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Maka-Dai-Dai Shogi A game information page

. Historical ultra large Shogi variant.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

📝Jean-Louis Cazaux wrote on Sun, Jul 10, 2005 01:01 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

Thanks for the compliment about my website.
To be honnest I should say that the photograph is not mine. I borrowed it
on a Japanese site I can't find again.
Also, I am not the author of this current page on www.chessvariants.org, I
think I would remember. Someone is using my name, ah ah, Sherlock, who is
he ?
Jean-Louis Cazaux

Tony Quintanilla wrote on Sun, Jul 10, 2005 05:57 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

Jean-Louis, I posted the link. I failed to add my name as the editor. However, you are the author of the original page! And a very good page, at that.

Flowerman wrote on Sun, Feb 14, 2010 06:40 PM UTC:

Where are that 'rules' (Under some pieces and simbols writen 'see rules')?

H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Mar 11, 2015 10:34 PM UTC:Good ★★★★

The description in the linked page basically follows the rules from the TSA leaflet. But progressive insight due to easier contact with people in Japan through the internet has led to substantial revising of the rules, and the current Wikipedia description of this game differs in several important respects from the TSA rules. For instance:

The Lion Dog is now thought to have 3-step linear Lion powers, similar (but greater than) the 2-step linear Lion power of Horned Falcon and Soaring Eagle in Chu Shogi. That it should not have Lion power was argued in the TSA leaflet apparently on no other basis than that 3-step full (i.e. direction-changing) Lion power would make it much to strong, but the restriction to linear movement that voids this arguments was never considered.

It is now considered unlikely that promotion (on capture) was mandatory. Unlike Dai Dai Shogi, where most pieces do not promote (or start out promoted, if you want), having forced promotion in Maka Dai Dai would thoroughly wreck the game. Many of the strong pieces 'promote' to the weak Gold, (hook movers, Lion Dog), and there are no pieces in the initial setup that would promote to any of these lost pieces. So you would quickly end up in a situation with flocks of Golds, plus some rather uninteresting sliders. A much better rule would be that promotion is mandatory only when you capture a promoted piece, and optional when you capture an unpromoted one. That would preserve the interesting pieces much longer. The idea that you would 'inherit' the promoted property from you victim is in line with the following rule as well:

The strongest pieces of the game, Teaching King and Buddhist Spirit (compounds of Queen + Lion Dog and Queen + Lion) cannot be traded out of the game, by a rule different from the Lion-trading rules in Chu, but practically achieving the same: whenever you capture a TK or BS, the capturing piece promotes to that. (Using the just captured piece to replace it.)

This makes the game much more interesting than once thought. The major drawback remains the very large size, which makes it tedious to play. I designed a version of it about half the size, on a 13x13 board: "Macadamia Shogi", on which I posted a page here.

H. G. Muller wrote on Tue, Mar 17, 2015 08:36 PM UTC:

Shall I also create our own page for Maka Dai Dai Shogi, (and perhaps Dai Dai and Wa Shogi?), similar to the one I did for Chu Shogi?

Jeremy Good wrote on Wed, Mar 18, 2015 11:59 PM UTC:

Would love if you did.

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