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Shogi Champ plays in chess tournament.

Remarkable is the 38th place of FM Yoshiharu Habu (6/9). Why? Because Habu is not really a chess player, but the world's leading Shogi champion, who has taken a casual interest in chess.

Read the rest ...here

Thanks for the replies David and Elijah. If you want a game of taikyoku
shogi, you can find it in here.
http://taikyokushogi.hp.infoseek.co.jp/taikyoku.swf and thats the larger
version.
http://taikyokushogi.hp.infoseek.co.jp/taikyoku.html

Shogi, is of course, an excellent game. But here is what is interesting: In
relation to another CV comment, seemingly unrelated (i.e., Fergus's
comment to research a certain player to see he (Fergus) had no
double-identity).. Well, I did research that player and found out he was
in Tokyo and had a Shogi link which was quite interesting.  He also
mentioned a site where you could play Shogi in real-time.  So, I went to
http://www.kurnik.org and in minutes won my first 10 minute on-line speed
Shogi game... quite fun.  I was then crushing my opponent in a second game
when a most terrible thing happened.  I went to move the Rook, but then
realized I could drop a pawn instead and win a Lance for the pawn.  When I
clicked to drop the pawn, my Rook moved to that square instead... so,
instead of winning a Lance, I lost a Rook... oh what sorrow due to a
mechanical issue.  Anyway, it is fun to play real-time Shogi... and thanks
to the rating system double-idntity issue, a real-time Shogi site was
found.

has some pictures of a (25x25) board and pieces for Tai Shogi. Dane, I think that is about the largest game anyone here will ever play.

Another interpretation of the King with the `gyoku` kanji might be 
`handsome general`.  The one with the `oo` kanji could be `ruling 
general`. 

Of course, one way to avoid the problem of interpretation is to called the
pieces by their Japanese names.  So the King would be either `gyokushoo` or
`ooshoo`(these names depend upon the side of the field).  But we can still
end up arguing about the proper phonetic spelling.

I prefer that the terms Black and White should be `sente` and `gote`.

But the introduction of Shogi to western culture began a long while back,
and those individuals responsible for its early interpretation selected
terms which they believed would make its assimilation easier.  Right?
Wrong? Maybe just expedient.

http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUnihanData.pl?codepoint=7389

But what should shock you is that knight is not honorable horse but a 'cinnamon tree-horse' and lance is 'perfume-chariot'. names probably chosen by phonetic reasons rather than those of meaning

That the Japanese chess-king is a jade general rather than a jeweled
general is supported by the wikipedia at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shogi and this other website:
http://www.crockford.com/chess/shogi.html .  Murray seems to say that he
depended for his information on nineteenth-century German translations of
a few Japanese documents.  This is rather a shock; it has been 'jeweled
general' to us for so long!

Recently on the Shogi-L
(http://www.shogi.net/shogi-l/Archive/2005/Naug05-00.txt) there has been
discussion of a freeware Shogi program called Bonanza.  It is quite
strong
on even play.  An extension has been created that allows playing handicap
games.  Its handicap play is perhaps not as strong as its even game play
(I suspect this is because it does not have book moves for the handicaps,
but that is a guess), but it will prove challenging for most.  It
certainly is for me.  

The link for Bonanza is:
http://www.geocities.jp/bonanza_shogi/bonanza1.1_csawin.zip

and for the extension:
http://homepage3.nifty.com/floatinghome/csa_xt122.zip

The listing from Shogi-L describes how to use the extension.

Non-Japanese shogi players should truly appreciate this gift from Messers
Masumoto and RaumNaum; I sure do!

Dear Fergus Duniho,

About my game with Joao Bigodes. His King is captured, though the game
continue! Isn't a bug somewhere???

Best regards,
Paul Grosemans aka Centaure.

'I am not sure if this will clarify or confuse the issue, but here is a summary from an old post of George Fernandez:'

*** *** *** *** *** ***

The last version of 'The rules of shogi' I have was written in 1993 by Mr. K. Horiguchi 6 Dan[supplement to the January 1993 issue of Shogi Sekai]. The 96 page booklet, written in japanese, is the official rule book accepted by the Japanese Shogi Association.

The following definitions were given which apply here:

Checkmate:

A checkmate is a position in which a King is in check and there are no legal moves to leave the check.

Illegal moves:

(1)A move is illegal to make a double pawn.

(2)A move is illegal to make a deadlocked piece.

(3)A move is illegal for a player if his King's square is attacked by an opponent piece after the move.[to remain in check, to move into check or to expose the king to check]

(4)A move is illegal to make a repetition check move [Mr. Horiguchi wrote in an addendum the following clarification: '... In the event of perpetual check, if one player player does it FOUR TIMES(three times is permitted), he will lose his game'.

(5)A move is illegal to make a dropping check move by a pawn which leads to a position in checkmate at once(dropped-pawn mate).

Legal moves:

A legal move for a player is a move to leave the check by moving pieces on the board or by dropping if his king is in check. Otherwise, a legal move by a piece on the board which can go[move] or a drop move, which is not illegal.

Remark (condition of ending game):

1. The game is finished if the position is in a checkmate; The player to move loses the game.

2. The game is finished if one player makes an illegal move; This player loses the game.

3. The game is finished if one player has no legal moves; This player loses the game[contrary to chess rules, where a stalemate is considered a draw].

4. The game is finished if one player resigns; This player loses the game.

In an effort to put this issue behind us, and move on, I'm sharing with you a bizzare diagram from the 1993 rules book[page 93, digram #92].

***ENDQUOTE*** I [David Paulowich] am unable to format the diagram for this text message. It shows a stalemate loss for the lone White King. But Black to move also has no legal moves, even though he has a huge army and a Pawn in hand (dropping that Pawn would be mate).