Feb 28 – Mar 2
Under the winter sunset in the Friday evening, the 3-day tournament began in Frankfurt, Germany with the Blitz tournament. 19 shogi enthusiasts gathered at the venue out of their hectic schedules on Friday, and enjoy the breathtakingly rapid games with 10-sec byoyomi until 3 hours of time limit passed or they felt exhausted. Yasushi Ishikawa Sensei, a former Pro 3-dan Shoreikai player, traveled from Japan to Frankfurt for this tournament, and every participant had a game with him not only as a teaching session but also as an incentive game which gives 3 winning points to a winner. His highly sophisticated skill of shogi enabled handicapped “Sanmenzashi” games (3 games against 3 palyers at once) with 10min blitz, and never allowed “easy win” for the players. Nonetheless, 6 players acquired their valuable wins against Ishikawa Sensei. After all, the top 3 masters of rapidity were determined as follows;
- Ryoichi Murayama – 14 points
- Richard Rödel – 13 points
- Bilal Dardour – 11 points
On March 1st the main tournament “CLASS CHAMPIONSHIP” was initiated, starting with the group satge dividing players into 4 classes, namely CLASS S (over 3 Dan, ELO over 2000), CLASS A (2-3 Dan, ELO 1800-1999), CLASS B (1 Kyu-1 Dan, ELO 1600-1799), and CLASS C (below 2Kyu, ELO below 1600). Each class managed 5 games by Swiss system for determination of top 3 qualifiers for the final knockout stage on March 2nd, Sunday. Thanks to the ELO-rating division, all the players competed with rivals with similar strength of shogi, and thus competitiveness was successfully maintained throughout the group stage and there was no “relaxing” games in each class. Due to the odd number of players in those classes, only one of five qualifying games was matched up between CLASS S and CLASS C across the rating gap, and therefore, the McMahon points (CLASS S = 3, CLASS C = 0) were necessarily adopted as a better methodology to assure fairness of tie-breakers (SOS, SOSOS) in each class. Surprisingly, Ryoichi Murayama, a 1 Kyu player in CLASS C made the remarkable “giant killing” happen on the battle against Peter Shcheslionok, a 4 Dan player in FESA and the highest ELO-rating holder in all of the registered players, despite the fact that non-handicapped games were exceptionally applied between those classes. After the competitive games, the top 3 qualifiers for the final were determined respectively;
CLASS S
1. Tsubo Kazuki
2. Anton Borysov
3. Yoshiharu Kojima
CLASS A
1. Keigo Suzuki
2. Kensuke Tsutsui
3. Bilal Dardour
CLASS B
1. Chung Man Chan
2. Mariusz Stanaszek
3. Fumihiro Watanabe
CLASS C
1. Ryoichi Murayama
2. Joel Elsen
3. Leo Suganami
The knockout stage was organized between the qualifiers on the final day of the tournament. Benefitting from the special regulation for U15 (under 15 years old) players, Illia Borysov was also qualified for the final stage as well as the aforementioned 3 players in each class. For the purpose of providing higher chances of winning to lower ELO holders, the designated handicaps (3 class difference: Rook down, 2 class difference: Bishop down, 1 class difference: fixed black or lance down) were applied. While players in Europe do not often play handicap games and thus are not used to the system, the handicap system created a bunch of exciting games, and after the tournament, many of the participants commented that handicap games unexpectedly felt joyful.
The two finalists, Anton Borysov and Kazuki Tsubo got over such difficulty on the handicap system against the tough rivals. As a result, the matchup of the final was No.1 vs. No.2 in CLASS S, and Anton won accolade at CLASS CHAMPIONSHIP. Top 3 players in each class and top 3 U15 players acquired the undoubtedly valuable prizes, the shogi goods with the handwritten signatures by the Japanese professional players, Tatsuya Sugai 8 Dan, Kazuo Sugimoto 5 Dan, and Wakamu Deguchi 6 Dan. ELO-rated games were also played among unqualified players on Sunday with the negotiable handicap system in between. Therefore, it can be clearly concluded that every participant enjoyed shogi until the end of the tournament. INTER CITY SHOGI CUP in Frankfurt ended up with 28 players and the ratio of Dan players reached nearly 60%, which is a great achievement in European competitions. I truly wish shogi prospers more and more in Europe, accelerated by this tournament.
Kazushi Shibutani
P.S. Some games were broadcasted through Ishikawa Sensei’s Youtuber channel. Please check out the videos
