shogishack.net - Introduction (original) (raw)

If you want to know the basic movement of each shogi pieces or learn the rules, you will not find them on this site. You can go to Wikipedia and enter "Shogi" in the search box. They do a great job of explaining those stuff. (or you can go to Youtube and watch this video)
However, learning Shogi play rule is only the first step for enjoying this game.

  1. Most people who start to play Shogi right after learning each piece's move seem to lack some fundamental philosophies on "what to do" and "what not to do." After reading this site, you will be able to judge most of these things by yourself.
  2. Most players lack knowledge of which piece to move first. I can somtimes get confused too. Do understand however,95% of the Shogi masters game start with only one of two moves. You better do the same. See here for those moves.
  3. There are "Shogi Checkmate Problems (Tsume Shogi)." These problems are similar to Chess Problems. Learning fairly short ones (usually about 3,5, or sometimes even 7 moves) will dramatically improve your closing moves. Have you ever missed a basic checkmate, and regretted it later? After doing these problems, that shouldn't be much of a problem to you anymore. See here for these moves
  4. Many of the articles on this site utilizes interactive shogiboard. You will know that when there are playback buttons below the shogiboard. For those boards, you can simply click on the board to advance pieces, a right click plays back one move.
  5. Since it will be impossible to explain everything on this site, I will make many references to the established shogi sites. Most of those sites are Japanese. Not Japanse? Don't dread. Even just a little bit of knowledge about Shogi could lead you to understanding the whole page. See here. A little practice and you will be amazed how much you can learn.
Announcement
Handicap study page added

Shogi is a game that is not influenced by elements of luck, making it difficult to win against a higher-ranking player. However, it is not enjoyable to play against someone who is holding back. A way to enjoy a serious match on equal terms with a higher-ranking player is through ‘handicap shogi.’ Handicap Shogi is […]

Monday, Aug 5 2024

Order of Shogi piece placement

I created a new page that explains how the shogi pieces will be placed on the board before the game starts. You can of course place pieces in any order to set up the shogi board for the game, but There are traditional ways to place each piece. Detail is here

Sunday, Jul 21 2024

Kyokumen.jp and it’s use within our site.

Recently I added a reference to Kyokumen.jp a.k.a. KyokumenPedia（局面ペディア） in the resource section of our site. The site name is coined after Kyokumen(局面) (board situation or position) and Encyclopedia. The site is maintained by the same people who runs 81dojo.com. To take a full advantage of the site, I added buttons to our site pages […]

Thursday, Jul 11 2024

First moves supplemented with opening book that comes with Yaneuraou Shogi AI

Opening Book made public by Yaneurao is now used to explain ‘after the first move’ On the section of the site where I explain Shogi’s first moves, there is a summary page which tries to comprehend how the first few moves become various Shogi strategies. As you can guess, It is never possible to list […]

Saturday, Jun 29 2024

Remember these technique for Anaguma castle

I would like to refer to this youtube video that discusses techniques to attack Anaguma castle. This youtuber picked examples out of ShogiWars actual plays and compiled them to compact yet very effective format to explain how to compromise the Anaguma castle. Although spoken in Japanese, you should be able to pick up things or […]

Saturday, Jun 29 2024

You have to get used to the Classic Kanji Pieces

Like symbols better than Kanji? Too bad. Your going to have to get used to the Classic Kanji Pieces. Sure, it is much easier to see symbolic pieces rather than pieces with Kanji characters on them. However, most of reference materials that are available online are shown with Classic styles. If you don't get used to it, then you'll regret it later. It's better to learn now, than later. If you don't know what every piece stands for, then your opponent has a huge advantage over you, and your basically screwed. Trust me. Learning the Kanji on the pieces are easy.

As such, this site uses custom shogiboard applet which shows the shogi board like this. Usage should be intuitive enough, but please take a quick look at this short guide on how to navigate the board.

Other Useful sites

Shogi Entries on Wikipedia went through a dramatic improvement over the last 10 years and I will not speak lightly on those articles any longer. You will learn a great deal from Wikipedia site pages alone. Additionally , there are many 'modern' reference mediums you can explore. See Resources section of this site for more.

References I originally suggested below still exists but no longer updated. although they are still relevant, some links have disappeared. Main problem being a demise of flash player based pages.

This site introduces you to the variety of Shogi articles. In particular, You will want to take a look at "Basic Shogi information available in English on Internet (1)" for general Shogi information and "Basic Shogi information available in English on Internet (2)" for English literature on various Shogi techniques available on-line .