Li League Match 4 Senko vs Igo & Shogi Channel

 

Match 4 (or Match 2 or Round 2 as the Japanese are framing it) occurs this coming Friday and here we have first sight of the final team Senko. This should be defining as we have last years winners versus last years finalists who also won the pool stages and the current Japanese number 1 lady versus the current Japanese number 2 lady.

Pairing are here

Oh, so much to consider. Firstly you can see the importance Igo&Shogi put towards the game as they are retaining their line up from their first victory in round 1, so no use of their (young) 4th player. Senko equally are fielding their strongest ELO players.

Whereas last match Igo & Shogi put their Captain on board 3 and vice captain on board 1 this time they placed the Captain on Board 1 where we have the matchup of the two strongest female players.

They did put their vice on Board 3 though which is also interesting. If they had kept Xie on Board 2 in a vice captains match we would have seen Xie (3073) versus Mukai (3031) - not a lot of gap in those ratings but board 3 would have had Arisa (2952) versus Hana (2815) - a much bigger gap. I wonder if they though Senko would place their vice on 3 as well. Now though Xie has a great chance to win you would think Mukai might do better against Arisa. Who knows though. Personally I am most looking forward to Board 2 but they will likely all be excellent games.

Board	Senko	Fukuoka	Result	Winner
Board 1	Ueno Asami	Fujisawa Rina	?	?
Board 2	Chiaki Mukai	Moro Arisa	?	?
Board 3	Tsuji Hana	Xie Ximin/td>	?	?

Board 1  Ueno Asami  (W) vs Fujisawa Rina  (B)

Board 2 Chiaki Mukai (B) vs Moro Arisa (W)


Board 3 Tsuji Hana (W) vs Xie Yimin (B)