[Albrecht Heeffer]
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My game against Habu

Diagram 1
Diagram 2
[Playing Habu]
Against world's best shogi player
(click for larger picture)
[with Habu and Boris Spasski]

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.

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