From: Eric Cheymol IMAGINET FR> Date: 25 mar 1997 Subject: Re: The Art of Shogi I have read Tony's book, studying essentially the first 66 pages (ie all pages before games and josekis). In short, it's an excellent book every non japanese reader should have in his bookshelf (or preferably near a shogi ban). But I found some details which can bother a beginner or middle kyu player. Here are my plus and minus thoughts about the book : On the plus side : 1. It's a great thing to have in a single book the main josekis explained for even and handicap games : many beginners ask where to find a non-japanese book to learn josekis. As we play handicap games in our club, this book follows beginners in their improvements without the need to buy many books . 2. I find very useful to see castles and the way of to break them. 3. The games and josekis are meticulously explained. The ideas behind the moves are explained which is very useful for all (perhaps a bit too hard for low kyu players). On the minus side : 1. The notation ! Again, the notation system comes in the discussion (a year ago, there was a long discussion about it). I hope we are not going to talk about it too much. When a new player is interested in studying shogi, we show him "Shogi" (Georges Hodges' magazine). He then learns the usual notation system which is used by all for exchanging scores (games published here, games stored in Matt's database program ...) So it's a useless effort for a beginner to learn two systems. He could use this effort to solve some tsume shogi. 2. I think it's better a have a single position in a diagram where an error is possible : in the diagrams 4 and 5, there are too many marked squares, a beginner can be confused in the bishop's and horse's moves (the same for rook and dragon). The same problem appears with tsume : diag 62 : the lance 7h works in the tsume on the upper left corner diag 63 : the rooks 5a and 5i are connected, the 5a rook can work in the 3 problems the 6g bishop protects the 9d square for a pawn drop diag 66 : the 6f bishop removes the N*9c solution 3. As far as I know, useless moves are not counted in tsume shogi. On the rightside of the diagram 62, pawn drops in front of the lance should not be counted as a move. So this makes a one move tsume instead of a 15 moves one. Finally, there is a lot of thing to read in this book. It is a bit difficult to read all the variations in the games scores as all is very densely written. It would be easier with a little more intermediate diagrams in the explanations. But more pages would have increase the costs. I don't find the book expensive if I compare it with the chess books I used to buy. One last thing : I didn't find any western or japanese shogi association address (Only the shogi foundation but I don't know the link with BSF). If this book is sold in a bookstore, it would be difficult for an interested reader to contact other players. What about giving BSF, the japanese federation and shogi-l address ? If I could have read such a book 10 years ago, I would have improved much faster. Encourage to read this great book. Eric ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Get the last european Shogi news at ----------------------------------------------------------------------