From: ATKINSON%VAXROM.decnet.CERN CERNVAX BITNET Date: 26 jul 1990 Subject: Random warbling Various things, many of which may already have been said. 1) Unless I am told not to, I shall send a copy of Hodges' price list to SHOGI-L, since it seems nice to have that as well as the address. Does he accept credit cards? If not, how do non-UK residents pay him? (I have a UK bank account, so I'm ok) 2) Nippon Books next to St Pauls underground station (and, indeed, next to St Pauls Cathedral) in London is a Japanese bookshop, with a very nice games section. They have lots of books of Tsume-Shogi, some of which are very easy indeed. eg, there is a book with 1, 3 and 5 move S Er 1 3 and 5 move Tsume-Shogi only. Even _I_ can do 1-move problems without too much hassle! However, they also have books with more realistic 5 to 15 move problems. Question: Is it normal in Japan to be told how many moves there are or not? These books usually tell you, but magazines sometimes seem not to, and Tsume-Shogi Paradise (a VERY good magazine, I am told by Mazura 3-dan who lived in Rome until fairly recently) has sections 3,5,7,9-11, 13-17,...,31-55,...,100+ so you have some idea. I showed Mazura a "hard" problem of unknown length from SHOGI the Hodges magazine, and Mazura did it instantly. He said "Hmm. 13 moves? No, 15." and recited them. Is this typical? 5-move problems take me quite a while, when I can do them at all. If I didn't know they were 5 movers, I would probably be even more paranoid. Also, some problems in my Japanese books seem to be mis-classified. Sometimes, White can artificially extend the game by 2 moves in a silly manner by dropping an undefended piece which is then taken and THEN it is really checkmate. Mazura spoke neither English nor Italian with great facility, so I didn't manage to get across to him what I found unsatisfactory with this problem. If there are alternative solutions to a Tsume-Shogi problem, is this a design fault? If White can extend the game in a useless manner as above, why is the problem not counted as being 2 moves longer? Books usually only give 1 answer (and some wrong ones, with explanations of why they don't work, I think. I don't know any Japanese) It really is quite simple to read gamescores and problems in Japanese - diagrams and moves are easy if you can recognise the pieces (which you certainly OUGHT to be able to do!). The only difficulty is working out the symbols for "promote" and "not promote" and the stuff used when two pieces of the same sort COULD reach the square. There are all sorts of odd symbols used to disambiguate such cases. You can usually work it out. SHOGI has an article on it, but you can do it yourself given enough examples. As of last year, Cambridge in England has a large number of Shogi players. Try pestering, say, Alex Scott, Mark Owen, Dilip Sequira or Brian Brunswick or Trinity College or Marcus Moore of King's. There are lots of other players (say 20 in total last year, and we are hoping for lots more this year). The University Centre in Mill Lane has (or had the last time I was there) games of Shogi most evenings by chance, since all the Shogi players eat there most days and then go to the coffee lounge, and there are official gatherings to play Shogi in some other location. Contact one of them for more details if you think you might happen to be in the Cambridge area at some stage. ADS10 phoenix cambridge ac uk is the main man of Cambridge Shogi at the moment. 4-kyu the last I heard, but probably better than that now. I realise this is nothing so amazing compared to other people on this net, but we'll start feeding him raw eggs - wait and see! If anyone knows ANYONE living in Italy who wants to play Shogi live, please contact me. I live in Rome (Via Gallarate, 15 B/3) and can't find anyone. Mazura 3-dan left 2 months ago, having spent 3 years in Rome. He was the secretary of the Japanese residents'a association, and says he didn't know any other players. The few Japanese people in Rome generally know how to play, but have terrible memories of when they were small, and were forced to play it by grandfather etc etc. So, no luck there. The few Italians who play anything at all are chess players, but seem almost hostile. I have been to several chess clubs to ask for advice (not to play there - obviously, at a Chess club one plays chess) but they took offence even at the idea that I should ask them where I ought to look. The Chess Variant Club people here are only interested in playing by normal post, which I can already do care of Phil Holland anyway, and "normal" post in Italy is useless. Wargames types aren't really interested in chess-type games, but this is fair enough. The go club has no Japanese members at all, and only about 6 Italians. They (reasonably enough) only want to play Go. Suggestions, anyone? In games with Mazura, I noticed that he behaved as described by someone earlier - pawns shuffled forwards behind other pieces etc, across entire width of board, and not only centre. He was almost always careful to leave no "holes" in his home zone (except when the holes were obviously no use to me at all, which can happen). The trouble is, that even games were farcical, so I learnt a lot about his favourite openings (since evens games worked like the bilingual openings book - if I did a non-joseki move he would show me WHY it wasn't joseki by smashing me for a bit, then returning game to earlier state) but the best I could do was lose only fairly rapidly (rather than very rapidly) once midgame was reached. In handicap games, the handicap needed was so huge (6-8 pieces) for me to lose slowly (I never won any games at all, even at 8 pieces) that I felt sorry for him. A 3-dan player who lives in a flat full of magazines, newspapers, books etc about Shogi must be desperate if he reaches the stage where he is willing to play against someone about 15 grades weaker. The Tsume-Shogi effect killed me in the high handicap games. I survived to the endgame, but then couldn't tell very well when defence was called for, so he could announce "Ha! Mate in (large number)" sooner or later. Still, it was interesting, and I'm glad he didn't mind wasting so much of his time. I expect his wife was glad too - she was well into the "my grandfather made me play it" category, and apparently Mazura used to try to get her to play. I played her a couple of times, and won VERY easily. I can't imagine she was trying very hard, since I still lose against total beginners playing for the very first time, if they play chess. (Well, I don't ALWAYS lose against them, but it happens sometimes. If they don't play chess, I beat them. Not exactly something to be proud of, is it?) What else? Erm. Any info on Shogi computers (or software). I have found a Chinese Chess computer, and know of some programs that play it. Mazura said he thinks there are some Shogi computers, but that they cost amazing amounts of money. He found an article from Shogi Weekly which had a comparison of various programs, but they were all software. I am told I cannot buy these, as they won't work on Western machines. I sent a copy of this article to Ishi press, so maybe they can tell us something about this field in this Shogi World I keep hearing about, but which seems not to exist (I have been charged for it on my credit card, so maybe it will actually arrive one day).