From: Nick Bardsley <nbardsley <at> ICC <dot> CO <dot> UK>
Date: 30 nov 1999
Subject: Tokin and King (& address of Japanese Book Shop)

Rikard> and can the lone tokin really win?

I think now, in a minority of positions only. The lone King can =
force-capture the tokin from an
amazingly large number of positions. If the tokin's King strays away =
from it by too much the lone
King seems usually to be able to start a (long) sequence that will =
result in a forced capture. And
of course, the tokin's reach is so limited that keeping connected with =
its King means the lone
King can almost always escape. [I think also that there would be so much =
repetition in most
other situations that players would agree a draw.]

I think this means that 'kinsho' does mean an initial rank Gold General =
only in the
relevant passage re bare King rule. [I really have come across people =
who won't believe that a
Rook can mate on its own until you show them how...maybe this was a =
prevalent belief then and
this rule/convention was intended to stop people boorishly insisting =
that their opponent play the
(often long, let's face it) mate out.]

It also confirms that I had a rush of blood to the head when I said that =
a tokin could win
anyway...;-]

To make up for my nonsense, a little tip for London-based shogi players =
or anyone visiting
London (particularly West London). There is a little Japanese bookshop =
in the Ealing area, which
has a small English-language section with Go and Shogi books (Art of =
Shogi was there).
Naturally there is a range of Japanese Shogi books and there are quite a =
few Tsume-Shogi
collections.
The owner/assistant was very helpful (indicating the difficulty of each =
collection, etc.) and I think
he said the books were collections of newspaper problems. With the list =
of Tsume-Shogi kanji on
Reijer Grimbergen's site, the books are easily usable - ideal for =
whiling away train journey's, etc.

The shop is OCS Books, 2 Grosvenor Parade, Uxbridge Road, Ealing. An =
easy way to find it is to take the tube to Ealing Common station and the =
shop is on the right as you come out.

Nick Bardsley