From: GRIMBERGEN KUNPV1 PSYCH KUN NL Date: 30 jul 1990 Subject: The route to 1-dan HOW TO TACKLE SHOGI IF YOU'RE NOT JAPANESE I am often asked by starting Shogi players that really enjoy the game what the best way is to improve their game. The answer is simple: play lots and lots of games. However, since Shogi players are scattered around and scheduling is a real problem if you don't have a playing partner you can wake up in the middle of the night to play a game, I can also recommand the "book-route to sho-dan" (sho-dan is Japanese for 1-dan, as some of you go-players may know). Most Shogi-players will start with John Fairbarn's "Shogi for beginners". This book is essential if you don't have a strong player around to tell you about the important issues in Shogi and even if you are taught the game by a dan player you can use the book as a back-up. After this you should buy "Better moves for better Shogi" by Aono. One reason for this is that it is one of the few bilangual Shogi books (English/Japanese) but besides that it is one of the best books on Shogi strategy ever written. I completely disagree with Adam Atkinson who wrote that this book isn't for beginners. I think he must have been blinded by the claim that this book is useful to dan-players as well. This is true, since I think I have read Aono's book about five times, and everytime I learned something new. The difficult sections can be skipped by beginners, but the sections about good and bad shape are essential to understand the basics of playing a good game. When you have finished Aono's book for the first time, you are at a critical point in your Shogi career. You can read the bilangual "A guide to Shogi openings" (also by Aono) to get a feeling for opening play and different kinds of attack, but after that you have to make the decision to really jump into Shogi by reading Japanese publications or to just be a moderate player and play a game now and then. Reading "Shogi Japanese" is not as hard as it seems. To read game scores you only need to know a few characters and you have to figure out how ambiguity is solved (the same pieces can move to the same squares). After five years of reading Japanese Shogi magazines I can only read a little more than that. This is all you need to become a strong player since the menu to become a dan-player is playing professional games and solving tsume-shogi problems. Especially tsume Shogi is very important (it happens to be my personal kick, so I wrote a seperate article about it on the Shogi-L list). One of the famous proverbs in Shogi says: "A tsume every day makes you sho-dan without delay". Professional Shogi games can be found in "Shogi Nenkan". This book is published every year by the Japanese Shogi Bond and contains hundreds of important professional games played in that year. Of course it is impossible for a 6-kyu to understand the games, but quickly playing over these games gives you a sense of attack and defense in Shogi. It is said that if you play every game in Shogi Nenkan you will have improved a grade. I bet that's true, because it will take about a year to do so. I personnaly find Shogi Nenkan depressing because it is so much work. I prefer the monthly magazine "Shogi Sekai" (also published by the Nihon Shogi Renmei). This magazine contains news about professional tournaments, games, best move problems, tsume shogi and articles about joseki (openings). The problem is that most problems are dan-level. This means it can be frustrating if you try to solve them being 2-kyu or weaker. The best way to fill the gap between 8-kyu and 2-kyu is to buy a Shogi Nenkan and a book with about 100 tsume shogi problems (it is not a big problem to order them from the Nihon Shogi Renmei, Publication Sector, 2- 39-9 Sendagaya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, Japan). After working through these books you will be about 2-kyu and ready for Shogi Sekai. I hope this advice helps, but remember that it is no fun without the possibility to test your strength against a (human) opponent. Reijer Grimbergen kunpv1 psych kun nl>