Top players do well in Oza
In the Oza tournament all top players advanced to the second round.
Meijin challenger Maruyama played veteran Naito, who is only four wins away
from 1000 professional victories. He will have to wait a little longer for
this milestone, as Maruyama showed his outstanding form with a complete
victory.
Meijin Sato also advanced to the quarterfinals with a win over Mori
Keiji. Sato seems to be getting more and more defensive these days, leaving the
initiative to the opponent and then striking with a counter attack. In
the Meijin match this has not paid off yet, but in the game against Mori it
worked fine. Mori had the early lead, but Sato nicely turned the tables
and won with a dangerous looking sacrifice of a promoted bishop that was
just enough. It would have been a good game for his confidence, if he had not
been told after the game that Shima had found a very nice win without
the dangerous sacrifice. Sato completely overlooked this alternative and he
has enough Meijin pride to be kicking himself for this oversight.
Moriuchi did not have to do much to beat Izumi. Izumi failed to find a
good way to build his position in the opening and got a cramped position as a
result. He then decided to play a waiting game, knowing that the longer
a game lasts, the bigger the chance that the opponent makes a mistake.
However, in the end he was not patient enough and chose an ill-advised attack
that was refuted with some forceful Moriuchi attacking.
Oi leagues
In the white group of the Oi league Morishita could have forced an
early decision with a win over Fukaura. The fight between the two players with
the same teacher (Hanamura) ended in Fukaura's favour. This suddenly
makes the red group very interesting as all six players still have a chance to
win the group or reach a play-off with two rounds left to play. Since
the red group is also very close, all bets are off on the challenger of
Habu this year.
Ryu-O tournament
In the Ryu-O tournament Nakahara, Habu and Hatakeyama Nariyuki
qualified for the challenger knock-out, joining Aono who already qualified
earlier. Nakahara beat Meijin Sato in a Yodofuribisha game where he grabbed the
initiative early on and never gave Sato a chance to get back in the
game.
Habu had much more trouble winning the 99th encounter with Tanigawa
(Habu lead 59-39). He got the advantage early on, but a mistake turned the
tables and Tanigawa got a big advantage. However, a desperate attempt to get
some counter play turned into a winning plan when Tanigawa overlooked that a
bad looking reply to a good looking counter move he played, was actually
very good for Habu. Habu is in great form at the start of the season and
is looking like he might add one or two titles to his four crowns. He
already made the finals of the Kisei challenger tournament and now he also made
an important step to the Ryu-O title.
Hatakeyama qualified for the finals by beating Nishikawa in the
relatively easy qualification group 3. This group has only 16 players and two
players qualify for the challenger finals, so the route to big fame and money is
very short. Hatakeyama won the battle of nerves as the game was heading
straight for sennichite. However, Nishikawa spent 78 minutes around the
dinner break to decide that he wanted to open the position instead of
playing again. This turned out to be suicidal, as Hatakeyama defended well got a
very strong counter attack. He then almost gave it away in the endgame,
but a Nishikawa mistake under time pressure was enough for Hatakeyama to
win the game.
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