From: Charles S Smith JUNO COM> Date: 22 mar 1997 Subject: Spreading shogi in the west - another anecdote from USA! On Fri, 21 Mar 1997 23:56:05 -0600 Naohiro Nishiguchi NWU EDU> writes: >This is very interesting...I wonder how many nationalities are >participating into this group? Looks like there are some Europeans, >Americans and some Japanese. I would like to know how people started to >playing Shogi in each country. It would be very interesting to know, >perhaps for other members, too. I live in Harrisburg, PA USA. I love almost all kinds of games (the more thinking and the more complicated, the better!). One day I bought a book called New Rules for Classic Games by R. Wayne Schmittberger and started to read it. It was the best book on game variations I have ever seen! It had the rules for a game called Double Bughouse or Double Drop-In chess where the game is played by two partnerships of two w/ 5 minutes to play the entire game on their clocks. Schmittberger said that the drop-ins were like Shogi. This made me curious to the game. I had a friend from Japan visit our church and I asked him if he played Go (I was more interested in this game at the time). He said he didn't play Go, but that he played Shogi! I asked him if he would get me a Shogi Set while he was over there. Six months later, he gave me a new shogi set from Japan. We didn't have time for him to teach me the game and I, alas, had no rules! Later that week, I went to the library and got the rules from a web site devoted to Shogi and taught myself how to play. To this date, I've only played Shogi w/ two different people. I've only played about five whole games. :-( That's my story! --Trying to spread Shogi in the west, Chuck ***e*r*e*h*s*e*g*a*s*s*e*m*l*a*n*i*m*i*l*b*u*s*o*n*** Interested in playing the best abstract thinking strategy game ever created? Okay, so maybe I'm biased--I wrote the game! The best way to describe it is a simultaneous Pente game on a 9x9 grid! For more information write cybrdude juno com! Requires IBM, 256K Ram, VGA monitor. Only $7 (US)! ***e*m*a*g*y*m*y*u*b*** :-) --- I have a shareware version of this out, if anyone's interested!