From: Larry Kaufman <lkaufman <at> WIZARD <dot> NET>
Date: 1 dec 1999
Subject: Re: Normal people ?

At 05:25 PM 12/1/99 +0100, you wrote:
>Hallo Shogi-players
>
>I played chess some years in Sweden, now its very clear for me that
>chesspeople in
>general are not as other people. Sorry to say, I found them not
>trustable but dishonest
>and strange. Many are asocial. Ofcourse not all, but an unnormal big
>percent.
>I worked 7 years as a teacher, I teached people much older than me. My
>experience of
>grown-up people is big. Among chess-players I can hardly find a real
>grown-up.
>Some leaders in the chessclubs, working with children, are something
>like authists, people
>that you cant talk with in a normal way, more like robots.
>In the chessfederation we find very strange men, never worked with other
>stoff than chess.
>
>How is the situation in Shogi around the word ?
>Is there the same problem ?
>For me it seem to be so here in Sweden, the shogifederation is only some
>years old,
>now some of the most stupid chessplayers started to play Shogi.
>(One of them is spitting and pinking on graves in the nights, only one
>but a very good
>example)
>I started to like the game more than chess, my relatives and I own some
>houses in the
>Stockholm area, I thought of starting a good place for both Shogi and
>chessplaying,
>to give normal people an alternative to the dull place they play now.
>The leader for the Shogifed,. here, Danerud, started a conversation with
>me with a mail.
>When I told him that I thought of starting a Shogi-club, he didnt even
>answer !
>It doesnt at all surprise me, that the situation is the same in this
>sector.
>

     My own experience in the U.S. (and to a lesser extent in Europe) is
that while there are both nice people and not-so-nice people in both chess
and shogi, the percentage in the first category is much higher in shogi.
One reason is that many chess players are looking to make money from chess,
while there is almost no financial incentive to play shogi in the west, so
it does not attract greedy people.  Also, the ranking and handicap system
forces a certain modesty and makes for friendly play; especially when a
handicap game is played, there is no ego rivalry, as the handicap has
already established which player is the stronger.  Egomaniacs tend to drop
shogi quickly when they realize they cannot even pretend to be much
stronger than they really are.
     In Japan the situation may be more like chess is here; it's difficult
for me to tell as I'm not very fluent in Japanese and nearly everyone is
nice to me when I'm there.  Politeness is such a vital part of the culture
that few people in any field act rudely there.

     Larry Kaufman, amateur 5 Dan