Takodori's Entrance to Shogi World

Slideshow of Shogi Set uploaded recently on Instructables

I found a slideshow of shogi set which contains 4 shots today.

• Shogi Set - A shogi set I made for my cousin for Christmas.

A video of shogi for chess players were uploaded on YouTube

The following video of shogi for chess players was uploaded on YouTube. It's using "International Pieces" and for beginners and/or novices.

Here is the duplication of the description of this video by the author.

This video is the first part in a series of videos that will introduce Shogi, the Japanese form of Chess, to Chess players. This first video introduces some Shogi equipment that is suitable for Chess players who don't know any Japanese, namely my Symbolic set, and it explains why Shogi uses wedge-shaped, double-sided pieces. It does not cover all the rules or even how all the pieces move. I will cover these subjects in subsequent videos.

A shogi scene in "Detective Conan"

I found a shogi scene between 1:21 and 1:24.

The number of registered members of 81SU forum exceeded 100

The number of registered members of 81-Square Universe Forum which is an English-speaking Shogi community exceeded 100. The hot topic in the forum has been New online playing website for these several months.

• The 81-Square Universe • Index page
• The 81-Square Universe • View topic - New online playing website

www.shogi.fr started to generate RSS feed

I found that www.shogi.fr, the website of French Shogi Federation, started to generate RSS feed recently. It's convenient to register it to my RSS in order to be notified timely when there is update without visiting it frequently. It can be found on the left side of the page linked below;

• Fédération Française de Shogi

I wish all the active shogi websites will start generating RSS feed so that their readers can be notified timely through their RSS reader/aggregater whenever they are updated.

Neues Deutschland covered 2nd one-day tournament in Ludwigshafen, Germany

Neues Deutschland, which is a German newspaper based in Berlin, covered the second ond-day tournamennt in Ludwigshafen.

• 05.12.2009: Der Weg kann das Ziel sein (Tageszeitung Neues Deutschland)
• English translation by Google Language tool.

Learn to play Shogi at the Balboa Club in San Diego

The following event of Learn to play Shogi will be held at 7:00pm on December 8 and 14 at the Balboa Club in San Diego, California. If you are further interested, please read the links below, you will find the contact information there;

• Learn to play Shogi at the Balboa Club - SAN DIEGO CHESS CLUB

Taught by Chess Expert Eric Kuniholm, now Shogi Master 1^st Dan.

      Shogi is a cousin of Western Chess, independently developed as the game spread outward from India over the last 1000 years or so. About 75% of the rules are similar so it’s really easy to learn if you know how to play Chess. Most of your skills will be transferable! —And transferable both ways if you get good at Shogi! Three of the top Shogi players in Japan have made master norms in their first ever attempts to play in Chess tournaments, and IM Larry Kaufman finally got his GM title after becoming the top rated Shogi amateur in the West.

      But be warned, Shogi has several orders of magnitude more possibilities than Chess, and computers have yet to beat Shogi professionals in match play. The main reason for the increased complexity is because in Shogi, prisoners can be reintroduced into play, like bughouse, and almost all pieces can promote—rooks, knights, bishops, and not just pawns. Almost every game ends in a sacrificial mating attack, and only 2% of games between professionals end in draws (for amateurs, the figure is even lower). And no problems finding opponents once you learn the game, it’s more popular than Go in the Japanese community, and the Shogi equivalent of the ICC offers free online membership to all players outside Japan.

I got an email with a photo from Eric Kuniholm, who is the organizer of the captioned event. Here is the photo he sent to me.

  (Eric Kuniholm presents to Chuck Ensey, and the San Diego Chess Club Library,two copies of Shogi books by Aono Teruichi 9 dan--graciously donated by the author. Balboa Club members can now check out two of the best books available in English on this Japanese cousin of Western Chess.)

Shogi is picked up in BEGIN Japanology by NHK world TV

NHK world TV is broadcasting the following shogi program today.  The schedules are at the end of the contents.

BEGIN Japanology

• Hosted by Peter Barakan
• Bilingual (English/Japanese)

Thu. 0:30 - 1:00 (UTC) etc.

BEGIN Japanology invites you into the world of Japanese culture, both traditional and modern, explaining how traditions evolved and the part they still play today in people's everyday lives.

Topics of the week:

Nov. 26, Thu. 0:30 - 1:00(UTC) etc.

"Shogi"

Shogi is one of the most popular board games in Japan. Like chess and other games of strategy with which it shares historical roots, shogi is based on the idea of an "army" attacking the opposition and capturing its king.

One unique feature of shogi is a rule that enables you to recycle captured pieces as members of your own force. It is said that this rule derives from the ancient military practice in Japan of recruiting defeated opponents.

Shogi has been played for over 1,000 years. It was popular with medieval warlords before eventually spreading to the population at large.

These days, the game is played professionally for big prizes, with the top pros engaging in engrossing psychological battles that may last hours. Even now, the best computers cannot beat the best professionals.

On this edition of BEGIN Japanology, we look at a game that tests a person's full potential as a human being.

Schedule:

	UTC
NHK WORLD TV	Thu.	00:30 - 01:00 04:30 - 05:00 08:30 - 09:00 12:30 - 13:00 16:30 - 17:00 20:30 - 21:00
General TV (in Japan)	Fri.	01:10 - 01:40 (JST)

*English on audio main-channel

Updates - Discussion about a new online playing website at 81-Square Universe

The discussion is here. The things seems to proceed very quickly. This is HIDETCHI's summary.

OK.
I started this topic not only because I'm seriously thinking about the necessity of a new playing website, but also because I wanted to know if there are anyone elses who can get serious about launching 81SU online game system.
And although I'm not yet too confident we're all pretty serious about it, I think I'd present some plan of how we can actually proceed it, since I see many people at least interested in this project.

My idea is, "why don't we split the work?". I think maybe it can be split into:

A: Graphical user interface of the game table. (plus its working algorithm for such as piece movement, timer action, etc.)
B: Graphical user interface of the waiting room. (how we show the name list and table list, etc.)
C: Network system (building communicating protocols, sever storage and security system for individual data, etc.)
D: Give opinions, requests, ideas, anything to the persons in charge of A to C.

One can do more than two at the same time if he'd like to, of course.
On the other hand, each of these could also be split into even smaller works.

I see there have already been many good suggestions so far.
But the most important thing, I believe, is that we get to have the new system RUNNING as soon as we can. So, I think we should give it a go as soon as the minimal required features are built.
We can think about adding other attractive features (such as "teaching mode" and "my page" some of you suggested) later, because once we get it running, hopefully more people get interested in improving the website, which means we get more people to help us.
(In order to improve it and add new features to it later, the program must be such that it's configurable, just as shogi4fun suggests)

What I'm worrying is if we need to expand the disk space, it would cost hirohiigo some additional payment. I think I should share part of the cost (as I'm the one who brought it up ), and hopefully, if we get more people playing at 81SU, hirohiigo could recover the cost by implementing advertising section or something.

And a Japanese programmer is taking part in this project.

Hi,all.
I'm a Japanese shogi loving programmer.
And I guess i can make some contribution to actually building up a online shogi-playing site.

I have work experiense in ruby,PHP,Flash(Flex) and java, and I'm currently thinking of making the server side with ruby, and the client with Flex.

Also, I'm thinking of developing the program in open source style. Maybe using an open repository on git-hub.

I believe I can release the first proto type with minimal features in one or two months.

How do you guys think of my plan?
Any suggestions, especially on the chice of programming languge ,are welcome.

Kota Fujiwara a.k.a Koudayu

And hirohiigo who is a co-founder of 81-square universe made a mock-up image of the new shogi playing website linked below;

• 81suclientdemo.png

Discussion about a new online playing website started at 81-Square Universe

Discussion about a new online playing website started at 81-Square Universe.  It's kicked out by Hidetchi.  For reading and/or participating in the duscussion,  please click the link below, I'm quoting Hidetchi's first post here.

• The 81-Square Universe • View topic - New online playing website

I think I remember hirohiigo mentioned that 81SU wants to have its own online playing website sometime in the future.

Actually, I even thought about studying java and program it myself. But I think it's too hard work for me.
I wish we could recruit someone who is good at web programing and is interested in shogi popularization.

Anyway, I've just made a rough idea of how a new program should be. Hope you get interested.

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