From: "Randal J. Andrews" <tiger22 <at> IX <dot> NETCOM <dot> COM>
Date: 11 jun 1996
Subject: Re: NTT Shogi Server!

>I am afraid that you will have many troubles because you must enter
>your nickname first when you log on.

This was easy.  Some of the rules are in English already, although the
explanation of how to start a game is missing.  It's buried under "r"
which is mostly in Japanese.


>You will find two players always log on the server. They are computer
>programs, indeed. You can play them when they are not playing anybody.

I logged on once at 5 AM Japananese time and again at 5 PM Japanese
time and saw only the one computer player "S1" online.

Playing the game seems easy.  Apparently the moves are input using the
numeric notation, for example P-7f is 7776.  Promotion is by adding a 1
to the move:  88221 or if no promotion simply 8822.  (This could be
backwards, of course).  Drops are indicated by 0055x  where x is the
piece code.  I could figure out the piece code for pawn=1 and bishop=6,
but the others I could not figure out.  Online, pawn shows up as Jb
and bishop shows up as 3Q.

If I actually started a game, I would use my own set and not try to
follow the diagram, even if I had a program to read the Japanese
characters.  The reason is that all the characters English or Japanese
are very small on my screen and are difficult to read.  (I've noted
this problem on the go server too.  About a month ago, the characters
there got much smaller than previously.  Maybe, it's my system.)

I'm wondering if there was a place to play shogi where both players did
not have to be online at the same time.  That is, a player could make
one move, then the opponent could log on later and make a move and so
on.  On ISS, you can adjourn the game, but it would be nice to make a
move without the opponent being online.  This would be a convenient way
to play shogi by e-mail with time limits.