From: Manabu Terao JAPAN SUN COM> Date: 17 feb 1999 Subject: Re: shuffle chess(or shogi) mvanier BBB CALTECH EDU wrote > I think you're missing the point of shuffle-shogi. Unless there is some > profound reason why the lances and/or knights MUST be located on the > original squares I see no need for this restriction. In fact, allowing > different placements of the minor pieces is what would make shuffle-shogi > interesting. Larry's point about not putting the knights in the corner > makes sense, but I'm not sure how much this would harm the game. Remember > that pieces in hand can go anywhere, which takes away a lot of the force of > your argument. Why should those particular 10 squares be the optimum ones > for knights to be able to get to? What if the knight started one square > closer to the king; how would this destroy the game? There is no profound reason. In chess, the pieces which can not get to all the square on board are Pawn and Bishop without promotion. A Bishop's movable square seems to be kept same after shuffling. Nearlly identically, the pieces which can not get to all the square on shogi board without promotion and drop are Pawn, Lance, kNight and Bishop which I failed to mention in last post. So I just apply the same to those pieces. > > I basically agree with this point (Kings on 5th file) but not with your > reasoning. I think the reason the King should be kept on the 5th file is > that it preserves the option of building a castle on either side. Of > course, this will depend on the position of the generals too, so perhaps > this restriction is unnecessary as well, or (alternatively) you could > stipulate that on each side of the King you would have to have one of each > of the minor pieces. Restrictions of this sort aren't done for > shuffle-chess and it's not clear to me that they're needed for > shuffle-shogi, although the lesser lateral mobility in shogi might make > them desirable. With these restrictions and the bishop and rook on their > original squares you would still have 24*24 = 576 possible opening setups, > which is quite a bit already. Disallowing the knight from the corner > reduces this to 18*18 = 324 setups, still quite a bit. And of course if > the position of the rook and bishop are allowed to vary this goes up > dramatically (by up to a factor of 72). > > What is important is that both players have equal chances. You can get > that and preserve the symmetry of the relative arrangements of the pieces > by having each player's setup be the same as the other player's, with the > board rotated 180 degrees. The pieces in back rank are located not only symetrical but also in the order how many direction they can move from the center to the edges in descendant order as bellow File Piece name Movable directions of the piece itself 1st Lance 1 direction 2nd kNight 2 directions 3rd Silver 5 directions 4th Gold 7 directions 5th King 9 directions 6th Gold 7 directions 7th Silver 5 directions 8th kNight 2 directions 9th Lance 1 direction I'm not sure why minor pieces are located as above but I think both the symetry mentioned before and the order like above makes us feel the original set-up something beautiful, at least it's true for me. > > > > Imagine removing all the Pawns, you can find the Bishops are originally > > located to be exchanged quite easily in only one move. I think this easy > > Bishop exchangeability is one of the essential and critical factors which > > make shogi an attractive game. Shuffle shogi should keep this exchangeability. > > > > Again, I think you're trying to make shuffle-shogi a clone of shogi. Is > this really so important? Yes. as a result. I did not know the idears of both shuffle chess and shogi until very recently and thinking about how to accept shuffle-shogi leads me to be making it nearly a clone of shogi:-) Wouldn't it be well accepted to create a shuffling shogi breaking the beauty of original set-up of shogi in just order to solve the problem of openings? I'm curious how the chess top players accepted shuffling chess. Have they accepted it well from the beginning or are they becoming positive step by step? Do they consider it a totally different game from chess or a chess-like game? Manabu Terao