From: wills NANDO NET> Date: 27 jan 1996 Subject: game analysis and annotation I have a suggestion for the members of this list, but I would like to make it in the context of my experience studying shogi and western chess. A few years ago I was living in Tokyo and I started playing shogi because my drinking buddies and I picked it up. A bar near my house had a shogi set so we learned the rules. My friends had all played western chess before but I had not. I loved it: the rules for dropping pieces and for promotion, the slow pace of the opening and the rapid-fire pace of the middle game really appealed to me. I bought a (very weak) video game shogi set and played a lot. But my best teacher was the NHK shogi program, which aired every Sunday morning, and which I watched religiously. For those not familiar with the program, it's an ongoing tournament of top-level professionals, who play a game every week with commentary provided by another pro. It's a great way to practice both your shogi and your shogi-related Japanese, so I'll add that if anybody knows how to procure tapes of this program (assuming it's still going) they should immediately inform the members of this group, who could only benefit greatly from this info. When I returned to the US I experienced heavy-duty shogi withdrawal. No shogi-playing drinking buddies, no video game, no NHK. So it was then that I started to learn about western chess, as a kind of substitute for shogi. I discovered that I was one of these people who could study chess forever and never get very good at it, but could still study forever. I enjoy chess books and chess lore, probably more than I enjoy playing chess. One of the remarkable things about chess, as opposed to other sports and games, is that the greatest meetings of the greatest players are all recorded, move by move. Anybody with a board and a book can play the games out for himself. Steinitz-Lasker, Lasker-Capablanca, Capablanca-Alekhine, and so on in unbroken succession, all the great games are available, with annotation, analysis and commentary by whatever great players along the way who have chosen to share their insights. And so I thought, what about shogi? I know there are shogi books and magazines in Japanese. I can read the notation in Japanese (it's not so difficult) and would love to happen across a collection of the greatest shogi games ever played. Such books probably exist in Japanese, but what about English? Those of us westerners who have undertaken shogi know that the pickings are pretty slim; there are a few books in English for beginners, but once you reach intermediate stage, you're on your own. The books have a handful of games, and you can get current games without annotation or commentary from the shogi list (which is itself a good thing) but am I not accurate in assuming that we would all love to see, say, a book in English (or German, or French, etc) entitled "The Greatest Shogi Games Ever Played", with extensive commentary? Or, "The Champions of Shogi"? Or, "Habu: My 60 Memorable Games"? So my long-winded suggestion to this group is: can we not provide this service for ourselves? There seems to be a good number of talented people involved in the shogi list. There have been examples of game analysis and commentary included among the messages in this group for the last 8 months or so (my tenure as a member). I have a few suggestions for ways that we could approach this problem: 1)collective discussion of games: let's say some aribiter chooses an interesting professional game, and posts it to the group for commentary. Group members then add their questions or insights to the game score, in an ongoing discussion. 2)discussion games: two players play an email game, with discussion of each move as they play. This used to be (maybe still is) a popular activity on the Compuserve Chess Forum. A stronger player would play a weaker player, and each would post his move with a summary of his reasoning behind the move. Or two strong players; either way this method opens up many avenues for discussion. There are probably other ways to go about this, and I invite suggestions from other members. I should add that I am not a strong player and while I would delight in the notion of shogi enthusiasts around the world studying my own commentary on great games of historical interest, I doubt that it would contribute much to the overall excellence of international shogi. But, I believe, an involved discussion of games would attract many new players, and would reinforce the attraction of the game for experienced players. Will Sexton