Welcome to Shogi Shack!

Site to help you get to the PlayOK(Kurnik) rating of 1500 or more.
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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 24

Nice Shogi Database
One of the readers of this site told me of the nice shogi database site.  This is in French shogi fedration site.
 
 
You can also get to English version of the same database
 
 
Shogi record is drawn from Japanese shogi database but this is still an amazing accomplishment. You can search and follow all kinds of book openings by simply clicking on color coded shogi board for established moves.  Perfect for studying book openings and Professional players nuance.
 
I will be adding this to the list of my internet links. 
 
Thanks  Gilles for your tip!


1:45 PM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

June 27

Learn Short Tsume Problems!
I was watching other people's play on playOK.  Both are R1500 level players and they were playing very good end games .  Then the game finally came to where the white guy tipped the scale and it was about to end. The white player was winning.  Note that both of players were on byoyomi.

Then I couldn't believe my eyes.  The white player run out of the 30 seconds byoyomi and the Black won.

If you still dont see the situation, see the tsume program below.   This is three move checkmate. R1500 level player should see this in less than 20 seconds.

The first move of G*8b does not work. the King will escape to 9c.  One of the basic rule of tsume is to block the King's escape route.  Therefore..

G*9c - Nx9c - G*8b.    This is a simple three move checkmate.

Maybe the white's  computer have simply frozen.  But if he really did not see this simple three move tsume, then his further practice on tsume problems will probably increaese his win rate a lot.



2:32 PM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

February 12

Translation sites
My friend,  who does not speak Japanese said these two sites help decyphering Japanese text on the WEB.
 
These are the 2 sites that I use:

http://www.translation-services-usa.com/japanese.php - this site does not run as quickly and requires smaller fragments of the text to be able to translate, but I find it gives a better translation of what is being said.

 http://babelfish.yahoo.com/ - this site will translate large sections of text but seems to give less accurate translations.

 Having said that, Japanese text on Shogi-sites tend to use Shogi-terms that may not correctly translate on these service anyway.  However those terms are limited in number and I try to mention those in　both English and Japanese on my site (ie.,  edge pawn or  hashi-fu (端歩),  Forking king and Rook =(王手飛車　or oute-bisya)  Sorry, for the last two years, I recognized I am not consistent in the way I explain the word)悲しい



3:16 PM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

January 20

Doraemon shogi board introduced
I leaned from Takodori-san's Japanese blog that Epoch Japan is planning to release Shogi board and pieces arranged with Doraemon characters on it.
(if you are deep into J-culture, then you know who Draemon is.  If not, just look up in Wikipedia or google the name.)
 
See the image here
 
The woman in the image is Yamato Takahashi, retired female Shogi player.
The release date is March 2010 so the product is not on their company site yet.   I wish I can use everwhere door with this board so that the King can transport to any square the moment I got tsumero 爆笑


10:31 AM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

January 12

Invincible castle. Really?
This is a well known mystery.  A certain potion of Shogi beginners end up with this castling.  It seems as if they come up to this with their own idea,, but it is not the first time in Shogi history this castling was played.  There is even a name for this formation.  It is called "Invincible castling. (無敵囲い)
I bet you it is not!  There are many sins or no-no's  this "castlng" commited.
  • Rook and King sit closely to each other.
  • King is sitting at its original place.
  • Bishop's head is unprotected.
My advice is simply "don't do this."  You will not get any mileage out of it.  It will only make your opponent "invincible"


6:08 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.