page_title: 61st NHK Cup (shogi)
section_title: Preliminary tournaments
hierarchical_section_title: 61st NHK Cup (shogi) / Participants / Preliminary tournaments
context_page_description: The 61st NHK Cup, or as it is officially known the 61st NHK Cup TV Shogi Tournament was a professional shogi tournament organized by the Japan Shogi Association and sponsored by Japan's public broadcaster NHK. Play began on April 3, 2011, and ended on March 18, 2012. The 50-player single elimination tournament was won by Yoshiharu Habu. All of the tournament games were shown each Sunday morning on NHK-E. The host during the NHK-E broadcasts was female professional Rieko Yauchi.
context_section_description: A total of 139 shogi professionals competed in eighteen preliminary tournaments to qualify for the main tournament. These tournaments were one-day tournaments held at the Tokyo Shogi Kaikan and the Kansai Shogi Kaikan, but were not televised. Each tournament consisted of seven or eight players. The initial time control for each player was 20 minutes followed by a 30-second byōyomi.
  The female professional seed was determined by a play-in game between Kana Satomi and Tomomi Kai, which was won by Kai.
  Brackets from two of the preliminary tournaments are shown below.
caption: 8-player preliminary tournament won by Takuya Nagase 4d