RBerenguel wrote:I have a shogi board, "The Art of Shogi" and even a computer opponent on my iPad (and a tsumeshogi app on my old iPod touch.) But man, the game is "hard." Hard to see anything, hard to follow the opening patterns. It's been almost 2 years on hold, because I don't have that much free time and I try to focus in "just one board game," so no tsumeshogi, no hex, I just to tsumego and the like, at least for the time being :) I'd be glad to read your shogi endeavours too here! (btw, there's a subreddit for shogi, but it's 99% dead.)
I ordered "Shogi for Beginners" (from John Fairbairn, who could have guessed ; ) ) and "Joseki at a Glance" (Josekis are openings, like in chess, if I'm not mistaken), those two should - hopefully - bring me to a level where I don't lose against the weakest bot on 81dojo.com ^^
I feel that Josekis in Shogi are even more important than openings in chess. Because of the move-peculiarities of the Shogi pieces (quite a few of them can't move backwards), you have to be really careful where to move them.
I attended a Shogi event with two professional Shogi players (and got to play one of them - yay!) and the strongest amateur player there (a 2-dan) played a show match against one of them. Essentially he lost because he moved his King in the attack line of his opponent's Joseki, which he didn't know.
Later on the pro gave him a book he had written, where he explains this Joseki ^^ (Sadly it's all in Japanese.)
Another strong player (got awarded a 5-dan diploma in his prime but stopped playing) told me, when I understand everything what's in "Shogi for Beginners" I could be already Shodan ^^
Then I do a lot of one- and three-move Tsumeshogi with Anki, thanks to you ; )
The internet is so kind as to present me around 100 one-move- and almost 900 three-move-problems (no scans or such as far as I'm aware).
I finished the one-move-problems three times by now and solved a quarter of the three-move ones. By the way for those of you who know chess: three-move-problems actually mean three moves in total, this would be a mate in two in chess. A five-move-problem in Shogi is a mate in three in chess.
As with Go I'm more the study type and play less. Once a week I play a couple of games with a friend and occasionally I play against a Hamster (http://www.hozo.biz/shogi/) : D Sadly the handicap system is completely weird in Hamster-Shogi (it doesn't follow the usual pattern), so I can't learn proper handicap Josekis and such.
So much for my Shogi endeavours =D
