The biggest news in February was the Sota Fujii. He gained the Oushou title from Akira Watanabe on 12-Feb. Watanabe (Master, Kiou) is one of the best player in the current professional league, but Fujii defeated him with 4 – 0 score. Winning rate is now 80.95% for this year (as of end Feb), which is the second best performance in all.
Five out of eight major crowns (Kisei, Oui, Eiou, Oushou, Ryuou) are now possessed by Fujii, and it was the youngest record that one person occupy 5 crowns. Former record holder was the Yoshiharu Habu (22 years and 10 months). Fujii shortened this record to 19 years and 6 months.
The Legends in Shogi History
Sota Fujii started his professional carrier in 2016 when his was 14 years old. There were Four precedent people (Hifumi Kato, Koji Tanigawa, Habu Yoshiharu, Akira Watanabe) who joined professional during age of junior high school. All of them gained the Master title later, so Sota Fujii is also expected to acquire the title. He is now enrolled to B1 class in the Ranking League, and is about to promote to the highest rank of A class. If he take the 1st place in A class in the coming season (start from April), he can get a chance to challenge the Master title.
Deep Learning AI for the revenge match
Current Master is Watanabe, and funs are eager for watching the to same card in the end of 2022 season. If it realize, it will be a revenge match for Watanabe. As of now, they had 14 games and Watanabe won only 2. It was reported that Watanabe bought high-end PC with Deep Learning Shogi AI, which costed about 11,300USD in order to defeat Fujii. On the other hand, Fujii is well know as PC freak. He built his own high-end PC and installed AI software. Nowadays, AI is a powerful tool and many professionals introduced it to their study. A lot of new tactics were invented from AI. Younger generations like Fujii flexibly learn the peculiar sense of strategy. Of course, the amazing record of Fujii is not just because of the AI study, but definitely the AI is being made a revolution to Shogi strategy.
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