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Japan, Kyoto, August 1989 (08-02 - 08-06), RIF rule

Final Standings:

Pl	Participant	Country	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	Pts
1	Nakamura Shigeru	Japan		½	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	8½
2	Nara Hideki	Japan	½		0	1	1	1	1	1	½	1	7
3	Nishimura Toshio	Japan	0	1		1	0	1	1	0	1	1	6
4	Hasegawa Kazuto	Japan	0	0	0		½	1	1	1	1	1	5½
5	Mikhailov Nikolay	Uzbekistan (USSR)	0	0	1	½		0	1	½	½	1	4½
6	Bobkov Evgeniy	Russia (USSR)	0	0	0	0	1		0	1	1	1	4
7	Sundling Ingvar	Sweden	0	0	0	0	0	1		1	1	0	3
8	Kozhin Mikhail	Russia (USSR)	0	0	1	0	½	0	0		0	1	2½
9	Gardström Petter	Sweden	0	½	0	0	½	0	0	1		0	2
10	Palmgren Jan	Sweden	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	1		2

The First Renju World Championship took place in Kyoto, Japan, August 2-6, 1989. Thanks to the effort of the first three RIF member countries the big event became reality.

Without any doubt, Nakamura was the superior player in the tournament. He won nearly every game as expected. One interesting thing that many people remember is, when Nakamura was asked after the ending of the World Championship "If in the World Championship there were 10 Japanese players, then what would be the place of the best European player in that tournament?" Nakamura smiled and replied: "The 11th". It showed a big confidence about Japan renju, and without any question - Japanese were so much stronger than the players from Europe at that time. As you can see from the tournament table, the four best players were all Japanese.

Ando Meritee

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