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Estonia, Tallinn, August 1995 (07-31 - 08-07), RIF rule

Final Standings:

Pl	Participant	Country	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	Pts
1	Kawamura Norihiko	Japan		1	0	0	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	9
2	Meritee Ando	Estonia	0		1	1	1	�	0	1	�	1	1	1	8
3	Ilyin Dmitry	Russia	1	0		0	�	1	1	1	1	0	1	1	7�
4	Nara Hideki	Japan	1	0	1		1	0	�	�	1	1	0	0	6
5	Peskov Stepan	Russia	0	0	�	0		1	1	�	0	1	1	1	6
6	Gardstr�m Petter	Sweden	0	�	0	1	0		0	1	1	�	1	1	6
7	Reims Aldis	Latvia	0	1	0	�	0	1		�	1	�	1	0	5�
8	Salnikov Pavel	Russia	0	0	0	�	�	0	�		1	1	1	1	5�
9	Veidemanis Arnis	Latvia	0	�	0	0	1	0	0	0		�	1	1	4
10	Soos�rv Ants	Estonia	0	0	1	0	0	�	�	0	�		0	1	3�
11	Karlsson Stefan	Sweden	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	1		1	3
12	Poghosyan Albert	Armenia	0	0	0	1	0	0	1	0	0	0	0		2

The 4th Renju World Championship took place in Tallinn, Estonia, July 31 - August 7, 1995.
This time the World Championship was hosted by a new RIF member country - Estonia. It was a big challenge and responsibility for local organizers to make a good tournament and earn the trust of RIF. The condition of RIF was that the new member country should make a test tournament a year before WC, to prove the ability of hosting the international tournaments. Such tournament was carried out successfully.
Then it was the end of July, 1995, a season for World Championship. Estonian Renju Union made big efforts to make a great tournament despite the small number of available staff and volunteers.

The place of the tournament was perhaps more exotic than any previous WC - the historical house in the Old Town of Tallinn city called the House of Backcaps, many many centuries old building with an unique architecture and design. That place gave everybody a good taste of history and maybe it influenced renju games, too, with its fame and legends. Perhaps it made people have a feeling of a historical renju tournament...
The oldest written documents about that house come from year 1400. Today the place is still looking as it looked 600 years ago, without any damage, thanks to the Tallinn city who is taking care of the historical Old Town.

The tournament itself brought together all the strongest players except Nakamura who was absent again.
Instead of Nakamura, another top Japanese player took part - Norihiko Kawamura, the man who was on the top of his renju career, having beaten Nakamura with score 3:2 in the Meijin Match in Japan in that year.
Naturally, he was the main favorite of the tournament. He proved everyone that he is just as strong as people expected him to be, and won the first place confidently with 9 points from 11 games.

Ando Meritee got the 2nd place, and even that happened thanks to the Ants Soos�rv who beat Dmitry Ilyin in the last round, dragging him down to the 3rd place by that.
Dmitry Ilyin was the most unlucky player the history of World Championship - he was a superior leader having 7.5 points from 8 games when there were only 3 more rounds to be played, and everybody was sure that he will get the gold medal but then a distaster happened. He could not bear the pressure of the leadership and lost his last 3 games to Meritee, Nara and Soos�rv, and dropped from sure 1st place down to the 3rd place.

It is a pity, of course. He had worked so hard to get so far. He had a special talent, allowing him to conquer the top of the renju world.
But the winner of the tournament will be the one who is tough enough to survive all 11 games, and Japanese master Norihiko Kawamura proved that nothing can make him worried or nervous - he seemed to win the World Champion title quite easily without any struggles or crisis during the tournament.
Japanese had once again proven they are the leaders of the world of renju and others should do much better of they want to get a better place.

Ando Meritee

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