From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 21 mar 1997 Subject: The Art of Shogi Yesterday I saw Tony's book "The Art of Shogi" for the first time and even though I only looked through it for about fifteen minutes, I would like to add my voice to the discussion. Let me begin be saying that I was impressed. It seems to me to be only second to Aono's "Better Moves for better Shogi" as far as non-Japanese books on Shogi are concerned. However, no discussion is served by only praise, so here are my other comments: 1) I am not too wild about the notation system that is used in the book. This is one of my pet peeves, I know, but I still think that Shogi is best served by having as few as possible notation systems. Tony seems to have used yet another different hybrid, which I do not think is very wise. In my opinion either a direct translation of the Japanese notation to text should be used (76P 34P 22B+ xS and so on) or the common Western notation (P7f P3d Bx2b+ Sx2b and so on). 2) The terminology used is not always in tune with daily practise. For example, I have not heard the term Fortress in Europe for almost ten years, but in the book it is still used instead of the more common "Yagura". On the other hand, the Bear-in-the-hole is consequently referred to as "Anaguma". This is alright by me (I am in favour of using more Japanese terms in Shogi), but I know that at least in Europe the word "Bear-in-the-hole" is much more common than the word "Fortress". Added to this point, I am wondering why "Anaguma" is consequently put in cursive script, while "Ishida" is not. 3) Good as the opening part of the book is (it even has chapters on the obscure bishop head's pawn push!), it seems that opening joseki has gotten a little too much emphasis. One can argue that many of the concepts in openings and early middle game are also used in other stages of the game and I guess that by analysing the professional games in depth one might also pick up other Shogi ideas. However, I still think that middle game and end game tactics are discussed too briefly. Even professionals tend to write most about the opening, but I think this is very unfortunate, so I see this as a missed chance to make "The Art of Shogi" a work for generations of Shogi players to come. 5) My final problem with the book is that it seems rather expensive. This was of course unavoidable, and I aim this comment more at the publishers of Shogi books in Japan (specifically the Renmei), who do not seem to be interested at all in making translations of Japanese books available to the starved non-Japanese players. Apart from the points above, I would like to start a discussion about the set-up of Shogi books in English in general (who knows, I might write one myself someday :-) ). Even though Tony claims that his book is for Shogi players of all strengths, I do not think this book is suited for players who do not even know the rules of the game. I think this book is for players from 10-kyu until 1-dan. Therefore, I think that including the rules of the game is a waste of space. Actually, "Shogi for Beginners" seems to suffer from the same wish of wanting to please everybody. I have heard some people complain that the second part of "Shogi for Beginners" is too difficult for beginners and I tend to agree. In the same way, it seems to me that if someone who has never played a Shogi game in his live, will start reading the first chapters of "The Art of Shogi", put it aside for a couple of months and then start at the second part of the book. This is prabably alright, but I do not think many people learn the rules of a new game from a book. Again, these points are only meant to make this book even better than it is now and I sincerely salute Tony for a great effort. It is sad that individual efforts like this are still the main source of information for those who can not read Japanese. Reijer -- Reijer Grimbergen Electrotechnical Laboratory Palcious Tsukuba 302 1-1-4 Umezono 1-24-8 Ninomiya Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki-ken Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki-ken 305 JAPAN 305 JAPAN E-mail: grimberg etl go jp Tel: 0298-59-1606 WWW: http://www.etl.go.jp:8080/etl/suiron/~grimberg Tel: +81-(0)298-54-5080 extension: 67431 Fax: +81-(0)298-58-5918