Sep 21, 2025
Author's Commentary #569:
Time to talk about the intro to Season 9, Chapter 569: October winds.
I don't know why, but I really wanted to make "October winds" the title, even though something like "All-Japan begins" would have been more fitting. I also don't know why I've decided to torment myself by jumping straight into Season 9 instead of doing one-off Kisha specials to give me more time to build up backlog.
Anyway, welcome to All-Japan, being held at Ryokoma in Tokyo. I wasn't kidding when I said we'd be jumping straight in, and it's certainly a big match to jump into in the first round. Okisato has been paired up against Yuusuke, but just like before, he wipes the floor with him.
For some reason, I really wanted Okisato to play the Polish Opening for this game, and in the process of doing so, I ended up playing the Bugayev Attack, and the Chess.com bot was losing after move 3 before I knew it. This game was actually modified from the original I played around the 18th move. In the game I played out, the bot decided not to capture the pawn with the king, opting to move the f-rook to e8 instead leading to an eventual mate on move 37. I opted for capturing which led to a mate in 27, and one more befitting of Yuusuke's agitated state for this match.
Now the big question will be how I decide to proceed from here in terms of the matchups. Yuusuke will be the primary focus of this season, so you can expect to see his remaining 6 games, but I'm not sure how many games I'll show for the other main cast members. They will have matches, especially ones against each other should they find themselves paired against each other, but I don't think I'll be showing all 7 games for the entire main cast. Games for characters outside the main cast will probably be rarer too, but there might be one or two. Basically, I don't want this to be a repeat of Season 7 and have it go on for nearly a whole year. I'm expecting this to be between 24 and 30 chapters, maybe just under 40, but not more than 50. This will be more similar to Season 6 in that sense. One final thing I want to bring attention to is the line Okisato tells Yuusuke about his rating. And that's it. You'll have to theorize on your own about why he might have said it and what it could be implying.
That's all for this commentary. I hope you enjoyed it.
