Senko Team

 

The second team that I will briefly cover is Senko - This team is headed by the current number 1 Japanese female player Ueno Asami and came 2nd last year though it did actually have the best pool results losing out in the finals to Igo&Shogi.

In the draft the team elected (unsurprisingly) to retain it's Captain 6th Dan Ueno Asami and has taken an interesting approach to drafting. Rather than go for balance it seems to have fairly heavily favoured players who love fighting.  In the draft they scooped for co-captain Mukai Chiaki who has been in quite a few finals in the past but tended to be pipped to the post by Xie Yimin (earlier) but at 5 Dan is obviously a competent and talented higher level player who last year won 5 and lost only 3 games. Chiaki is also the only player who favours Territorial games plus likes my favourite opening as well (not that this matters but makes her interesting to me)

The team also redrafted 5 Dan Isawa Akino who is another player who has flirted with Championship finals and likes fight and Tsuji Hana a 3 Dan player who is also a fight fan but who only won 1 and lost 2 last year.

The team does appear to be going for a style matchup sort of approach as when you look at total ELO it is the 3rd strongest team (and this is with Asami the current strongest player) and if you 'mean' it out it drops to 4th with a mean of 2922.

Player profiles (will link as and when written)

Captain Ueno Asami
Co-Captain Mukai Chiaki
Tsuji Hana
Isawa Akino