mahavrilla

My advise is a bit too practical.

1 First move? (When you are Black)
There are a number of move choices but three moves are oustandingly popular.

A P-7f: Making a way for the Bishop diagonal.
B P-2f: For quicker use of Rook and aiming for a pawn exchange.
C P-5f: Suggesting the use of Rook at fifth file aiming directly for the king.

..To be continued.

fukuhara

AbigailII: I'm not sure why BrainKing names them that way. Personally I wish that 'japanese chess' would get renamed to 'shogi'. On the settings page, the tab for shogi setting is called 'shogi'. More consistancy in the naming would be nice.

Of course, I also wish that when one is using the japanese piece set and has the opportunity to promote, that the piece displayed above the board would also be shown in the japanese piece set rather than the 'western/symbolic' set. And that it wouldn't always say "Click on a piece you want to promote the pawn to." even if you're moving a knight, rook, bishop, etc, and not a pawn. Also, that gives the impression that a piece can be promoted to more than one promotional value (like a chess pawn), whereas each shogi piece obviously only promotes to one thing and one thing only per piece. (Hint hint Fencer)

Just curious, why is the full sized game called "Japanese Chess", while the small version is called "Minishogi". Wouldn't it be more consistent if they both either used "Japanse chess" or "Shogi" in their name?

Hi,

the fellowship Oriental Games is looking for two more players to complete our Minishogi team for the upcoming "The World Is Not Enough" team tournament. If you would like to play then please apply at our fellowship or message me and I'll send you an invitation.

Hope to see you :-)

You are cordially invited to join the new tournament of the fellowship "Oriental games" opened to all.
The supported games are:
Chess, Chinese Chess, Japanese Chess, Loop chess, Ambiguous Chess, Reversi 8x8, Go, Go 9x9 and Go 13x13.
You can be registered to the adress:
Oriental Games (15. Septembre 2006, 06:56:47)

Dear (online) Shogi players,
As announced a few months ago here, the 22nd edition of European Shogi Championship has taken place in France, near Colmar.
The event was quite a success although not so much people from east Europa were able to join us.
You can find the whole results and pictures of the event here: http://esc2006.free.fr
Kind regards
Fabien Osmont
organiser

onigoroshi: Hmmm... as far as I know, pawns may define BKR limitations for the Waiting Room.

Do you see the boxes where you choose the low and high BKR's that you want?

Are you saying that the game is created, but someone out of the range is allowed to accept?

Feel free to send me a message and describe to me where the problem starts. (Click on my name, and you will go to my profile, and there will be a link to send me a message.)

For some reason (as a pawn) I cannot create a game that enforces opponents to be of a certain strength in order to join. Is this a limitation of my membership level, or a bug?

jannix: Lets to organize match tournament on shogi.

Hello,

I am the big boss of the fellowship "Oriental Chess".
We seek for our team of Shogi, other teams to be challenged.
Is it that the big boss of fellowship would be interested to engage their team
of Shogi against ours?
If so, make a team of japanese chess of at
least four players and name a captain.
Then, challenge us or send to me an
invitation.
It will be a pleasure of meeting you.

Hello,

The fellowship " Xiangqi " was modified to allow to add it various variants of the oriental chess.
That is why it changed of name and is now called "Oriental Chess".
We kept naturally the game of Xiangqi and we added the of Shogi.
For the moment, they are the two only oriental games of chess which are installed on this server. When the other variants will be created here, we shall add them in our fellowship.
Because you are interested in the game of Shogi, you are cordially invited to join us. Make the demand to the address:
http://brainking.com/fr/ShowFellowship?fid=429

Best greetings

If you are interested in both shogi and chess, here is a information for you. 3 crown Habu and Meijin Moriuchi are taking part in World Open Chess Tournament held in US. They are in Five-Day section.

You can see the page of Word Open at http://www.worldopen.com/

You can replay some of their games through http://www.worldopen.com/games.htm
(Java-capable browser is required to see the games.)

It would be nice if the Shogi notation shows when a player waives promotion of a piece. I beleve this is usually denoted with the character = after the move. When replaying my games over an actual board, I've been confused by this, so I figured I'd bring it up ;)

Due to the change in membership status of the previous moderator of this board, it needs a new moderator.

Anyone interested, please send me (or any Brainking Staff member), a message indicating your interest. We will choose from the messages received. Some knowledge of the game is of course preferred! :-)

mahavrilla: Please try the links in the page of my blog at http://shogi.typepad.jp/eweblog/2005/11/basic_shogi_inf_1.html

I think shogi FESA and USSF organizations use the rating system which is equivalent to western chess. Please refer to http://www.shogi.net/fesa/rating.intro

A professional players' association exists in Japan. They don't use rating system. They use Dan grading system.

Can anybody here give me some opening tips? I am new at shogi and would appreciate any help. I also need help understanding shogi ratings...are they different than western chess?

DragonKing: As you may possibly know, Tanigawa 9dan won it with 107 moves. You can replay it in the following unofficial page temporarily.
http://3rd.geocities.jp/shogi_kifu/64-3.html (Sente is Tanigawa 9dan)

Any news on who won the third Meijin game?

;)

;)

oh, nevermind... I should look before I speak ;)

actually, let me rephrase that response. The option says "White removes rook, bishop, both lances, and either knight", yet one cannot remove "either knight", so there is somewhat of a contradiction.

well, if that's the case, then please use the right knight handicap, as the left is almost never used.

onigoroshi: I think it is best to stick to the formal handicap's of which huge amounts of litterature already exist and not offer rare or new ones :)

Fencer: would it be possible to offer both the left and right knight handicaps?

Fencer: Would it be possible to indicate a Go/Shogi handicap in the 'Your color' column of the 'Waiting Games' page by following the colour with the value of the handicap? If you saw White(4) you'd know you'd be playing with a 4 piece/stone handicap, if you saw Black(2) you'd know you were being offered a two piece/stone advantage.

YuryShpilev: It can be marked by a blue dot or something.

Fencer: I think that you (as site creator) must to separate handicap and normal games (and may be rating - not rating, visible - hidden too) in view of main page. It can be by means of the insert of new columns. What is your opinion?

You can also find them on Eric Cheymol's website in franch and english: http://eric.macshogi.com/shogi/handicap/handicap.html

Fencer: Larry Kaufman- an amateur 5 dan- has a series of articles about the best play with each of the standard handicaps. They are at Mindzine- Google handicap shogi to find them. They were very helpful to me when I started to play shogi last year.

Fencer: Ok, thank you. Therefore I have to find a "teacher" first.

ニコ: The handicap games won't affect your BKR but they will appear at the win/loss statistics (unless you define these games as "not counted").

Spirou: The level of handicap is determined by the game invitation creator. Nothing is automatically adjusted.

Takodori: Thanks, I didn't know that :)


Fencer: Will the handicap shogi games affect our normal shogi BKR & win/loss statistics? or will it be shown in a seperate rating section?

flummoxed: Thank you for this answer.

I presume the level is determined beforehand with my future opponent? Or automatically but in that case how?

Fencer: Thank you for introducing Shogi handicap games! Excellent job.
Spirou: When you create a new game there is a drop down menu on the 'Select this game parameters' page allowing you to choose the White player handicap.

I am perplexed about:
- How to create a Shogi handicap;
- How to determine the handicap level.

I did'nt found a clue in the help file.

All right, it should be fixed now. White starts and the first black move is marked as "-" in the notation section.

ニコ: There have been arguements whether Gyokusho(玉将) or (王将) is correct at least since 17th century.

In diagrams in the books and magazines published by Nihon Shogi Renmei(Japan Shogi Association), 'Gyoku'(玉) is used for both colors.

On the other hand, if you buy a set of shogi pieces, there usually are one Gyokusho and one Ohsho as the Kings in it. It is a practice that a higher rated player uses the Ohsho and a lower rated player uses the Gyokusho in that case.

I think it will be no problem for Brainking to use two Gyokusho for both Kings.

YuryShpilev: I understand. It won't be a problem, of course. But if the game recording starts from the 2nd move, does it mean the white's 1st move is not recorded?

In Japan, we don't use the technical terms like Sente and Gote in a handicap game. Instead, we use Uwate(more skillful player) for a handicap giver and Shitate(less skillful player) for a handicap taker. And, Uwate, a handicap giver, always moves first in handicap games.

The color of Uwate is White and that of Shitate is Black. Why? I think this is due to the conveneience of printing industry in Japan. Looking at shogi books in Japan, the lower side of a diagram of a handicap shogi position is always Shitate(black). The player who needs to read such book is definitely novices/begenners and it is easier to understand the position if the lower side of the diagram is Shitate(Black) rather than Uwate(White). I think this is true for Igo handicap games. White(a handicap giver) drops first there.

The white King (Osho) is the one with the extra dash.

source: http://shawnbrown.com/basement/shogi/shogi_rules_1.html

Conclusion:

The white king with the extra dash, denoting wealth, is the reigning king.

The black king is the challenging king, and thus has the first move, attacking the reigning king's kingdom, because he needs the money. ;)

I also happened to notice that with your current kanji shogi characters both King's are denoted as the "gyokushō" (jade general).

The "ōshō" (royal general) King looks the same but without the small dash next to the 'E',
which denotes the gyokushō king's wealth.

This is a common 'error' and might trouble programming? But correcting this issue would at least impress shogi player's with brainking's intrinsic attention to detail. ;)

/Nico

I think this has been somewhat confused.

In both Go and Shogi black ="Sente" has the first move and the first notation in the protocol etc. (white ="Gote")

Sente actually means "the first move".

The real japanese word for black is "Kuroi".

In Go, black was considered to have the advantage (moving first) so the komi rule was introduced (reducing 2 1/2 points from black's score after the game was finished) this changed certain opening strategies, which is why "kosumi" is only found in old go game that predate the rule.

In Shogi, black is also considered to have a (very small) advantage, however in certain openings and handicap games black (the first mover) is at a disadvantage, like the aigakari static-rook opening where black can fall for the classic bishop trap.

Handicap-Shogi is also quite popular at the shogidojo24.

By the way according to the Chess Grandmaster "Adorjan" from Hungary, black has the advantage, he has released two books explaining why Black is better than White (in Chess). He says we think white is better because of the psychological implications of the word "White" (=positve, pure, clean, etc.) etc.

Even Fischer has been quoted as saying that black is better, also world-champion Karpov never played 1.e4 ever again after losing his title to Kasparov in their 1.e4-c5 games =)

Some shogi master's think the kakugawari opening will die because black gives away a tempo to white, so one day white will find a winning strategy and kill the opening, but I don't believe that. =)

/Nico

Fencer: No problem. If black make 1st move than weakest player have winnig position in 8 piece gandicap (white without Rook, Bishop and all Lance, Knight and Silver) after 1.P-7f 2.G-3b 3.B-6f 4.G-7b 5.Bx9c+. If white begin that they defend own position: 2.G-3b 3.P-7f 4.G-7b 5.B-6f 6.G-8b and white defend pawn on 9c.
But here can another explanation: white give material and must have compensation by doing 1st move.

YuryShpilev: I did't know that. Why should white make the first move?

Fencer: I found 1st error. White make 1st move, but not black! And game begin for recording from 2nd move.

YuryShpilev: All handicap games are automatically unrated.

Fencer: Thanks for new possibilities! It's very good! But how will calculate rating in gandicap games? If stong player give gandicap then the force of players is equalized. Therefore rating will calculate as players have equal rating. But it's correct not always. I not know this dependences.

flummoxed: All right, you can try it now.