From: Sam Sloan <sloan <at> ISHIPRESS <dot> COM>
Date: 20 mar 2001
Subject: Re: About the name of the pieces

At 02:50 PM 3/19/2001 -0800, Eiki Ito wrote:

>That said, there's one point which seems common on this list but I don't
>think it should be.  It's the naming of squares: '1C' should be '13'.
>The main reason is that it's the way the Japanese use.  We'll need to
>translate Japanese literature (game scores etc) into English.  When we
>do that, translating "1<3inJapanese>" into "13" is straightforward, but
>into "1C" is not.  Well, C=3 or D=4 is actually fine, but I always have
>trouble understanding whether "6h" is 67 or 68.  I guess this use of
>alphabets instead of numbers came from chess, but this is not really
>helping even chess people since the direction is the opposite.
>I don't see any merits using alphabets here.

I agree. Although I am a chess player and used to the e2-e4 type notation,
I would find it easier to play shogi in my head if the Japanese method were
followed of san-san-fu for example.

Sam Sloan