players play the four new 4-dans in the first round. This year was special because the match-up ended in a tie. Amateur Ryu-O Watanabe beat Kimura and Shibu Meijin Endo beat Sato. It is unclear if we are really talking about amateurs here, though. Endo, for example, had a week where he earned more by playing shogi than most of us earn in six months of hard work. By winning two big amateur tournaments in a row he cashed in no less than 1,4 million yen. Who needs to become a pro? More next week, Reijer -- Reijer Grimbergen Electrotechnical Laboratory 1-1-4 Umezono Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki-ken 305 JAPAN E-mail: grimberg etl go jp WWW: http://www.etl.go.jp:8080/etl/suiron/~grimberg Tel: +81-(0)298-54-3316 Fax: +81-(0)298-54-5918