From: Michael Vanier <mvanier <at> BBB <dot> CALTECH <dot> EDU>
Date: 27 jan 1999
Subject: Re: big shogi

> Date:         Wed, 27 Jan 1999 21:12:32 -0500
> Reply-To: The Shogi Discussion List <SHOGI-L <at> techunix <dot> technion <dot> ac <dot> il>
> Sender: The Shogi Discussion List <SHOGI-L <at> techunix <dot> technion <dot> ac <dot> il>
> From: Benjamin Good <bg18+ <at> ANDREW <dot> CMU <dot> EDU>
>
> Excerpts from mail: 27-Jan-99 Taikyoku Shogi by Rikard Nordgren <at> ETEK <dot> CHA
> >
> > Apropos the largest shogi variant. I calculated an estimated number of
> > moves for this variant by making a quadratic regression on the average
> > number of moves for the smaller variants. A game of taikyoku shogi would
> > take about 10000 moves. If you could manage to make a move every two
> > minutes it would take a month (with ten hours a day) to complete the
> > game. Taikyoku IS the ultimate!
>
> whooo hoo, who wants to play with me by email?  round robin taikyoku
> shogi tournament?
>

Let's see... at one move per day, an email game would take 20,000 days, or
about 55 years.  Hope all your opponents are still alive when the
tournament is over :-)

More seriously, it occurs to me that one way of making the larger shogis
more playable (at least by email) is to allow multiple moves on a single
turn with no piece moving more than once per turn (perhaps using a
progressive chess system of 1, 2, 3, up to the maximum number of moves per
turn).  This would not only make the games more playable, but it would
dramatically increase the complexity of the tactics, which seems quite in
the spirit of the large shogi games.  If we use regular shogi as a
benchmark, then maybe you should be allowed to move about 1/20th of the
total (starting) number of your pieces per turn.  This would mean 2 moves
per turn for Chu Shogi, 4 moves per turn for Tenjiku Shogi, 9 moves per
turn for Tai Shogi and 10 moves per turn for Kyoku Tai Shogi.

Mike