From: "Samuel H. Sloan (my real name)" AOL COM> Date: 23 jan 1996 Subject: Regarding Shogi Notation REGARDING SHOGI NOTATION I would just like to add an observation to this discussion. I am a player of almost all chess-type games. I am a rated expert at chess, a rated 2-dan player of shogi (as rated by the Shinjuku Shogi Center on Yashakuni Dori in Kabuki Cho, Tokyo, Japan) and I am one of the best players in Thai chess. I also competed in the recent World Championship of Chinese chess in Singapore. Nevertheless, I do not presently own a set to play any of these games. I do not have a chess set, a shogi set, a Chinese chess set or a Thai chess set. Being a naturally lazy and shiftless person, I play though games of these blindfolded. This causes me big problems with shogi, because shogi notation runs upside down, from the Western player's point of view. In chess, the square in the lower left hand corner of the white side is called a1. The square in the upper right hand corner is h8. In shogi, it is just the mirror image. The square in the upper right hand corner from the point of view of the first player is "1a". Because of this, I cannot clearly visualize shogi positions blindfolded. This has hindered my development as a player. As a Westerner, I would find it easier to play through shogi games blindfolded if the system would be reversed and made to conform with the Western chess system. However, I am not advocating this, as there would be significant disadvantages. To begin with, I wonder how many people share my problem. Are a lot of other shogi players actually reformed chess players who always try to play blindfolded, or am I the only one? Also, converting games from the Japanese system to my system would be complicated and tend to produce lots of errors, although with computers this may no longer be such a serious problem. By the way, somebody in this discussion mentioned the book Chinese Chess by H. T. Lau as an example. I feel that this is not a good book to go by, as no player of Chinese chess that I know of follows that system. Also, H. T. Lau is an unknown person. Nobody has ever heard of him, other than through that book. My book, "Chinese Chess for Beginners", uses the system which is most standard among Westerners, although some Europeans use an algebraic system. My system has the major advantage in that it can be easily read by Chinese persons, since it follows exactly the Chinese descriptive system. However, the World Xiangqi Federation wants me to change some of the letters in my system. They want me to use "A" for Assistant instead of "G" for Guard, for example. Also, whereas I write C2=4, they want me to write C2.4 My answer to this is that the market place will answer these questions. Eventually, one system will predominate over the others and no committee or group will be able to overrule that. Sam Sloan