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Bishogi. An attempt to take the FIDE army further towards Shogi than Chessgi does. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

Charles Gilman wrote on Thu, Sep 23, 2004 07:56 AM UTC:

Again I was guilty of too much shorthand. The 9x9 description on the Index
pages suggests that two Messrs. Howe have found it confusing!
	The board is 8x8 with only one Queen aside, but I compare the Queen to
the Goldgeneral in that (1) it is on the 4th file in, (2) it is has the
greatest long-term unperomoted strength on the back rank, (3) it is a Ferz
substitute among 8-file arrays just as the Goldgeneral is among 9-file
ones. The Pawns are on the second rank, because as I say, there is 'no
middle rank', not even an empty one. The statement that players can use a
novelty FIDE Chess set or, if they can manage to ignore the usual meanings,
a Shogi set 'minus the four surplus pieces' does make it clear tha only
sixteen pieces aside are required. The idea of a 9x9 version of Bishogi is
an interesting one, but it would have a problem of Bishops starting on the
same colour. Mind you, the fact that promotion and/or reintroduction could
overcome that is even more in keeping with Shogi itself...
	Perhaps the confusion comes from the 'further variants' section.
Sekishogi is another 8x8 varint, but Southwark Shogi is 9x9. It may have
been sloppy to throw that in with the others, but I felt that it was a bit
too frivolous to have a page of its own.

Charles Gilman wrote on Fri, Sep 24, 2004 07:24 AM UTC:

There is no double move as Pawns are promotable on the seventh rank and
these rules together preserve the 5-step Pawn trek. There is thus no
en-passant.
	Castling is a tougher question. Shogi has no castling, but then it has no
long-range piece its own move away from the King. Xiang Qi is little help
either, as that too has a rule automatically barring vastling: the General
cannot leave the middle three files, which it would do if it castled! I
have also failed to specify castling in the related Anglis Qi, and am
interested to hear the thoughts of others on castling for both variants.
	By the way, I have now taken to writing HTML files, so if anyone can send
me the Bishogi one I can start work on adding in hte info. I'll keep 8x8
as standard, but may add the 9x9 interpretation to the middle of the last
paragraph.

Charles Gilman wrote on Mon, Nov 28, 2005 08:33 AM UTC:

I have noticed a small error in my Southwark Bishogi array - it should have the same Pawn ranks as Shogi-81. As this is only a minor subvariant I will leave further updating until I need to make a more major one.

(zzo38) A. Black wrote on Tue, Jan 24, 2006 04:48 AM UTC:

'Bi' in Japanese does mean something. It means beauty, written ”ü by kanji (ideograph)or ‚Ñ by kana (sound). The symbol ƒr is also the sound 'bi' in katakana but normally katakana isn't used for native Japanese words. If you want it to mean beauty, you might want to use the kanji, if you do not want it to mean beauty, you should probably use kana (hiragana or katakana, probably katakana).

John Smith wrote on Sun, Dec 14, 2008 09:56 AM UTC:Good ★★★★

You can play with Pawns promoting to Princes instead of Queens, as they lie on the second rank, as the Shogi Bishop and Shogi Rook do. You can even play with a naive promotion of Bishops to Primates, Rooks to Chatelaines, and Pawns and Knights to Queens. Of course, the Draughts variant is not playable. In Draughts, you must move forward, so there is no opportunity to permanently block. Rithe with capture, the board clears up and the pieces that can move backward cannot cower behind a wall. What defense there is is solved by zugzwang. Your variant fails in that one can move a King into an opponent's corner and blockade him with dropped Men and another King, providing only enough space for tempo moves, with the Men blocking any mandatory capture.

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