United States Shogi Federation?

[Eric De Las Casas]

Hi everyone,

I noticed while looking at the Shogi World Championship's website that
one of the sponsors is the United States Shogi Federation, which I
didn't know exists. I have been trying to find information on an
American body for shogi for quite some time and am wondering why
information about the USSF is so hidden.

It seems to me that if the USSF wanted to be successful they would be
more open and more active. All I have found in my searches are broken
links and criticisms of the past USSF. It is my opinion that it would
benefit all shogi players in the US if the USSF took a more active
role in promoting shogi and, especially, providing a database of US
shogi players and clubs as well as distribute ratings, help potential
shogi clubs, etc. The American Go Association is a good model for
what I believe the USSF should be.

If there seems to be anything I'm missing, please let me know, because
I certainly hope there is, or will eventually be, a unified body for
shogi players in the US in the same way there is for igo.

Thanks,

Eric De Las Casas

[Larry Kaufman]

The USSF has not been active in recent years, except that we continue
to rate US Shogi tournaments together with FESA (the European Shogi
association) under the "Pan-Atlantic Shogi rating" system, and saction the
annual U.S. championships. It would be nice to see it take a more active
role.

Larry Kaufman (ratings officer for USSF)

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[Eric De Las Casas]

Larry,

I see, that's a shame. I would love to see - and even help - the USSF
expand its role by promoting shogi and trying to unite American shogi
players. I think right now the USSF has a good opportunity to take
advantage of the current rise in popularity of shogi, which is spurred
by the anime Naruto as well as Hidetchi's videos.

Thanks,

Eric De Las Casas

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[Daryl Lakes]

As a new Shogi player, I agree that it would be nice to see Shogi popularity increased. What I have found is that in Japan, Shogi is more popular then Go. Outside of Japan, Go is fairly popular, but shogi is nearly unheard of. If you use Google (or Youtube for videos etc) you will find a massive amount of Go links in English but finding shogi links is like finding a needle in a haystack. I am not sure why this is. I would think that western chess players at least would be attracted to Shogi. Why does Go do well outside of Japan but not Shogi? One guess I might offer is that a Go set has 'universal' pieces and board. Small round dots are easy to understand. In Shogi, the pieces are very intimidating to a non Japanese person. The only reason I became interested is I (by accident) stumbled upon a video series on Youtube (Hidechi) and saw it was possible to use westernized pieces. I can not say that letting people know that it is possible to play Shogi with
less intimidating pieces would help promote, but it did in my case.

--- On Tue, 12/1/09, Eric De Las Casas <ede...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Eric De Las Casas]

Hi Daryl,

One of the biggest reasons igo is becoming popular around the world is
not only the universal pieces, but also the simplicity of the rules.
"Put a stone anywhere on the board, if it's surrounded it's captured,
and whoever surrounds the majority of the board wins" is, basically,
all you need to know about igo's rules in order to play the game.
With shogi, however, you have to learn and memorize 10 different
movement types for each of the 8 pieces, as well as learn to recognize
different types of images, whether they're kanji or pictures. It also
takes a bit more to understand the basics of shogi than it does with
igo.

One of the reasons shogi does not do well outside of Japan is the wide
variety of similar games. The West has chess, China has xiangqi,
Thailand has Makruk, Korea has Janggi, etc. To players of these
games, shogi is "just another chess type." Because of this, they tend
to not take shogi very seriously.

One last reason that igo is more popular than shogi is that igo has
national associations devoted to constantly popularizing the game. I
know Europe has the FESA for shogi, but as has been explained in this
line of messages, the USSF doesn't do much popularization. If you
look at the American Go Association, you see that they constantly make
efforts to go to various types of cultural and gaming events to
introduce new players to the game. They also have a national database
of igo players, so that you can simply look up online to see if there
are any igo players near you. Not to mention they release a
newsletter very often, and they actively participate in helping
beginning igo clubs.

These are all things I think the USSF should be doing if we plan to
make shogi more popular in the US.

Thanks,

Eric De Las Casas

On Dec 1, 5:58 pm, Daryl Lakes <dla...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> As a new Shogi player, I agree that it would be nice to see Shogi popularity increased. What I have found is that in Japan, Shogi is more popular then Go. Outside of Japan, Go is fairly popular, but shogi is nearly unheard of. If you use Google (or Youtube for videos etc) you will find a massive amount of Go links in English but finding shogi links is like finding a needle in a haystack. I am not sure why this is. I would think that western chess players at least would be attracted to Shogi. Why does Go do well outside of Japan but not Shogi? One guess I might offer is that a Go set has 'universal' pieces and board. Small round dots are easy to understand. In Shogi, the pieces are very intimidating to a non Japanese person. The only reason I became interested is I (by accident) stumbled upon a video series on Youtube (Hidechi) and saw it was possible to use westernized pieces. I can not say that letting people know that it is possible to play Shogi with
>  less intimidating pieces would help promote, but it did in my case.
>

> --- On Tue, 12/1/09, Eric De Las Casas <edel...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Daryl Lakes]

Hi Eric,
I totally agree. Whats more, as a new player here are some other obstacles I have encountered:
When I learned to play Go about 10 years ago, I had no problem at all finding quality sets, English language books (my public library alone had 5 titles) and many other English language resources.
But, for Shogi, in close to three weeks of searching the Internet (Google, Ebay, Amazon, etc) I can not find a single quality shogi set. All I see are the same handful of folding or magnetic sets. I figured if I could get a real set, I could at least TRY to use the traditional pieces. But even Ebay has come up empty. One other thing, software. When I started playing Go, there was several English Go programs with friendly beginner UI's. For Shogi, there is one, Shotest. The others such as BCM or Shogidokoro you must struggle through limited information on how to get them to work with engines, etc. Collections of professional games are minimal with Shogi as well. Go has Gobase, and many searchable free sites but for Shogi, for the most part I am stuck with the Japanese websites via Google translator.
Finally, I again thank Hidetchi. There are numerous beginner Go lesson videos available, but if Hidetchi had not made his on Shogi, there would be none at all in English that I know of.
I plan on taking my laptop computer next time I go to a chess tournament to see if I can interest any of my chess playing friends to Shogi. I recruited a few for Go at one time, but this time, I will not even have a real board/pieces to show them. If anyone knows a website that has a nice Shogi table board with decent pieces in the US $100 range, please post it. My searches have come up empty. Thank you.

--- On Tue, 12/1/09, Eric De Las Casas <ede...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Eric De Las Casas]

Hi Daryl.

I agree that it's hard to find information about shogi. This is one
of the things I hope to fix with the website The 81-Square Universe
(http://www.81squareuniverse.com/), as well as Shogipedia (http://wiki.
81squareuniverse.com/index.php?title=Main_Page).

On the topic of shogi books, have you seen the Shogi Foundation?
(http://www.shogifoundation.co.uk/) The Shogi Foundation sells three
English shogi books: The Art of Shogi and Classical Shogi, written by
Tony Hosking, and Habu's Words, written by Yoshiharu Habu. In
addition to The Shogi Foundation, you can find John Fairbairn's book,
Shogi for Beginners, at The Trading Centre (http://
www.thetradingcentre.co.uk/), and you can also find Better Moves for
Better Shogi by Teruichi Aono (translated by John Fairbairn) on
Amazon.com.

As for shogi boards, I have seen a few quality shogi boards on ebay,
but you might want to look at Japanese Games Shop. (http://japanese-
games-shop.com/shogi.html) They sell quality mass-produced equipment,
as well as handmade equipment.

One English shogi software I can recommend is called "Booze." (http://
drunksoft.com/shogi/) It has several different difficulty levels and
is suitable for beginners. It also features Mini Shogi and Tori
(Bird) Shogi variants.

I hope you're successful in your promotion attempts at your local
chess tournament.

Thanks,

Eric De Las Casas

On Dec 2, 3:34 am, Daryl Lakes <dla...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hi Eric,
> I totally agree. Whats more, as a new player here are some other obstacles I have encountered:
> When I learned to play Go about 10 years ago, I had no problem at all finding quality sets, English language books (my public library alone had 5 titles) and many other English language resources.  
> But, for Shogi, in close to three weeks of searching the Internet (Google, Ebay, Amazon, etc) I can not find a single quality shogi set. All I see are the same handful of folding or magnetic sets. I figured if I could get a real set, I could at least TRY to use the traditional pieces. But even Ebay has come up empty. One other thing, software. When I started playing Go, there was several English Go programs with friendly beginner UI's. For Shogi, there is one, Shotest. The others such as BCM or Shogidokoro you must struggle through limited information on how to get them to work with engines, etc. Collections of professional games are minimal with Shogi as well. Go has Gobase, and many searchable free sites but for Shogi, for the most part I am stuck with the Japanese websites via Google translator.
> Finally, I  again thank Hidetchi. There are numerous beginner Go lesson videos available, but if Hidetchi had not made his on Shogi, there would be none at all in English that I know of.
> I plan on taking my laptop computer next time I go to a chess tournament to see if I can interest any of my chess playing friends to Shogi. I recruited a few for Go at one time, but this time, I will not even have a real board/pieces to show them. If anyone knows a website that has a nice Shogi table board with decent pieces in the US $100 range, please post it. My searches have come up empty. Thank you.
>

[kouassi lionnel]

Hi everyone,
It is a very interesting topic.So to my mind the big probleme of shogi
is not only about the difficulies in learning rules but about the
broadcsting.
According to me Shogi is often played by people who are fun of japan
culture.Here in Africa, shogi had not no federation or a bit
section,why ?In spite of the fact some african have been in japan and
have seen this game, or perhaps have played it.The reason is that
people fear not to be understand when they will explain shogi rules so
for that they prefer not to do nothing.
When i discovered shogi in Naruto, what attracted me was that
Shikamaru was too clever as a boy of 12 years old. The values given by
shogi must be showed to the potential players.
We must not fear to put money in promotion of shogi as we can because
this a good game which should have many players only if we promote it.
International federation of shogi should first have a website in
english and french.
World championship of shogi must bebroadcasted in many important
channels in the world.Here in ivory coast people have never seen shogi
match on television.We must discuss with national television, school
to permit to the whole world to discover shogi.
I would like to know where is the international federation of shogi?
who is the president?
Fan of shogi in all the world let's rise up and fight for spreading of
shogi in the world.Tha's possible.
thanks and excuse my bad english,i'm french speaking person.
Shogi forever