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The tentative version of the book "Silicon Valley kara Shogi wo Miru" was translated into English to read through the following linked pages.

Top page of the project
http://modernshogi.pbworks.com/

Preface - 'Non-playing Shogi Fan' Declaration
http://modernshogi.pbworks.com/Preface

Chapter 1 - Yoshiharu Habu and 'Changing Modern Shogi
http://modernshogi.pbworks.com/Chapter-1

Chapter 2 - (about Sato Yasumitsu and the commentary of 1st game of
79th Kisei-sen in the year 2008)
http://modernshogi.pbworks.com/Chapter-2

Chapter 3 (about the enjoyment of watching Shogi)
http://modernshogi.pbworks.com/Chapter-3

Chapter 4 (about Fukaura Koichi)
http://modernshogi.pbworks.com/Chapter-4

Chapter 5 (about the commentary of 1st game of 21st Ryuoh-sen in the
year 2008)
http://modernshogi.pbworks.com/Chapter-5

Chapter 6 (about Watanabe Akira)
http://modernshogi.pbworks.com/Chapter-6

Chapter 7 (Table talk between Habu and the author)
http://modernshogi.pbworks.com/Chapter-7

Postscript
http://modernshogi.pbworks.com/Postscript

Acknowledgments
http://modernshogi.pbworks.com/Acknowledgments

The book containing 291 pages was released on April 25. The reason
why
English translation emerged so early is that Umeda Mochio, the
author,
declared to allow the book to be freely translated into any languages
to be
published anywhere on the Net in the form of web content on his blog
entry
of April 20, 5 days before the release. And an open source style
project of translation of it has been kicked by shotayakushiji since
April 29 and then
15 Japanese people including myself came together to generate the
tentative version linked above.

I'm sure this will instantly be one of most interesting reading
materials in
English about shogi.

You can not only read the contents but also participate in brushing up
the translation since the translation is still tentative and the
project is
proceeding in an Open Source style. In order to take part in the
project,
having a PBworks account will be required. And you can kick the
translation project of it into other languages than English and
French.
(PJ for French translation by Yamada Yoshihisa, see the link both in
Japanese and French below;
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/yoshihisa_yamada/20090509/1241832915 )

Here are some links to the contents related to this project for our
reference.

* Emerging Open Source Translation Projects in Japan
http://www.mobinode.com/2009/05/09/emerging-open-source-translation-p...

* Open-source style translation project "Shogi" book
http://hogacentral.blogs.com/japan_tech_blog/2009/05/opensouce-style-...

Shogi-Silicon Valley Book open to the world
* http://www.yokoishikura.com/english/?p=381

http://www.gamerz.net/


has it !!

fukuhara: There is indeed a site that offers Chu Shogi, as well as Dai Shogi & Tenjiku Shogi ... http://www.gamerz.net/pbmserv
If you ever wish to play, my userid there is tkr101010 as well.

The game courier on Chess Variants also offers Chu Shogi, but the interface isn't as nice, http://play.chessvariants.org/pbm/index.html


I just want more sites to offer more variants :) BrainKing's got the nicest interface and plenty of people play shogi here anyway, so adding Chu seems logical.

fukuhara: Why not keeping the original name "chu shogi"?

TKR101010: Great idea. I haven't heard any online sites that has one. But the name cannot be chu shogi which literally means Middle-sized shogi. Any idea for a cool English name?

Does anyone think that Chu Shogi will ever become available for play on this site?

Date: May 28th to 31th, 2009.
Venue: Assembly Hall of Déri Museum, Déri tér 1, Debrecen, Hungary
Time limits: 30 minutes + 60 seconds byo-yomi

For more information, please visit
http://magyarsogi.fw.hu/

It's to be held on April 10 to 12, 2009 in San Francisco. The application deadline is March 27. For more information, please visit the followings;

http://www.nyshogi.com/en/index_en.html
http://groups.google.com/group/shogi-l/browse_thread/thread/7bd3c111c8c001a4/245af1e633ba553f?show_docid=245af1e633ba553f

The New York Shogi Club cordially invites you to The 3rd Shogi World Championship Tournament, to be held
in the weekend of November 13-15,2009, in New York, supported by the Nihon Shogi Renmei and the City of
New York, among other sponsors.
The winner will be awarded with the title of The Amateur Shogi World Champion, along with the cash prize of
US$3,000!
As was the case in the past, we require a preliminary tournament to be held in each country by the summer of
2009, and the winner of the preliminary tournament in each country will be invited to the World Championship Tournament in New York, with the travel and hotel expenses to be paid by the organizer. All other participants are of course welcome at their own expenses.
The 1st Shogi World Championship Tournament was held in New York in May of 2000, and Mr. Katsumasa Egoshi of Brazil became the 1st Amateur Shogi World Champion. In the following year, we planned the second tournament, but it was obstructed by the 9/11 terrorist attack in New York. We are pleased to have theopportunity to hold the 3rd tournament next year, and we hope to see you all in New York next November.
The tournament details will be announced from time to time by the New York Shogi Club, and will be posted on the websites at www.nyshogi.com and www.worldshogi.com
We need to contact the presidents or the leaders of all Shogi clubs around the world in preparation for this
tournament.
Those who are in that role, please give your email address to our Public Relations Director, Mr.Tomohiro Kubo kubo@worldshogi.com

Thank you,

New York Shogi Club
November 8,2008

There might be problems having Popii shogi here as it was originally designed as an advertising gimmick for a life insurance company. In any case it's a very limited game. On the other hand, we have permission to use Kyoto shogi, which is an excellent game.

That promotion rule isn't unique, it occurs in the larger historical shogi variants.

There is an interesting shogi variant called Microshogi, aka Five-minute Poppy Shogi, played on a 4x5 board. It has a unique promotion rule - whenever a piece makes a capture it flips over and becomes the piece shown on the other side. The full rules are here:
http://www.chessvariants.org/shogivariants.dir/poppysh.html
I think it would be an interesting addition to the site. Minishogi players would particularly enjoy it.

Thanks.

See here: http://yamajunnshoginews.blogspot.com/2008/12/shogi-news-21st-ryuo-sen-7-games-title_18.html

Does anyone know where I can find the Ryu-O final game online?

HIDETCHI continuously released his lessons. Each of them is approximately 10 minute long.

Lessons#1-10
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=587865CAE59EB84A&page=1


Lessons#11-20
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=587865CAE59EB84A&page=2


Lessons#21-30(29&30 will be upcoming soon)
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=587865CAE59EB84A&page=3

Have fun.

They are for complete novices/beginners. So far today, there appeared 18 lessons. It's still ongoing.

Playlist: How to play Shogi(将棋)
Description: Shogi lessons in English. I will teach you how to play Japanese Chess, Shogi.
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=587865CAE59EB84A

bakashogi:
Wrong link. All my apologizes.
The right one is: http://www.shogi.fr/web/shogi/shogi_fr.nsf/ryuo2008.html

For shogi players being interested in meeting the best shogi players of the world, I would like to inform you that the first match of the RyuO sen will take place in Paris on the 18+19 October 2008.
An eve cocktail is open to everybody on the 17.10.2008. There you'll be able to meet many well-known shogi players.
All details in french at http://www.shogi.fr/ryuo2008.html.
document in english to downloaded at the same place.

ABSTRAKTA SHOGI TOURNAMENT 2008

6 players out of min. 16 until now.

any more takers? :)

ABSTRAKTA SHOGI TOURNAMENT 2008

I have a set of Westernized Pieces. Does anyone know a good site (besides wwwYutopian.com) to buy a board to go with them; as well the approximate cost? I live in The United States and do not know foriegn currency exchange rates; so could a responder let me know prices in United States Currency. TED

I am happy to introduce two new Taiwan players that could in future be the regional champion.

They mainly play at shogidojo and their current rating is about
qswdefg: 240
siydira: 220

I guess their BKR rating could be around 1600-1900

I will invite both to brainking and I hope they will do well here.

fukuhar

rod03801:

I don't regularly play other games besides shogi and chess. I go to Yahoo Pool when I don't want to not think, lol. So, I don't know how this would be used in other games. If you think it is a "feature request" for the site as a whole, please post it there. Another thing to be aware of is, if someone comes on this server to play shogi, it is more likely that they would have visited the shogi forum and have it linked than the feature request forum. In that case, I think it would be beneficial to list non-specific game forums below the banner. If there are too many list, my question then is, does there need to be that many? Is it possible to condense if there are too many?

jadarite: LOL.. I think this would actually be a great suggestion for the Feature Requests discussion board. But hey, it works here too, as far as I'm concerned.

I think polls of many sorts would be very useful and fun for the site.

I thought I should post here instead of the feature request area cause people are more likely to give more pertinent feedback for this suggestion. I hope it's ok, I want to post the same one in the European chess forum also.

I think it would be a neat feature to be able to interact some way. One suggestion I made before was to add chat. Another idea would be to allow "game polling". This would be applied to strategic games like chess and shogi, and NOT to games like card games.

People would NOT be allowed to suggest moves, but they could have an overall vote on the position/progress of the game. A simple example of this would be, "Who do you think has the advantage? Black or White?" Each person has one vote, which is seen anonymously. As the game advances, you may switch your position or keep it if you think the same person still has the advantage.

End result would read something like, "60% think white has the advantage out of 10 total".

Ok, so, I pose the same thing in a different way, is this a good idea or completely dumb? Sorry, you can't be anonymous in this poll LOL

Yes, my suggestion has short lines for the directions the piece can move one square; long lines for directions where the piece can move one or two squares to.

Now, I think there are Shogi variants with pieces that may move (as opposed to jump) two squares in a direction, but not one square. We'd need something else if Fencer would ever implement such a Shogi variant.

jadarite: from AbigailII: "One way to show the Eagle: arrows up-left, up-right, down. short lines up, right, left. longer lines down-left and down-right."

jurek:

"short lines were blue and the long ones red", can you tell me what you mean by that? Lines seem to be the same length, it's just a matter of showing and arrow "->" for multiple squares (rook, bishop move) compared to just a "-" for one square (king, pawn, silver, gold). That already seems to be solved from the wiki page which has a circle instead of a line for single squared moves.

portugal: Different colors to go along with the different lengths would help differentiate them, too. For example, if the short lines were blue and the long ones red.

harmy:

If there is interest in learning the characters, I can make something to help learn them. I think that aspect is better to be kept separate from the actual playing of the game.

Long/short arrows seems a good option, if they don't look too similar. :)

Another option, that I would like, would be to have pieces with movement indicators along with the Chinese/Japanese characters. That way people who didn't know the characters could play the game and also learn the characters.

portugal: One way to show the Eagle: arrows up-left, up-right, down. short lines up, right, left. longer lines down-left and down-right.

This is closest to how the current Shogi/MiniShogi pieces are: straight arrows for slides, curved arrows for jumps, lines for steps. (Mini)Shogi doesn't have pieces that can step two places though, hence the short/long lines.

Alternatively, I'd settle for images of falcons, geese, quails, eagles, cranes, swallows and phoenixes.

There could be 2 sets of westernized pieces for Tori Shogi. One set is the same size as the Japanese set, it would have "G" for goose, "E" for eagle. You would be expected to know how the game is played, but not the Chinese characters.

The other set would have bigger pieces and could have the word "goose" under "+Sw", "eagle" under "+Fa" along with movement indicators.

jadarite [flags]: the right flag is the one you feel suits you better.
It never crossed my mind that one could be of a country and live in another - and as such, i read nationality rather than location. :)
Nationality makes a bit more sense inside my head, but that's a personal choice i guess. :)

---

[Western Representation]
About the promoted pieces and their representations...
It might become a tad harder for people to remember what it promoted from if the piece changes name.
For the less experienced players, that is.
Still, it's part of the game, i guess. To know the pieces and what they promote to/from.
If the objective is to have the original game represented fairly, i think one ought to use the "real names".
(Although that would, in all honesty, make the process of learning the game harder.)

I like to see the movement indicators on the pieces.
I hope that is something to be kept in the more "exquisite" games.
Though i'm curious how we'll manage to represent Tori Shogi's exquisite movements - namely the Eagle's back moves. =]

jadarite: I would prefer pieces that indicate movement, just as currently with Shogi and MiniShogi. On chessvariants, I've seen pieces that uses dots and arrows to indicate movement (arrows for rook and bishop like moves, different coloured dots for moving/jumping one or two spaces in the indicated diretion).

jadarite: To my opinion, it's better to write "+Sw" than "G" or "+B" than "H" as shogi western players don't always know the name of the promoted pieces, but just know them as "promoted".
As it is so in "regular" Shogi, I would also do it so in Tori Shogi.

Fencer:

Yes, I can. The question is, what do people want on it? Since there can be letters which aren't as complex, there are more options. I can add arrows also or leave them out if people prefer. Another thing is which letters to use. At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tori_shogi they show abbreviations for the pieces and instead of goose they have "+Sw" for promoted swallow and "+Fa" for promoted falcon instead of eagle.

I haven't played the game, but if it's the same as regular Shogi, I would want to see "G" instead "+Sw" just like I would prefer to see "H" for horse instead of "+B" for promoted bishop. Feedback on this would be appreciated. Another note, do people want the lettering to be capital and then lower case "Ph" or "PH" for phoenix? Since there are two pieces which have "P", I'll keep it to 2 letters for consistency.

jadarite: Do you think you could make a set of "westernized" tori shogi pieces for those who cannot read Japanese characters? Similar to the standard Shogi set.

portugal:

I like the kanji too, it wasn't centering unless I wedged it up to the top to get space in between. So, instead I made the character for quail smaller and that gave room for the kanji.

I am not sure if I picked the right flag. I am living in Japan, but I am not Japanese. Should I change my profile so it reflects where I am originally from instead?

portugal:

Actually, I am from America (Detroit area), but I am living in Kyoto. When Japanese order at McDonald's, they don't say small and large, but rather the letters "S" and "L". I don't think I have ever heard anyone in America or in London when I was there say S and L. They always said small and large. Another example of abbreviating is "pasocon" which is a combination of "personal" and "computer". A German student in my Japanese class in college was surprised to hear "arbaito" for "part-time job". She would say, "It's arbeit, no o at the end". However, the only consonant Japanese use to end words with is "n". So, I guess, as long as you have a reason you are free to mangle the language to fit your needs LOL

Ah, never mind me, then. :)
And blah, you're Japanese. If anyone knows it's you, i guess.

I still prefer the whole kanji though, as you have it now. ;-)

portugal

I think it depends on the person. Someone could be equally upset that we have letters for pieces as the default set. My intention is to make a simplified version for people to learn the game.

Also, there is nothing wrong with what I did. I was referencing the radicals for each piece. They just happen to look like katakana characters as well.

http://japanese.about.com/blkod2.htm - migi
http://japanese.about.com/blkod24.htm - hidari

jadarite: Eep!
You can't break the kanji, then it'll be a different one! ;)
Those two katakana are the katakana for the sounds "ro" ( ロ ) and "e" ( エ ).
Any Japanese would go wild if he saw such changes. =P

It's like breaking a word in half: instead of "castle" you write "cast", and it's a different thing.

---

It looks great with the whole kanji.

( side note: 口 is also the kanji for "mouth" - kuchi ^_^)

jurek:

I can make them red. "Typically, the left/right kanji characters are on the back side", but how do you see that while playing a game? Wouldn't it be more convenient to see it on the front?

jadarite: Could you maybe make those katakana characters red, like on the chessvariants image? Typically, the left/right kanji characters are on the back side (since they don't promote) of the pieces and in red.

portugal:

To make space, I moved the main kanji down a bit, and then instead of adding 右 and 左, I put katakana ロand エat the top of the pieces. Same address http://marcuswebsite.googlepages.com/torishogipieces.html

jurek and jadarite: The difference in the quails is the kanji [japanese character] that shows up on the top of the piece.
右 = "migi" = right
左 = "hidari" = left

鶉 = uzura = quail

I suggest you use nihongoresources.com to search for the characters. :)
Very good work so far.


Sorry, i didn't read more than a few posts down.
If you need any help hunt me on msn: andre_c_neves [AT] hotmail [DOT] com


fencer: Taikyoku shogi? Heh, joking. ;)

«Click on a piece you want to promote the pawn to.»
That's what shows up, when you're promoting a piece.
Any piece, not just a pawn.

Simple, easy to fix bug that has been reported back on March - perhaps it was just overlooked.

kthxbai (sorry, i'm really grumpy today)