Today is the day for the game between Ouza Habu Yoshiharu and Ryuo Watanabe Akira. It's the first game of the 59th Ouza-sen best-of-five match at Prince Hotel Takanawa in Tokyo. Habu's twenty consecutive wins are at stake in this series. Watanabe's challenge to take the Ouza title is the second time since he did last time in 2003. As a result of Furigoma, Watanabe became Sente. To my little surprise, Habu advanced his Rook pawn to 8d at the second move which offered Watanabe to choose Yagura of Kakugawari(Bishop Exchange) opening, since recently the identical position of Bishop Exchange Reclining Silver is conside.red Sente's favor among professionoal players. Naturally Watanabe chose Bishop Exchange, but he did not let it go to the identical position. Intersting! In spite that the allotted thinking time per player is five hours, they play very quickly in the opening and fifty moves were already made withing one hour from the start of the game.
You can watch and replay the game through the following link. I think the game will end after 8:00pm(Japan time).
Here is the official site of the 59th Ouza-sen(in Japanese). And you can see lots of photos of this game to be updloaded frequently in the official blog. A chat environment with watching a slightly-deferred-liveboard is ready at 81dojo.
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