Shogi
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 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.
- tealeaf: Honourable mention should also go to
Taikyoku Shogi (pictures of a board
here). I imagine that that will keep computers going for a few years.
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.
http://www.nakayama-goban.co.jp and
http://homepage2.nifty.com/ohkubogobanten
Codexus: KurokiGoIshiTen has some very nice Shogi equipment in its japanese section.
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?
OneWeirdDude: Try 81 Dojo
http://81dojo.com/ of 81 Square Universe
http://81squareuniverse.com/.
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
OneWeirdDude: There are
instructions in English, too. I found them by Yahoo-searching for the
English language portal to rooms on shogi. That may not work, but the instructions are still good. And if nothing else, you can take a snapshot of the interface and use it as a guide.
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.;)
Download Shotest Shogi 3D - commercial release of Shotest from AI Factory.
- 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.
Brainking has shogi, go and more.
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.
PlayGo 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!)
Mencial: Shogi and variants (ChuShogi, MiniShogi, TenjikuShogi, ToriShogi, YariShogi) are among the many games played in Richard's PBeM Server ( http://www.gamerz.net/pbmserv/). They can be played by email or online (
http://www.gamerz.net/pbmserv/List.php?Shogi), with helpful graphics so you do not have to learn the movements for each kanji. The server is email-based, so the games are slow paced (the time limit for a move is measured in days), which might be good to try new variants.
Zerite: There is a japanese webserver here http://shogi-server.sourceforge.jp/ . I'll post more if I figure out how to use it, but I can't read kanji.
Curtmack: For that shogi server. First, download Ruby ( http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/downloads/). Now you need to download exerb (
http://downloads.sourceforge.jp/exerb/25874/exerb-4.2.0.zip) and put it in your Ruby installation directory (which should be C:\Ruby by default). Finally, download shogi server (
http://cvs.sourceforge.jp/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/shogi-server.tar.gz?view=tar) and put that somewhere or other.
In your C:\Ruby\exerb-4.2.0 directory, run setup.rb by double-clicking on it.
Now you need a client. Easiest one is probably the Emacs client ( http://tokyo.cool.ne.jp/progn/shogi-0.12.tgz), which you'll need Emacs for (
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/).
Haven't gotten farther than that yet. I'll keep you posted.
hirohiigo: Recently there has started a new shogi site, The 81-Square Universe. You can find it here: ( http://www.81squareuniverse.com). Found on The 81-Square Universe are a quite active discussion forum, (
http://forum.81squareuniverse.com, which is the quickest-growing and most active English shogi discussion group on the internet, and also Shogipedia, (
http://wiki.81squareuniverse.com), a wiki that encourages users to share all knowledge about shogi that they have, much like SL. If you're interested in shogi, you should definitely check these out.