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Site to help you play Shogi confidently on line
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Why would I want to visit this site?
 
If you want to get better at Shogi, learn more about it, or just simply enjoy taking a shot at new things, this is the site for you!!!
 
If you want to know the basic movement of each shogi pieces or learn the rules, you will not find them on this site. You can go to www.wikipedia.org  and enter "Shogi" in the search box.

 

So you thought you could play Shogi because you play Chess well.   Yes, you might find some techniques you learned in Chess will become useful while playing Shogi. However, you need more than that, based on what I am seeing in Kurnik (now PlayOk).  These are a few things that I am seeing people do:

 

 

  1. Most people who start to play Shogi right after learning each piece's move seem to lack some fundamental philosophies on "what to do" and "what not to do."   After reading this site, you will be able to judge most of these things by yourself.
  2. Most players lack knowledge of which piece to move first.  I can somtimes get confused too.  95% of the Shogi masters start with only one of two moves. You better do the same.  See here for those moves.
  3. There are "Shogi Checkmate Problems (Tsume Shogi)."   These problems are similar to Chess Problems.  Learning fairly short ones (usually about 3,5, or sometimes even 7 moves) will dramatically improve your closing moves.  Have you ever missed a basic checkmate, and regretted it later?  After doing these problems, that shouldn't be much of a problem to you anymore.  See here for these moves
  4. Many of the articles on this site will use "Kifu for Flash" Shogi board applet. Please go here to learn how to navigate this applet.  Pay particular attention to how to view alternative moves (if there are any), because many of play examples branches out to show variation of the moves.
  5. Since it will be impossible to explain everything on this site, I will make many references to the established shogi sites. Most of those sites are Japanese. Not Japanse?   Don't dread. Even just a little bit of knowledge about Shogi could lead you to understanding the whole page.  See here. A little practice and you will be amazed how much you can learn.

July 10

Getting Shobiboard in the States
I was at Chicago last week and had visited Mitsuwa market.  If you google the store name, you will find this is a franchise of Japanese Supermarket throughout the United States. (They used to be called as Yaohan-USA.)  Inside  Mitsuwa complex, there is a Japanese book store called Sanseido.  When I was browsing for Shogi [...]

6:12 PM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

July 08

Site Slogan changed
well, since many japanese players started to play at PlayOK.com, the rating of 1500 at playOK is no longer an easy target for novice players.  If you can get to 1300 at Playok, it means you are already quite good at Shogi play.    Also the PlayOK site is not as friendly as it used [...]

10:44 AM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

June 25

Update on Study Shogi
Another board describing Fourth ranging rook vs. Right fourth ranging rook (or migi-shiken) added in the study room

8:10 PM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

February 17

Play at 81dojo. You will like it!
When I play Shogi online, I usually play at PlayOK. This site is based on the experience I gained at PlayOK (At the time, the site used to be called Kurnick) Recently I was introduced to another site, 81Dojo. The site is a spinoff of the 81SquareUniverse, one of the busiest English based Shogi site. [...]

6:45 PM GMT  |  Read comments(1)

November 04

39? 4649? What are they?
In recent weeks, we have seen a surge of new Shogi players in PlayOK.  As it turned out, Yahoo.co.jp has ceased its service of Shogi game site.  So there are many Japanese players now playing at PlayOK.  That is a good thing.  However, I have seen some of those players uses the abbrebiation such as [...]

8:30 PM GMT  |  Read comments(0)


..Complete update history in About Me page...

Other Useful sites
 
The one I wholeheartedly recommend is  

This site introduces you to the variety of Shogi articles. In particular, You will want to take a look at "Basic Shogi information available in English on Internet (1)" for general Shogi information and "Basic Shogi information available in English on Internet (2)"  for English literature on various Shogi techniques available on-line . 

See here for more reference

 
 
 
 
Frequency of Updates
Updates to this site may not be as frequently as I would like to.  In the meantime, please refer to the site above. I am certain you will find values.  My son helps me on many of them.
 
You have to get used to the Classic Kanji Pieces
 
Like symbols better than Kanji? Too  bad.  Your going to have to get used to the Classic Kanji Pieces.  Sure, it is much easier to see symbolic pieces rather than pieces with Kanji characters on them.  However, most of reference materials that are available online are shown with Classic styles.  If you don't get used to it, then you'll regret it later.  It's better to learn now, than later.  If you don't know what every piece stands for, then your opponent has a huge advantage over you, and your basically screwed.  Trust me.  Learning the Kanji on the pieces are easy.
By the way, you need to turn on Asian character support for Classic style layout. Otherwise the PlayOK/Kurnik site will not show what pieces you have on hand. Please refer to this for how to turn on Asian character support on your PC.