pichy wrote:Where can you download your winboard version of Shogi and what Shogi program is included:?:
The standard version of WinBoard (obtainable from WinBoard forum, or through the direct link http://hgm.nubati.net/WinBoard-4.6.2.exe ) does support Shogi, and contains the Shokidoki engine (which supports regular 9x9 Shogi as well as 5x5 mini-Shogi). Just do not untick 'Shogi' during install.
There also is a dedicated Shogi package on my website, but it is quite old, and does not contain the latest WinBoard binary. It is more a stripped down version of the standard install made for oriental use.
To play Shogi in Western representation you just have to select Shogi from the New Variant menu dialog, and be sure the board size is 'middling' or 'bulky' (selectable View->Board menu). You can only select this when the first engine does support it (i.e. if you selected Shokidoki or an engine you installed yourself from the Startup dialog, or used the Shokidoki start-menu item that the installer creates), or if you run without engine.
To configure WinBoard for easy running of USI engines you have to run once with 'Additional options'
/uxiAdapter={UCI2WB -s "%fcp" "%fd"}
After that you only have to tick the checkbox UCCI/USI in the Load Engine menu dialog when loading / installing an engine. Free public USI engines are GPS Shogi, BlunderUSI, Laramie, Petit Shogi and Lesserkai. TJshogi is available in both WB and USI version, and in my on-line source repository there are WB versions of GNU Shogi and Bonanza Feliz. (Not sure if I have the Windows binaries for those on-line somewhere.)
pichy wrote:Where can you download your winboard version of Shogi and what Shogi program is included:?:
The standard version of WinBoard (obtainable from WinBoard forum, or through the direct link http://hgm.nubati.net/WinBoard-4.6.2.exe ) does support Shogi, and contains the Shokidoki engine (which supports regular 9x9 Shogi as well as 5x5 mini-Shogi). Just do not untick 'Shogi' during install.
There also is a dedicated Shogi package on my website, but it is quite old, and does not contain the latest WinBoard binary. It is more a stripped down version of the standard install made for oriental use.
To play Shogi in Western representation you just have to select Shogi from the New Variant menu dialog, and be sure the board size is 'middling' or 'bulky' (selectable View->Board menu). You can only select this when the first engine does support it (i.e. if you selected Shokidoki or an engine you installed yourself from the Startup dialog, or used the Shokidoki start-menu item that the installer creates), or if you run without engine.
To configure WinBoard for easy running of USI engines you have to run once with 'Additional options'
/uxiAdapter={UCI2WB -s "%fcp" "%fd"}
After that you only have to tick the checkbox UCCI/USI in the Load Engine menu dialog when loading / installing an engine. Free public USI engines are GPS Shogi, BlunderUSI, Laramie, Petit Shogi and Lesserkai. TJshogi is available in both WB and USI version, and in my on-line source repository there are WB versions of GNU Shogi and Bonanza Feliz. (Not sure if I have the Windows binaries for those on-line somewhere.)
Thank for helping, I never used windboard before, I only used Arena and the chessbase GUI. After I selected the board size to middling, then I selected two Shogi engines to play against each other, and I am learning by watching like Capablanca did by watching his father play chess. I noticed that Shogi is much more tactical than chess and it is a very exciting game to watch. Later on I will puchase my first book on how to learn Shogi, like the Dummy version of how to play Chess.
Oh, I forgot all about this, but looking into the winboard.ini file I distribute with the dedicated WinBoard Shogi package reminded me:
1) SPEAR is also a free public USI Shogi engine.
2) Some Shogi engines are not fully USI compliant, and need the winc, binc replaced by 'byoyomi'. UCI2WB provides a work-around to achieve that, but it means these engines have to be installed with an engine command specifying that work-around, and cannot be installed by simply ticking UCCI/USI. The required command is
UCI2WB -s ENGINE.exe ENGINEFOLDER " byoyomi %d"
(note the space before byoyomi!) You can achieve this by specifying (in the Load Engine dialog)
UCI2WB
as engine (*.exe), and the rest of the command line
-s ENGINE.exe ENGINEFOLDER " byoyomi %d"
as 'parameters'. Engines that suffer from this ailment are SPEAR, GPS Shogi and Petit Shogi.
hgm wrote:Oh, I forgot all about this, but looking into the winboard.ini file I distribute with the dedicated WinBoard Shogi package reminded me:
1) SPEAR is also a free public USI Shogi engine.
2) Some Shogi engines are not fully USI compliant, and need the winc, binc replaced by 'byoyomi'. UCI2WB provides a work-around to achieve that, but it means these engines have to be installed with an engine command specifying that work-around, and cannot be installed by simply ticking UCCI/USI. The required command is
UCI2WB -s ENGINE.exe ENGINEFOLDER " byoyomi %d"
(note the space before byoyomi!) You can achieve this by specifying (in the Load Engine dialog)
UCI2WB
as engine (*.exe), and the rest of the command line
-s ENGINE.exe ENGINEFOLDER " byoyomi %d"
as 'parameters'. Engines that suffer from this ailment are SPEAR, GPS Shogi and Petit Shogi.
Thanks, again now that I know how the Shogi pieces move I will like to know where I can purchase a nice Wooden Western Shogi Set (with Western look like pieces). I can Not find it here: http://www.chessusa.com/
Convetional ('statue-like') Chess pieces are difficult in a game like Shogi or Crazyhouse, where pieces have to change side. I know there exists a so called 'Eurasian' piece set, which has pieces that are painted black on one side, white on the other, so that you can put them on the board such that each player sees its own pieces as white, and the opponent's pieces as black. In addition there always is the problem of promotions: most pieces can promote, and with statue-like pieces that would require replacements, unless you put them on a pedestal or something. (But that would be confusing, as they keep similarity to the unpromoted piece, while they often move completely differently.
On a computer display none of this is of course a problem. Note that I don't play Shogi myself, so I don't need any 'woodware'. Traditional Japanese pieces would be totally unacceptable to me, although I of course have to handle them when I am operator to my Shogi engine in an OTB tournament.
pichy wrote:Larry Kaufman how much different is Shogi to Chess and can a Chess player improve his tactics by learning and playing Shogi?
Well, they are quite different, but yet the best players of either game who take up the other one serious do well. The two top titleholders in shogi (Moriuchi and Habu) are arguably the two best chess players in Japan. The best western shogi players are almost all pretty strong chess players.
My own experience was that shogi was a very positive influence on my chess. I took up shogi in 1977 at a time when I completely quit all chess play to focus on my career, only to end up spending as much time on shogi as I might have on chess. Anyway, after two years of playing only shogi (basically just with my American friend who taught me shogi), I returned to chess competition. Previously I never even came close to an IM norm, but after my return (and a few months of getting back into shape) I entered IM norm tournaments and made the norm with extra points every time, easily and quickly getting the title. Could be coincidence, but I was already past age 30 so I think shogi should get the credit.
lkaufman wrote:Anyway, after two years of playing only shogi (basically just with my American friend who taught me shogi), I returned to chess competition. Previously I never even came close to an IM norm, but after my return (and a few months of getting back into shape) I entered IM norm tournaments and made the norm with extra points every time, easily and quickly getting the title. Could be coincidence, but I was already past age 30 so I think shogi should get the credit.
I was but a modest club player, but I remember my biggest increases in strength happened when, fed up by the competition, I took 6-12 months breaks. Usually, when I would return, I would be much stronger, despite I hadn't touch a chessboard meanwhile, just like if the brain had used this break to sort and organize its chess knowledge. I have no doubt your shoji training played a major role in your chess improvement, but maybe the break from chess itself was of use too?
lkaufman wrote:Anyway, after two years of playing only shogi (basically just with my American friend who taught me shogi), I returned to chess competition. Previously I never even came close to an IM norm, but after my return (and a few months of getting back into shape) I entered IM norm tournaments and made the norm with extra points every time, easily and quickly getting the title. Could be coincidence, but I was already past age 30 so I think shogi should get the credit.
I was but a modest club player, but I remember my biggest increases in strength happened when, fed up by the competition, I took 6-12 months breaks. Usually, when I would return, I would be much stronger, despite I hadn't touch a chessboard meanwhile, just like if the brain had used this break to sort and organize its chess knowledge. I have no doubt your shoji training played a major role in your chess improvement, but maybe the break from chess itself was of use too?
I doubt it, because I recall that the first (informal) game I played after the long break, I lost to a 2000 rated player! It took some work just to regain my former level, but I quickly surpassed it.
I recomend "The Art of Shogi" which was a long time out of print, but is available again, now.
I'd bougth mine from http://shogifoundation.co.uk/, which gave me best price.
But also the otheres are good as first step.
Maybe Habu's Words I would not recommend being the FIRST book - but of course still worth buying.
pichy wrote:Thanks, again now that I know how the Shogi pieces move I will like to know where I can purchase a nice Wooden Western Shogi Set (with Western look like pieces). I can Not find it here: http://www.chessusa.com/
This is the most discussed topic for all time in the western shogi world and keeping again and again never ending: Kanji or western pieces
My choice is using Kanji ...
As H.G. told, there is an Eurasia euqipment.
You can see also some videos about it on youtube: Eurasiachess on Youtube
One problem in this discussion is that the so called 'western pieces' are still the same old pentagonal chips, with merely different inscriptions on them (letters from the Roman alphabet, pictographical representations of how the piece moves, conventional Chess symbols augmented with new piece types...). But IMO the only real improvement can come from abandoning a representation where the orientation of flat pieces determines the side they are on.
The Eurasian piece set was a nice attempt at this, but unfortunately it is far from optimal, and looks quite ugly. (You will always see part of the 'backside' of each piece, giving them an edge of opposite color, which for me works very disturbing.) This type of solution would not be so bad if the pieces predominantly had square cross sections, rather than circular ones: that would make it much easier to set them up in a way where two of the four sides are truly invisible. The top surface would still be a problem, though.
Personally, I would prefer a representation where side change would be brought about by flipping flat pieces over the Eurasian solution. Because then both sides could have a different color, and the bottom would be truly invisible no matter from which direction you look. In the traditional representation this degree of freedom is used for promotions, of course, so the chalenge would be to find an alternative to represent those. Stacking chips, as commonly done for representing Kings in Checkers would seem entirely acceptable for this. So a '2.5-dimensional' representation consisting of draughts chips with Chess piece symbols of opposite colors painted on their two faces, with blank chips shifted under them to indicate promotion, does already seem a huge improvement to me over the traditional representation and Kanji-free versions thereoff. (For the Western market.)
A further refinement could be in the thickness of the chips: slipping an unmarked chip under one with a Pawn, Knight, Lance or Silver on it to indicate it is promoted to Gold gives them all double height, which begs the identification "stack of two moves as Gold". To make that universally true, the Gold itself should be made from two chips glued on top of each other to begin with. And promoted Bishops and Rooks should be given a different height. Perhaps the normal B and R should already be made as thick as 3 stacked chips, towering even above a normal Gold, stacking another chip on top of them on promotion (possibly with another piece symbol on them). This would result in a nice correlation between height and piece value (P,L,N,S = 1; G,+S,+N,+L,+P = 2; B,R = 3; +B,+R,K = 4).
An alternative, aimed at a truly 3-dimensional represantation, can be made like this: Glue white and black normal Chess pieces together at their bottom. Then provide a 'pedestal' for each piece, which is basically a hollow cylinder, which hides the (upside-down) bottom piece. As an alternative, the board could have a hole in the center of each square, where the upside-down bottom piece would sink in, so that you only see the top piece. Promotion could be indicated by giving the piece a 'helmet' to be put on top of them (which would make promoted P,N,L,S similar in appearance to G at the top).
