My game against Habu
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Diagram 1 |
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Diagram 2 |
Against world's best shogi player
(click for larger picture) |
What a great trio!:
Ex world chess champion Boris Spasski
Shogi Mejin Habu and my humble self |
Albrecht Heeffer - Yoshiharu Habu
Simultaneous exhibition, Paris 23 May 2002
2-piece handicap
1...S6b 2 P7f P5d 3 P4f S5c 4 P4e (It is only the second time that
I played a two-piece handicap game and had no time to prepare. But
I did remember the basic ideas from
Larry Kaufman's articles on
Mindzine: 1) it is important to block Pd4, 2) advance the silver
to prevent P5e, 3) exchange the d-pawn and place the knight behind
the rook on 3f) 4 .. G3b 5 S4h K5b 6 S4g P7d 7 P3f P6d 8 R3h K6c
9 P3e S2b 10 P3d Px3d 11 Rx3d Px3c 12 R3f G6b 13 N3g G7c 14 G7h P6e
15 G5h G6d 16 S4f N7c 17 K6i (this position is quite similar to the
first diagram of Larry's article. Now Habu plays something different.)
See diagram 1
17. .. P2d 18. P5f (this frees the black silver from defending 5e and
forces white's silver to advance) 18 .. S2c 19 S6h P7e 20 Px7e Gx7e
(this was the disadvantage of advancing the f-pawn, P*7f is now not
possible) 21 S3e P6f (I did not see the point of this, so I just took
the pawn) 22 Px6f P8d 23 P9f (important to free the bishop!) 23 .. P8e
24 B9g P8f 25 Px8f (another pawn I took with pleasure, am I too greedy
here?) 25 .. P9d 26 R4f (the attack on the bishop is slow and does not
hurt the crab castle very much, so instead of defending I go for the
attack. Now it is all about speed.) 26 .. P9e 27 Px4d Px4d 28 Sx4d Sx4d
29 Rx4d P*4c 30 R4e (this is the justification of 26 R4f: I can retreat the rook
with a threat)
See diagram 2
30 .. Px9f (this move suprised me! Has Habu better moves
here? Now I was conviced to be winning.) 31 Rx7e P*7d 32 S*5b! Kx5b
(no choice here, if the king runs he will be mated soon. The beauty of
S*5b is that it forces the king back to the b-rank whereas he wants to
advance in handicap games.) 33 Rx7d Px9g+ (again no choice then to take
the bishop, white's problems here is that his silver is to weak to defend)
34 Rx7c+ K4b
This position is a clear win and I missed it! To my excuse I can say
that there were only two games left and I did not dare to let Habu wait.
So the rest of the game was blitz shogi and that is very uncomfortable
when facing Habu in an endgame. There are probably two winning ideas, as
Habu explained to me after the game. The first one I had contemplated,
the second option is even better and that one I missed:
a) 35 N4e +P8h 36 N5c
b) 35 P*4d! Px4d 36 P*4c Gx4x 37 G*4a Kx4a 38 +Rx4c
The idea in both variations is not to give a gold for defense, and that
is precisely what I did:
35 G*5c K3a 36 Gx4c Gx4c 37 +Rx4c G*3b (and the white king is safe now)
The game went on for 24 more moves until I saw that Habu had tsume.
Although I
lost the game, I am still happy with it because with limited
knowledge of handicap games, I managed to get a winning position
after the middle game.
Replay the game
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