From: Steve Evans NETSPACE NET AU> Date: 2 oct 1997 Subject: Re: Tai Shogi I originally included the alternative version of the Teaching King in my program on the strength of a comment in George Hodges' (1982) rules leaflet on Maka-Dai-Dai suggesting it as a possible interpretation of the piece. This interpretation was not included in the subsequent leaflet on "Tai". In commenting on an early pre-release version of the program George advised me that the alternative version was not historically correct, and I therefore removed it from the program. However, I put it back recently when including an alternative version of the Lion Hawk as advocated by Colin Adams. There were several reasons for reintroducing the alternative version of the Teaching King into the program (and not all of them were purely selfish). They were: - Clearly at some point in the recent past there was support for the more powerful interpretation of the piece, even though that position no longer seems to have acceptance. - The powerful piece appealed to me personally as an interesting and plausible construction. - I had gone to the trouble of coding it in my program, so I thought I'd have it in & let people make up their own minds. There will be a new version (1.4) of my Shogi Variants program available very shortly. While there will be no new variants, there will be stacks of new features. Steve Evans Rikard Nordgren wrote: > > I got the new (v1.3) Shogi variants program by Steve Evans. I see that > there is an alternative move for the Teaching King. In the source text > it is said to move like a Lion Dog and a Free King combined. According > to "Shogi variants" this can be interpreted in two ways. > 1. It moves like a Free King. > 2. It moves like a Free King and a tripple jumping Lion. > > (I think that the second one would be very interesting to try.) > Is there anyone who knows more on this issue? > > P.S. Are there more people on this list who plays the larger Shogi > variants (like Chu and up)?. (I do!) D.S.