From: Larry Kaufman COMCAST NET> Date: 2 aug 2003 Subject: Re: Beginner's Lessons No.1, Getting Orientated: Perspectives on Shogi and Chess ----- Original Message ----- From: "bogin" YAHOO CO JP> To: TECHUNIX TECHNION AC IL> Sent: Saturday, August 02, 2003 11:51 AM Subject: Re: Beginner's Lessons No.1, Getting Orientated: Perspectives on Shogi and Chess > > And, no I am not a very strong chessplayer. And, I don't really believe > that I am all that strong at shogi. > We know your level in shogi from previous emails to be 3 or 4 Dan amateur by club standards, which is fairly respectible. I think it corresponds to at least 2000 Elo in chess. My guess is that your chess ratings (if you ever had one) is lower than this? If the ultimate goal of chess was to queen a pawn then all games > would end at that point. If the ultimate goal were queening a pawn ( making > another queen ) then there would be no option of underpromotion would > there? Underpromotion is rare enough to have almost no effect in practical play. Perhaps one game in several hundred requires an underpromotion to win or draw. > With respect to tokins, there is a saying that says " attacking with a > tokin is must faster than it appears." Promoting a pawn in your opponent's > camp is a huge advantage and often leads to a win. But, promoting a pawn > doesn't always guarantee a win. I've seen many pro games where the one > player has promoted a pawn (sometimes even more than one pawn) and they've > still lost the game. While it is a huge adavantage to have it is not a 100% > gaurantee of victory. > Of course if you promote a pawn in shogi while the opponent accomplishes nothing you should win. But if he won a knight, or promoted a rook, or shattered your castle, etc. etc. the game would be unclear. But if you promote a pawn in chess and the opponent does not, it is extremely unlikely that he can have enough compensation to leave the result in any doubt. . If every > game was won by force then what would be the point of playing. Black would > win every game since no matter how white responded he would lose. There > would be a certian move sequence that would win everytime regardless of how > one's opponent defended? > Perhaps this is the case; in fact I think many pros believe that Black should win. But of course no one knows all the possible variations; they number in the googols! So whether or not Black has a forced win in shogi has no practical significance. > I know all about come back wins in shogi. I see them all the time. It > happens all the time among pros. Someone makes a mistake and they get a bad > and sometimes an even losing position but they hang in there and make > things complicated, and wait for their opponent to make a mistake that > let's them back into a game. Sometimes their opponent gets physically > tired, or sometimes they run into time trouble, sometimes they get careless > and over confident, sometimes they miscalculate and they will lose a game > that the should have won with best play. So, some players play on and hope > for the best. But, I think it's pretty unlikely that a top player would > play on in a game in which they were a rook down without any compensation. > They would simply assume that their would not blow it? > That's right; if the opponent's advantage is large enough to give him at least a 99% chance of victory (the exact figure depends on the personality of the player), the player will normally resign so as not to insult his opponent and/or depress himself further. > There are no draws in shogi like there are in chess. However, there are > instances of jishogi and sennichite. It seems that you assume that almost > all draws are due to bad moves. That they must be the results of multiple > mistkes that cancel each other out. But, could it be possible that a draw > is the result of good play? Both players simply play good moves and nobody > makes any major mistakes so nobody can get a winning advantage. Yes, it is possible that a perfectly played shogi game should end in sennichite, or in jishogi (I've heard both opinions). No one knows whether Black wins or the game is drawn with perfect play (even a White win with perfect play is possible, though extremely implausible). Aren't > these types of draws more common between very strong masters than the > mistake-filled draws? I know you are a very strong chess player so you > probably know more about this than I. Do strong players purposely play to > the end of dead-drawn positions if they know that with best play they can't > win? Generally a draw is agreed if it's 99% certain that it would happen anyway. Actually, in chess a draw is often agreed even when the result is totally unclear, a practice that has come under sharp attack recently. Haven't you ever drawn a game in which you made good moves? A game in > which no mistakes were made or at least in which the mistakes were small > enough to overcome? > Of course. > How is that different from someone who resigns a game in shogi because they > feel they have no hope to win? Sometimes pros games end when one pro simply > felt that he had no hope in winning and resigns because it is pointless to > play on. Even though his king wasn't under direct attack and mate was > imminent and he probably could play on for another 10 or so more moves, he > resigned because he knew he simply couldn't win. Mate was inevitable. > There is no difference in this respect. > The ultimate goal of chess is to checkmate your opponent's king. Looking in > any beginners guide or rule book under or how a game is ended and I'm prety > sure that it says something like "A game is ended when either one player > is checkmated, resigns or a draw is agreed." I'm pretty sure that it > doesn't say a game is over when a pawn is queened. No it doesn't, but if it did it would make no practical difference. That is why I agree with the claim that the principle object in chess is to queen a pawn, with checkmate an alternate goal. I'm not talking about the actual rule; I'm talking about what chessplayers try to do in a game. We don't even think about what will happen after we queen a pawn (normally); even an average amateur with one minute remaining on his clock can defeat Kasparov with an extra queen in a simple ending. But in shogi there is no such simple achievement that will guarantee victory, at least not one we can play for. We might win the opponent's rook for free if he gives it away, but in general playing to win a free rook is not a viable game plan. But in chess promoting a pawn is indeed the principle goal in the majority of games. > > My analogy may have been a stretch but I simply meant that the ultimate > goal of shogi is not to promote a rook any more that the ultimate goal of > chess is to promote a pawn. When you play shogi what do you try to do? You > try tomate you opponent's king. When you play chess what do you try and do? > You try to mate your opponent's king? Isn't that so? Only formally. In actual practice there are two alternate ways to win, checkmate or unilateral pawn promotion, which will end the game almost always. You can't say this about promoting a rook in shogi. > > This just may be my way of looking at this so I'd be interested in hearing > what other people think is the ultimate goal or object of each game? > > Bill Gaudry > I enjoy both games, and I'm a chess pro. But they differ greatly in their basic nature. Larry Kaufman