4 ms·
I was never a chess guy but I do like shogi. Chess has too many pieces that can move across the entire board: 2 bishops, 2 rooks, queen... And pawns capture dia
by 29athrowaway 6y ago
I was never a chess guy but I do like shogi. Chess has too many pieces that can move across the entire board: 2 bishops, 2 rooks, queen... And pawns capture diagonally which I have always found very weird.
In shogi there is no queen and there is only 1 bishop and 1 rook. Pawns capture forward and can move only 1 tile at a time and there is no en passant.
There are lances which are like rooks but can only move forward. Knights have 2 ways of moving instead of 8.
There are many more differences, like drops, different promotion rules, etc. It is a cool game.
Shogi gets pretty exciting towards the endgame.
An easy way to play shogi is in 81dojo. That site is available in English and is pretty active.
It can take a while to get used to reading the pieces and memorizing moves and promotions, but there are piece sets available that show you the available moves for each piece.
Illegal moves are the easiest way of losing. e.g.: nifu. And, you are expected to recognize a checkmate and resign.
And there is a "beginner" version, doubutsu shogi. Which consists of fewer pieces and a smaller board.
- Corence 6y agoYeah, the presence of piece drops means the average piece power has to be lower in Shogi. If you play Crazyhouse you see how quick the game is if you have drops in a game with as powerful pieces as Chess. I think both games have their interesting parts and it's fun to play both.
- SamBam 6y ago> And, you are expected to recognize a checkmate and resign Is that different from chess?
- 29athrowaway 6y agoNot different to offline chess, but online shogi will usually expect you to resign and penalize you if you don't. Although it is rather hard to explain for a beginner like myself. Mating in shogi is complicated... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brinkmate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brinkmate
- jandrese 6y agoI assume the penalty is in some metagame ranking? An in-game penalty for failing to recognize that you have already lost seems pointless.
- S4M 6y agoI also play shogi online on 81dojo like the GP. Yes, I think the penalty is meta-game: people can say you have bad manners, which will affect your "social credit" on the server, or you will banned from playing for a while if you do it too much (not sure about that).
- SamBam 6y agoI'm guessing that when you say "checkmate" above that it's more like go than chess? In chess you have literally no legal moves, but in go a good player just knows that it's hopeless to continue, and it's rude to keep going.
- S4M 6y agoNo, "checkmate" in shogi is the same as as in chess. What I meant to say is that if you are checkmated, you have to resign for the game to be over (on 81dojo). In theory, you could be a dick and not do anything until you run out of time for example, but that would be bad manner and you would be sanctioned for that.
- umanwizard 6y agoIf you have literally no legal moves why can’t the game just be programmed to stop?
- S4M 6y agoYou are right, the game could just be programmed to stop when one player is mated. The reason they didn't is, I think, to mimic the real life shogi play where the game ends when one player recognizes defeat.
- lmm 6y ago> And pawns capture diagonally which I have always found very weird. If you ever do reenactment of a sword-and-shield line fight it'll make a lot more sense. You naturally counter the person in front of you and neither makes any progress, the people who are diagonal from each other are where the action is.