|
< Earlier Kibitzing · PAGE 1 OF 7 ·
Later Kibitzing> |
| Dec-21-03 | | Lastel: Shogi champion.
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail... |
|
| Jan-30-04 | | S4NKT: This guy is considered by many to be the smartest person in Japan. |
|
| Jan-30-04 | | ughaibu: S4NKT: I dont think any Japanese feel that way, he's probably the strongest shogi player (though he's been doing badly lately) that's all. |
|
| Jan-31-04 | | S4NKT: well according to the article I read "written by a japanese journalist" he's considered to be the smartest person in Japan, but journalism is often made up. He's been an undisputed shogi champion for a good while anyway, they studied his brain and found that he mostly uses the right hemisphere when playing shogi, while most players alternate between the left and the right but mostly use the left hemisphere.
The right hemisphere is said to be decaying as a cause of modern society/education by the way. |
|
| Jan-31-04 | | ughaibu: Use of differing hemispheres is complicated by the structure of written japanese as has been demonstrated by kanji/kana processing damage from localised CVAs. The increase in use of computers/word processers in recent years may have effected the location of brain activity but that wouldn't just apply to Habu. I've been interviewed by journalists on three occassions so I know that their agenda is commercially motivated and their works ultimately consist of vulgar misrepresentations with the aim of entertainment. |
|
| Jan-31-04 | | Bitzovich: <ughaibu> Really? That's fascinating! Would it be indelicate of me to ask on what occasion have you been interviewed? |
|
| Jan-31-04 | | tud: Ughaibu you are a for sure a really rare person. British, living in Japan, a huge culture in classical and modern chess, shogi master. What are you doing for a leaving ? Teach mathematics ? Write books and philosophy like Lasker ? Shogi professionnel ? |
|
| Jan-31-04 | | refutor: he drew benjamin and lost to sadvakasov...how strong a chess player would you say he is? |
|
| Jan-31-04 | | sleepkid: He's roughly IM strength. I think his last published rating is 2351 or so. I don't know if he's made any norms or not. It's interesting to think of how strong he would be if chess had been his passion instead of shogi. Top 20 in the world I'd dare say. |
|
| Jan-31-04 | | bilikidder: I think that ughaibu mentioned in one of his posts that he worked for some ridiculously wealthy lady in Japan. He's mentioned what level dan player he was in shogi but I've forgotten (not that I understand the ranking system of shogi). It's been mentioned that Benjamin Lau would have been a good lawyer. Although for the most part good-natured, he sometimes gets vicious in his posts when he's trying to prove a point, so I tend to agree that he would have been a good lawyer. On pure speculation, I think he's a teacher, though. And (going on pure speculation again) I think that sleepkid is a journalist, who has recently spent a few months in Japan. |
|
| Jan-31-04 | | Bitzovich: Very interesting.. It sure does look like it. I wonder who they are in reality? (maybe they'll share it with us ;) |
|
| Jan-31-04 | | sleepkid: If I recall correctly Ughaibu is a 4th dan Shogi player. He does a lot of work on shogi variants and shogi problems. ...in reality that guy sleepkid is a real jerk. I hate that guy. Ummm... |
|
| Feb-01-04 | | ughaibu: Habu won the primary schools championship in (I think) 1983 but for a while after that he came second to another kid whose name I've forgotten and who presumably opted for a career other than shogi. Becoming a shogi professional is nothing like becoming a chess professional. If a player shows significant ability by the age of 10-12 and the player has sufficiently rich parents they can apply for the shoureikai. Getting in involves a pretty tough written exam, I would fail on knowledge of openings alone never mind the visualisation exercises, etc. Players enter the shoureikai at 6th kyu, a negative rank from which they have to work up to 4th dan i.e. 9 promotions. This they acheive by winning in the region of 80% of their games in a continuous tournament divided into several divisions according to strength. At the same time they study tsumeshogi, mating problems, by the time a player gets to 4th dan he'll have solved 20,000+ tsumeshogi. It's a lot of work which in effect means giving up any conventional academic ambitions. Only three or four players a year graduate to 4th dan, the rest will be kicked out of the shoureikai when they reach the age of 25 so it's pretty tough. The youngest players to become full time professionals were Katou and Tanigawa aged 14 and Minami, Habu and Watanabe aged 15. Habu's an outstandingly talented player but not unparalleled, he hasn't dominated the meijin tournament, in effect the world championship, to the extent that earlier great players Kimura, Ooyama and Nakahara did. |
|
| Feb-01-04 | | sleepkid: Ughaibu: I assume you've read "Meijin" (or 'The Master of Go') by Kawabata Yasunari. I always liked that book. By the way, I'm pretty sure that other game we found Kimura vs. Alekhine, is THE Kimura. I read somewhere that he also was fond of western style chess in a passing way. |
|
| Feb-01-04 | | ughaibu: Sleepkid: In fact I dont read much, I'll look around for a copy, thanks. |
|
| Feb-01-04 | | technical draw: "...the game of Go is flawed..." John Nash, Nobel laureate. |
|
| Feb-01-04 | | ughaibu: Does John Nash mention a flawless game? |
|
| Feb-01-04 | | technical draw: I don't know if John Nash ever mentioned a flawless game. The above quote is from the movie "A Beautiful Mind". Of course he said it was flawed because he lost, maybe sour grapes? |
|
| Feb-01-04 | | ughaibu: I see, thanks. |
|
| Feb-01-04 | | PizzatheHut: Ughaibu, how popular is shogi in Japan? I know where I live the only chess players people know are Fischer and Kasparov, that is if they know any chess players at all. By the way, thanks for the shogi summary. It's quite interesting. |
|
| Feb-01-04 | | ughaibu: I think there's reckoned to be around ten million players. Games are serialised through the week in almost all newspapers, important games are shown on national television and there is cable television station showing nothing but shogi and go, so it's incomparibly more popular than chess is in the UK. |
|
| Feb-01-04 | | sleepkid: However, Shogi is kind of like chess, in the respect that there are many people who know the rules, but not as many who actually play on a regular basis. 10 million people probably know the rules, and then out of that 1 million play occasionally, and then you've probably got 250,000 regular players, and a small group of professionals (about 180 or so. . .) Ughaibu: I really recommend "Master of Go" - it is Kawabata's first hand account of the last game played by Shusai and Kitani. It was originally serialized in the Osaka Shinbun, but I believe shortly after the war he revised it and fictionalized some of it. It's an interesting piece of literature. I also recommend "1,000 Cranes" (senbazuru) and of course "The Snow Country" (yukikuni) by him as well. You should be able to find any of these books at Kinokuniya or Maruzen, or you could order them from amazon.co.jp |
|
| Feb-01-04 | | fatbaldguy: While there are certainly points in common among the several chess variants around the world (assuming one can make the stretch of calling shogi a chess variant...), apparently it remains very difficult for anyone to really excel at more than one variant. The only example of someone who was truly outstanding at "Western" chess and at his homeland's version of the game was Sultan Khan, whose achievements are the subject of a separate page on this site. Habu's rating of 2300+ is certainly noteworthy, but it would not enable him to compete with world championship calibre players - whereas Sultan Khan beat, i.a., Capablanca. |
|
| Feb-02-04 | | Lawrence: fatbaldguy, http://www.atributetohinduism.com/a... shows that there are a surprising number of differences between classical Indian chess and the modern game--I somehow had the impression that there were only 2 or 3--but Garry Kimovich could be tops in both at the same time, don't you think? Does anyone know if Anand also plays the classical Indian game? |
|
| Feb-02-04 | | ughaibu: Wasn't Nezhmetdinov champion of both chess and checkers at one time? |
|
 |
|
|
< Earlier Kibitzing · PAGE 1 OF 7 ·
Later Kibitzing> |
Kibitzing
