Shogi

    Keywords: Culture & History

Shogi (shōgi 将棋) is the Japanese member of the chess game family. Shogi is often dubbed as Japanese chess.

Shogi is more widely played than go in Japan, especially among young people but in recent years, has been suffering from the same decline in its playing population. Its history has run parallel to go's since Sansa. Shogi is played on a 9x9 (cell) board, with a distinctive capture rule making pieces you capture yours to place back on the board.

See the [ext] Wikipedia article on shogi.

Shogi is much less played outside Japan.

There is in fact a substantial family of shogi games, including Chushogi (中将棋 chūshōgi) which is played on a larger board.

Is there any place to buy very nice Shogi pieces?

Bob McGuigan: Shogi sets can be as expensive as go sets. Here are two web sites (Japanese only) for shops in Japan where you can buy sets of pieces from $10 (plastic) to $6000 (finest wood) and boards from $15 to $5000. [ext] http://www.nakayama-goban.co.jp and [ext] http://homepage2.nifty.com/ohkubogobanten

Codexus: KurokiGoIshiTen has some very nice Shogi equipment in its japanese section. Also HiroHurl? provides an english website to order both [ext] cheap sets and [ext] better quality equipment directly from japan.

Hikaru79: Is there an online Shogi server (preferably English, but not necessarily)? You know, like KGS or IGS, where you can play Shogi with people around the world, real-time... I want to see what this game is about! =) If not, are there at least any english-language shogi info sites, like a Shogi versin of Sensei's Library or gobase.org?

StormCrow: I remember IGS having a Shogi mode, although I don't know if it still works or if people still use it (although I expect it might, but you'd find mostly Japanese players). You can use the UNIX/Gnu program xshogi to connect if it still works (looking further online, I saw notes that the shogi portion of IGS may have been discontinued, I have no further information on that). Perhaps check Yahoo or MSN games.

Hikaru79: I tried those. IGS has given up on their shogi and chinese chess servers, so those no longer work. I don't have UNIX, so I can't use xshogi. The japanese Yahoo! has shogi, but I can't read the japanese, so it's no use... x_x

TJ: There are free computer programs to play...Shogi Variants seems fun.:) It currently only has kanji sets of tiles, though. There's something called winshogi I used to learn because it has an option to put the moves for each piece on each tile. Winshogi seems a little clunky...just "set up server" and it should actually give you an AI to play against, though. It was fun to try out, but...I'd rather play Go.;)

  • contact Danny Dowell (2d in go/ 18k in shogi) a.k.a. schach, wilhelm, zzero, vash130 on KGS if you want to get help starting in shogi.

The best place to play shogi that supports an English version.

The gobase of shogi for English readers.

A group run by Japanese shogi players which organizes a monthly tournament for western players. ISC gives awards shogi diplomas to its members and official Nihon Shogi Remei certificates if desired.

Kurnik has added shogi.

Masaaku: Shogi Varients is a fun shogi program. With it I have been able to learn all here characters of the pieces and their moves. The computer is not the best, and I quickly have gotten good at smashing it by forcing bad exchanges. How ever it does a good job of teaching as it has piece help wich is clear and simple, it has a feature showing you were you can see who has influence over which part of the board, and it has about plenty of shogi varients including the monster TAI-Shogi which is played on a 25x25 size board, and includes 44 or so diffrent pieces, and 144 or so per side. This monster varient includes a "god" piece dejure and can take days to finish 1 game. Over all for a beginner I think it is a very good learning tool. (and fun!)


This is a copy of the living page "Shogi" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2007 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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