Toya senses a seasoned professional around Hikaru. Sai plays a complicated game with many traps, yet Toya avoids and alters Sai's strategy. After Hikaru resigns, Toya requests to play him again in the future without any handicap. Kuwabara actually suspects that Hikaru was playing as though he had a handicap against him instead of for him, which explained his overplays. This resembles the game between Cho Chikun as black versus Otake Hideo as white in the preliminaries of the forty-fourth Oza Sen title match, played on 14 July 1996.