The slightly more difficult part about Shogi pieces is not recognising, what piece they are, but knowing/remembering in which ways they move. It was for me at least. Solving a lot of one-move-tsumeshogi helps a lot though ; )

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

Indeed! Btw SoDesuNe, if you come to the NGA Summer Camp I'll bring my shogi set (would be my first game against a human... so far I still have trouble remembering the moves & recognising the shapes, too)

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

I would imagine like Chess that losing a good 15 or 20 games ought to make it pretty concrete. More difficult you think?

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Thinking like a go player during a game of chess is like bringing a knife to a gun-fight. Thinking like a chess player during a game of go feels like getting knifed while you're holding a gun...

Definitely more. Keep in mind shogi has normal pieces, promoted pieces and the "weird" kanji. I've tried my hand at the game from time to time, and I still find remembering which piece is which hard. Remembering how they move is somewhat easier to handle, the problem though is seeing them in actual play: it's then really, really hard to know what the hell you are doing.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

For one you have a bigger board (9*9 instead of 8*8) and more individual pieces (8 or 10, if you count promoted pieces, too, instead of 6). But I guess, we make it out a bit more difficult than it really is. I got the Kanji and the specific movements within two days with occasionally hickups, but I did sit down to memorise them (Anki!). So it's more a question of wanting and time.

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

I have to admit right now - I have absolutely no clue about how to actually shogi. But I have seen this game before, here and there, and one thing always puzzled me: is there any reason the pieces are all the same color, and sides can only be differentiated by which direction the piece is facing?

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

If you capture a piece, you can return it to the board on a later move (instead of moving an existing piece) as one of your own pieces. Hence the need for the same color.

Oh yeah, cool. This explains that nicely, thanks.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Personally, I'd be a fan of an American version with black and white reversible pieces such as in othello and english characters for piece identification. But this would probably kill the nostalgia of the game, no?

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Thinking like a go player during a game of chess is like bringing a knife to a gun-fight. Thinking like a chess player during a game of go feels like getting knifed while you're holding a gun...

You can't do reversible, since you flip pieces to indicate promotion status.

So the game has the drop rule and promotion? Is there anyone proficient in both Shogi and Chess that can comment on the general complexity contrast?

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Thinking like a go player during a game of chess is like bringing a knife to a gun-fight. Thinking like a chess player during a game of go feels like getting knifed while you're holding a gun...

This is a basic list, but probably good enough to get some idea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_complexity

A nice TV episode:

Begin Japanology: Shogi

It's interesting how they hold the pieces like Go stones and even play on their knees at a "coffee-table board" as I call it.

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Thinking like a go player during a game of chess is like bringing a knife to a gun-fight. Thinking like a chess player during a game of go feels like getting knifed while you're holding a gun...

Hi Joel,After thousands of years of experience (in the case of Go stones), they discovered it's both elegant and efficient.Floor board, and Seiza .

Yeah, holding a Go stone, for me, is like holding a baseball: it feels really awkward to hold it any other way then the proper way.

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Thinking like a go player during a game of chess is like bringing a knife to a gun-fight. Thinking like a chess player during a game of go feels like getting knifed while you're holding a gun...

A very polished Shogi interface .

If anybody has an Android device, you might like an application called ShogiWars. It's a shogi server that allows 3 matches a day for free.

I remember being told on a shogi forum that despite the fact that the application is in Japanese it is easy to navigate -

- and it's true, even someone who can't read Japanese like me got it started and running.

*developer is HEROZ

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