Fencer: Shog variants page on Wikipedia.

Okay, I clicked your link. There is a bigger variant taikyoku shogi on a 36x36 board. I dont know if anyone plays these. Chuu shogi on a 12x12 board is quite popular in Europe.

ughaibu: Yes, 25x25. Looks weird to me.

By tai shogi do you mean on a 25x25 board?

Kyoto shogi is an excellent game, a weirder variant is renge shogi, a kind of 7x7 version of Kyoto shogi but all the captured pieces are available to both players except that a player can only checkmate with a drop if using a piece captured by him/herself. Tori shogi is an interesting 7x7 variant from the 18th century but requires different pieces. Using the normal board and pieces, annan shogi in which pieces take on the movements of any piece on the adjoining square behind them and kingyounofun shogi in which pieces drag adjoining pieces behind them, are both fun and interesting.
Fencer: if you want detailed rules for any of these please message me.

What about Tai Shogi, anybody has a real experience with it?

Maybe Kyoto Shogi? It has some funny/remarkable changes from Shogi:
"In kyoto, there is no promotion: at the conclusion of every move the piece that moved must be reversed."
It is also played on 5x5, but with 2x5 pieces. Here is the site: http://www.drjochum.de/ (click on the link)
I haven't played it, I leave it to the expert Shogi players to judge :) but looks fun to me.

I found some larger Shogi Variants but to me they look to slow for a turn-based site.

Fencer: Anti-Shogi, Extinguish Shogi, ???-Relay Shogi, Atomic Shogi, Cylinder Shogi, ... <tt>;-)</tt>

Fencer: My favorite is Minishogi. I play it quite often with Zillions-of-Games.

Could somebody recommend a good Shogi variant which would be worth implementing?

Uh-huh.

Fencer: Another example there:

http://gamelab.yz.yamagata-u.ac.jp/SHOGI/kifumain.html


The main thing are the signs characters. The pentagonal shapes are nice but secondary, because the orientation of the characters shows the owners.
The above example is exactly what I think about.

[Edited by playBunny to make the link work. it gives a list of recorded matches. Then click any of the Java links to see the board and play through the game.]

Spirou: Do you mean just the Japanese characters without surrounding pentagonal shapes?

Fencer: Because the majority or at least many of the shogi web sites and books are using ... (I don't know the technical name) 'simplified' Japanese pieces, would you be so kind as to propose also this kind of pieces, please?
A clear and superb example is displayed in (you have to scroll down) : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh%C3%B4gi so you can watch the signs I write for.
I hope I am not trying to abuse of your amiability but it could be, again, a real improvement.

Fencer: Fine! Now one can invite asiatics players. Alas for me, I lost the email addresses from players at chessvariants. Some are very strong.

Thank you! :)

Fencer: Great!! Now we can select westernized or Japanese pieces according to users' preference.

Try Settings / Shogi page.

Fencer: Thanks for giving me the reason and your intention that it will be changed in the future.

takodori: This is the reason. But it will be changed in the future.

takodori: My hypothesis: as the "sente" starts first, I presume, in order to not disturb the used chess players "sente" is named "white".

In shogi, the player who makes first move has been called "black"("sente" in Japanese) and the other player has been called "white"("gote" in Japanese) in English as far as I know. Is there any particular reason why this site reverse the colours of players?

I think the Rules on draw of this site should mention to "Sennichite" and "Jishogi" referring to the following page;
http://www.ricoh.co.jp/SHOGI/rules/erules.html#DRA

The main shogi Page
http://www.shogi.net/shogi.html
FESA - European Shogi Federation
If someone interesting links on Russian , I can send this information

<Spirou & TKR101010> Thank you both! I will look at the sites soon, and Spirou I'll try to learn the japanese signs. It's probably worth it!

takodori> this is a great help already.

<The piece values in descending order are as followings;
Rook > Bishop > Gold > Silver > Knight > Lance > Pawn
In general, seeking for material advantage is good in the middlegame.

Hi Fwiffo :)
On one of my Yahoo pages I have some Shogi links listed that I've found useful. Check 'em out ...
http://www.geocities.com/phoenix_tkar/Shogi.html

Fwiffo: I wish to add: don't lost courage because the japanese signs on the pieces. After some games you will become very used. I know about what I say, because personaly I didn't found that so weird after +/- 10 games.
It is also the very sole mean to learn Shogi, all articles are with those characters and Shogi deserved that little training ;-).
Enjoy!!

Fwiffo: Is that kind of web sites you search for?:

http://yamajunn.hp.infoseek.co.jp/

http://www.shogi.net/ISC/

Could that help.

Thanks! I recognise the portal from some earlier google searches... but links to shogi seem to lead to broken pages, pages in japanese or too difficult pages.

If I find anything useful I'll post it, but I have not much hope.

Does anyone know a site where the "Shogi basics" are explained?

Fencer:

Spirou: I know what happened but you don't want to know it.

Fencer: I don't know what happened, now I can move and it is done.

The game is the : Game ID: 977044, Match ID: 33243.

Fencer: In my game with Nasmichael, I play G-3b, click move and play another person. After that the same game with Nasmichael comes again without my move G-3b as if I didn't had play.
I have repeated this operation 3 times, allways the same result.

@Fencer: I see it now :) thanks!

Mirjam: 1) Can be fixed. 2) Backward is contained in "vertically" :-)

I think I've found two mistakes in the game rules, one little: "captured pieces could be returned to the board and player's own."
"and" should be "as" I think.
And the bigger one, but I'm not sure it's a mistake:
"A golden general moves one space horizontally, vertically or diagonally forward." I thought he can also move one space backward.

Fencer, Frolind, Marficka.....sorry I took on more than I could chew :(

but then you look good and I look bad so there isnt any worries L)

Thank you for implementing shogi and xiangqi!

I know that you are working out bugs for these new additions and recognize that this will have a significant claim on your attention.

Perhaps in the future the options for new game of shogi will include the possibility of a handicap to be set based on the differential in BKR?

The traditional handicap system in shogi has always appealed to me, since it has allowed a weak player like myself to have an enjoyable game with strong opponents over the table. I hope that you would agree that it could enhance the enjoyment of play on BrainKing, too.

Once again, thank you very much for including these games!

All right, give me the checkmate now.

Spirou: I'll look at it.

Fencer: when I drop my Gold at 6h in our game, after I clicked "Move to main page" the PC displays a white screen excepting the titles from my browser.
I tried 4 or 5 times, allways the same result.
A little bug???

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh%C5%8Dgi

I added the link to brainking :-)

Fencer: Perfect! Thank you. Now I will ask again for new games.

I am hoping for asian characters soon that say not too later. I am sure accustomed Xiangqi and shogi players are waiting for that ;-).

Anyway, congratulations for the job already done :-)

Spirou: That's better.

Fencer: Correct! But actually the Bishop is on the right hand for the player in second ;-)

Spirou: A bishop is always on the left side (from each player's perspective).

Fencer, I am quite sure the Bishop and Rook for the player who plays in second are to be inversed. To be clearer, the Bishop should start at b8 and the Rook at b2.