Today is the day for the Ryuo-sen game between Itodani Tetsuro(5 dan) and Habu Yoshiharu(4 crown). It started at 10:00 am. Itodani became Sente player as a result of Furigoma. The opening strategy is Gote's Itteson Kakugawari(Bishop exchange with Gote's one tempo delay). You can watch and replay the game through either of the pages linked below;
The thinking time per player is 5 hours and less than 60 seconds pre move after comsuming it. The game will end in the evening today in Japan. The toppage of Ryuo-sen is linked below. You can see the photo of the players.
According to the comment of the 5th move, Itodani is the second teen-player who matches Habu after Habu became the 7 crown holder in 1996. The first teen-player was Watanabe Akira. It's difficult for lower aged player to meet Habu in a professional game since he needs to win lot of games to do that.
Habu won in 108 moves.
I think, he controlled the game. Very interestingly, he offered to repeat moves between move 42-44, threatening to get sente player if his opponent Itodani 5dan agrees. So Itodani has to risk something, maybe too much.
Habu managed to get his right wing knight into the game weakening sente's castle. Sacrificing a bishop against a silver, he started approaching sente's king move by move. Finally, he cornered sentes king without guarding generals around him. In the final position, sente is helpless, e.g. Kx9f, S*8e, K9g, L*9f mate
Posted by: marcchan | July 29, 2008 at 06:42 AM
> marcchan,
According to Habu's comment after the game, he had a feeling that something was wrong since he had to get back to his Silver to 5d at the 54th move. If Itodani put away his Silver to 7f at the 57th move instead of Bx7c+, it's getting tough.
Posted by: takodori | July 29, 2008 at 12:51 PM
After all, Habu managed to get a pawn in hand with his silver movement in moves 54 to 57. I will try to take a look at the things going on after Silver7f, thank you takodori.
regards
marcchan
Posted by: marcchan | July 31, 2008 at 04:42 AM