From: John Kenney EMBL-HEIDELBERG DE> Date: 6 nov 1992 Subject: Report on the 1992 European Shogi Workshop REPORT ON THE FIRST EUROPEAN SHOGI WORKSHOP =========================================== The First European Shogi Workshop took place on the 3rd and 4th of October 1992 at The European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany. It was organized by John Kenney, Pieter Stouten and Alan Sawyer and was sponsored by the EMBL Staff Association, Shogi Deutschland e.V. and Nihon Shogi Renmei. The workshop is the brain-child of Alan Sawyer, born out of the frustration of the lack of literature, expertise and players in Europe to satisfy his recently aquired Shogi addiction. The workshop was conceived with some specific aims in mind and to a large extent these were achieved. The aims of the workshop were: 1) To create a forum for Shogi players to come and discuss various aspects of Shogi in a cooperative rather than a competitive atmosphere. 2) To increase the overall level of play in Europe. 3) To attract new players. 4) To motivate newcomers to the game. 5) To give players the opportunity to meet other European players. 6) To give all players a chance to tap into the large pool of knowledge which is accumulating in Europe. The turnout was quite good, 38 people participated amongst whom there were three (one-time) European champions, Mr. Sakamoto, the 4-dan Japanese vice-consul from Frankfurt, and Mr. Iida, the 5-dan Japanese professional, currently working at the University of Limburg, Maastricht. Pieter Stouten got the workshop started with a good introduction to the game in which he outlined basic Shogi strategy. Hans Geuns gave an interesting lecture on solving Tsume Shogi problems, including one which was over 70 moves long! When asked how long it took him to solve it, Hans replied "Only 12 hours". Mr. Iida's talk, delivered by Jos Uiterwijk, was an analysis of "How a Shogi Grandmaster thinks" which had a bias towards applications in the formulation of computer algorithms for chess and Shogi programs. This was nicely juxtaposed with the first of two talks given by Hans Secelle (the first ever European Shogi champion and one-time winner of the "Most Popular European in Shogi" competition) about the impossible task of creating a truly strong Shogi computer program. Reijer Grimbergen (another former European Shogi champion) gave an excellent seminar on building and breaking down castles which was notable for its clarity. This was an especially useful and informative talk, even for quite strong players, reviewing the methods of attack and weak points of the four most popular castles. The Japanese lunch provided by Restaurant Iwase in Frankfurt was of a very high quality and was enjoyed by everyone. After the lunch break, there were some truly memorable lectures. Mike Sandeman started to deliver a lecture on "Dignity in Shogi" but quickly side-tracked himself and ended up giving an analysis on the demonstration board of a complex position from a recent game published in Shogi Sekai. Here Mr. Iida impressed the audience with a lightning quick appraisal of the situation and explained a long mating combination. Mr. Sakamoto gave an eloquent (at times almost poetic) talk on the history of Shogi, followed by Reijer Grimbergen's second talk, this time about the professional Shogi scene. The final talk by Hans Secelle, was a hilarious, anecdotal lecture on psycholgy in Shogi, and outlined methods of winning which had nothing to do with moving the pieces. For instance "mate by blackmail" which occurred in a game between Pieter Stouten and Mike Sandeman in which Mike made an illegal move in a won position. At which point Mike told Pieter that if he claimed the game then he would never speak to Pieter again. Pieter declined, and allowed Mike to make a legal move and consequently lost the game. After the formal seminars, the participants and lecturers moved out into the large foyer, and having been split up into groups, proceeded with the workshops. These were very popular, and in next workshop more emphasis will be laid upon this type of instruction. The workshops were interactive question and answer sessions on a variety of topics. For a particular topic, a teacher (none less than 2-dan) sat on one side of the board with a prepared position, or castle or tsume problem, and then asked the "students" on the other side which move they would make and why. There then followed a discussion on that or a related problem which was both interesting and educational. The success of these was such that each workshop lasted about an hour instead of the originally scheduled half hour; and still people would have preferred more time. Whilst this was going on Mr. Iida played simultaneous games with three of the players, and in the short time he had, he was able to get an advantage in all of his games. Unfortunately, Mr. Iida had to leave early to catch a train, and the games were not played through, but his comments indicated that he enjoyed the workshop and would be willing to come back to a future event to play the simultaneous games to their conclusions. The Sunday was devoted to a seven round quick-play tournament organized by Pieter Stouten. Mike Sandeman was the overall winner, Philippe Tran the winner of the lower group, and Mr. Sakamoto was the overall runner-up. All in all it was an interesting, educational and fun event. Huge thanks are due to co-organizer Pieter Stouten, known world-wide for his tact and diplomacy, who bludgeoned people into attending. Also, thanks goes out to Andrea Musacchio for arranging the coffee and organizing the seating and clean-up and Iain Russell for helping with the production of the workshop manual (which contains summaries of the seminars and many annotated game scores). Mr. Onogi of Nihon Shogi Renmei contributed prizes and the "Story of Shogi" video, all sent from Japan. Shoichi Natori performed the herculean task of translating this 90 minute video from Japanese to English (dubbing by John Kenney). It was an interesting video with plenty of beautiful shots of Japanese countryside - very restful after a hard day's concentration. The Director General of EMBL, Lennart Philipson, kindly granted the use of the Operon and its facitilites at EMBL gratis. Alex Sossick handled the audio-visuals for all the seminars and recorded them in the European PAL standard. The video will be available to national Shogi organizations. Finally, for everyone's participation we are very grateful. Looking forward to the next European Shogi Workshop we invite anyone with ideas, constructive criticism of this last workshop, equipment and money to please contact John Kenney or Alan Sawyer at this address: EMBL, Postfach 10.22.09, D-6900 Heidelberg, Germany. Results of the quick play tournament have been compiled by Pieter Stouten and will be available soon in the file TOURNA RESULTS on SHOGI-L. Alan Sawyer and John Kenney, Heidelberg, 5 November 1992