From: Sam Sloan <ishipres <at> BEST <dot> COM>
Date: 22 nov 1996
Subject: Re: Basic Rules of Shogi

I greatly appreciate the remarks by George Fernandez and Tom Eigelsbach
regarding my "Basic Rules of Shogi". This feedback is of great importance to
me. Obviously, I am going to have to make a few changes or modifications in
what I wrote.

Here are my comments on some of the points raised by them:

Regarding the possibility that a player might chose not to promote a rook or
a bishop, it appears that this situation only arises in composed problems. I
doubt if this has ever occurred in a competitive game. Nevertheless, I will
modify my "Basic Rules" to reflect that this possibility does exist. Please
note that what I wrote was: "In a practical game, in the case of the bishop,
the rook and the pawn, there is never a situation when it is better not to
promote than to promote." Obviously, the composed tsumi shogi programs to
which Mr. Fernandez refers do not come from "a practical game".

Regarding the possibility of stalemate in a game with a large handicap,
again, I will make some changes to reflect this. Actually, I made no mention
of handicap games at all in my "Basic Rules" so I need to add a section
about this.

Regarding impasse situations, George Fernandez writes: "The correct numbers
are: 31 or more wins; 23 or less loses; If the totals are between 24 and 30
for each player, the game is a draw."

I am in San Francisco right now. I wrote these shogi rules out of my head. I
do not have any printed or written materials with me. Therefore, I could
easily be wrong. Nevertheless, my memory of the rule is that if you have
three of the four major pieces (the two bishops and two rooks) and if all
the other pieces are divided equally, then you have the bare minimum number
of points to win.

Two rooks plus a bishop give you 15 points. Each side starts with 17 other
pieces, 9 pawns, 2 lances, 2 knights and 4 silver and gold generals. That
makes 32 points in all. According to my recollection, if you have only 31
points, the game is a draw.

This also affects the other point George made which is that in his
experience, it is possible to win an impasse game without having three of
the four major pieces. My experience is different, but, then again, I think
you need to have 32 points to win. Does anybody have the definitive or
authoritative rule on this?

I will also have to reformulate my comments regarding material advantage.
What I am trying to do is to explain to newly converted players not to try
to accumulate a big material advantage as they would in chess. I know that
when I took up shogi I could not understand why I always got what I believed
to be "winning" positions and then kept losing. What I was doing wrong was
simply collecting my opponent's pieces while he developed his attack on my
king. I later learned by trial and error to throw captured pieces back into
the game fairly soon after I got them.

Material advantage is clearly important at the early stages of a game of
shogi. However, as the game progresses, material advantage becomes less and
less important. At the end of the game, material advantage has no
significance. Note that the situation in chess is exactly the opposite.

Regarding the formula George posted, that a rook is worth 15 points, a
bishop 13, a gold 9, a silver 8, a knight 6, a lance 5 and a pawn 1, while I
have seen this published, I don't believe it. This concept was introduced
only after Western players started to take up the game. David Levy came to
Japan and wanted to write a computer program to play shogi. His idea was to
take the chess playing program he already had and simply plug in the
movement of the pieces and the size of the board and presto he would have a
program that played shogi.

However, his program and all other chess playing programs worked on the
formula from chess of a pawn equals 1, a bishop or knight equals 3, a rook
is worth 5 and a queen 9. He needed to have comparable numbers from shogi to
plug into his program. Otherwise, his program would not work. He asked many
strong Japanese players to provide these numbers. None of them could even
understand what he was talking about. Finally, just to satisfy Levy and
other Westerners making a similar inquiry, Tanigawa came up with these
numbers, which were published.

I do not believe that you will ever find a strong Japanese player saying to
himself, "Now, let's see. I have a rook and a bishop in hand, so therefore I
have 28 points. My opponent has a gold, a silver, a knight and four pawns in
hand, so therefore he has 27 points. Therefore, I am one point ahead."

It would be ridiculous to say such a thing.

On the other hand, every strong chess player, including Kasparov, makes a
comparable calculation regarding chess.

Finally, I have received a private e-mail asking that this discussion be
taken off line because "no other subscribers have expressed any interest" in
these "long-winded mails". I strenuously object to and resent this
suggestion. My rules may not be the first nor the best. On the other hand,
in my opinion, the most important subject for group discussion either is or
should be how to bring about the spread of shogi and to get Westerners to
play this game. Clearly an intelligible and easy to read set of rules is of
vital importance to furthering this objective. Moreover, the rules of shogi
have never been precisely and rigorously formulated, not even in Japan. The
same is true of other games. There are several different recognized rules
for the game of go. In Chinese chess, there is vast disagreement as to what
the draw rule is or should be. Even in the fairly simple game of chess,
there are constant changes and re-writings of the rules. The FIDE Rules
Committee meets once a year and there are always proposed changes in the
rules, some of which are adopted. There are also big differences between the
FIDE Rules and the USCF Rules. The person who sent me this e-mail obviously
thinks that he knows everything there is to know about the rules of shogi
and that everybody else on this list is the same, but in that case I cannot
see any reason why he should stay on this list.

Sam Sloan