From: Troy Conner <conner <at> CAIS <dot> CAIS <dot> COM>
Date: 22 nov 1996
Subject: Re: Basic Rules of Shogi

Interesting discussion; I'd like to clarify a few points:

Sam Sloan wrote:
> 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".

I have to disagree with this statement; it is not at all uncommon to
have
games where one chooses not to promote the bishop, rook, and pawn. I've
had
hundreds of games where a dropped pawn mate appeared in an important
variation,
and at least a dozen games where one of these nonpromotion was actually
played.
I have also seen players lose games because they forgot about
nonpromotion.

> 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.

The way I would explain shogi strategy to a chessplayer would be to rank
the heuristics of each in order of approximate importance:

Chess:
1. Material
2. Pawn Structure
3. Piece Activity
4. King Safety
5. Piece Coordination

Shogi:
1. Piece Coordination
2. King Safety
3. Piece Activity
4. Material

In shogi the relative values of the positional factors are much closer
than in chess.

Troy