I must confess that I'm a bit excited right now. In the second round of BrainKing's September Shogi Open, I've managed to quickly earn a couple wins against one of my two opponents. Both games were pretty loose and crazy as we were making many moves per day, but I was able to build mating attacks by applying pressure and doing my best to avoid the urge to profit materially. Instead of trying to capture pieces as I would in Chess, I tried to ignore unimportant threats and keep focus on attacking the king...things worked out for the best. I made a load of mistakes, but I feel for the first time in my Shogi "career" that I'm reading pretty well and seeing the entire board.
Hopefully I can keep this up in the coming weeks or months it will take to finish these other two games.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Monday, April 06, 2009
BrainKing Update
Well, here's a brief update of the September Shogi Open at BrainKing. The first round has completed and, since there was a three-way tie in our bracket, the next round just took all three of us! :D There are now two brackets containing three players in each.
Sunday, April 05, 2009
September Shogi Open First Round Concluding
Yes, I am still here! The first round of the September Shogi Open over at BrainKing is still running. A good deal of the fault lies with me as I was extremely busy in the middle stages and was sometimes using upwards of 10 days per move. The tournament settings specify 10 days per move and BrainKing gives additional time for delays, so it's clear that this could (and has) run for months. Even so, I prefer to make my moves much more quickly.
That said, I am in the final round in our bracket, one move from mate, so the longest it will last is another 15 days if my opponent takes the full time before making his move, resigning, or letting the clock run out. At that point, we'll be at an interesting roadblock. Three of us will be locked in the #1 spot, each with 6 wins and two losses.
Player A beat Player B twice.
Player C beat Player A twice.
Player B beat Player C twice.
All three players won their other four games.
So each of us will have six points in total and our tiebreak number, as far as I can tell, will be the same. It will be interesting to see what becomes of this. Only one player can move onto the next round since the three players from other brackets all ended up with a higher point total.
One other thing I should point out is that Takodori has blogged about the availability of Trevor Leggett's book "Japanese Chess: The Game of Shogi". Apparently, this is a revival of his "Shogi Japan's Game of Strategy", which was published in 1993.
That said, I am in the final round in our bracket, one move from mate, so the longest it will last is another 15 days if my opponent takes the full time before making his move, resigning, or letting the clock run out. At that point, we'll be at an interesting roadblock. Three of us will be locked in the #1 spot, each with 6 wins and two losses.
Player A beat Player B twice.
Player C beat Player A twice.
Player B beat Player C twice.
All three players won their other four games.
So each of us will have six points in total and our tiebreak number, as far as I can tell, will be the same. It will be interesting to see what becomes of this. Only one player can move onto the next round since the three players from other brackets all ended up with a higher point total.
One other thing I should point out is that Takodori has blogged about the availability of Trevor Leggett's book "Japanese Chess: The Game of Shogi". Apparently, this is a revival of his "Shogi Japan's Game of Strategy", which was published in 1993.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Shotest Shogi Developer Interaction
Well, good news! The Shotest Shogi developers are taking an interest in the community and have posted on the xbox.com forums:
http://forums.xbox.com/22673704/ShowPost.aspx
"As requested, developer dropping by. :)
Thanks for your support guys. As you've noticed, whilst the game's doing very well in Japan we're kinda struggling back home a bit. We're talking with MS about what we can do to get some more exposure over here.
A game like Shogi's never going to have a massive userbase, but it would be nice to get *some* westerners playing!"
Good luck to the SS team!
http://forums.xbox.com/22673704/ShowPost.aspx
"As requested, developer dropping by. :)
Thanks for your support guys. As you've noticed, whilst the game's doing very well in Japan we're kinda struggling back home a bit. We're talking with MS about what we can do to get some more exposure over here.
A game like Shogi's never going to have a massive userbase, but it would be nice to get *some* westerners playing!"
Good luck to the SS team!
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Folding Shogi Board
Well, as I've mentioned in the past, I purchased a folding shogi board through eBay and there were delays with the delivery. I did actually receive it and I must say that I'm rather disappointed. Considering the price ($45 + $7.50 shipping and handling) and my experience with similarly priced go and chess sets, this set was not a great purchase. It's very small with poor quality wood and incredibly cheap plastic hinges. The plastic pieces are actually ok, but there are a few with excess paint or scratching.
At any rate, here are a few photos. The first is in comparison to a floor goban to get a feel for the size and poor wood quality.
Here is a close-up of the pieces and the board grain.
And finally, a shot of the plastic hinge. I doubt this will last very long.
All in all, a disappointment. But at least I have something to work with while following along with the Fairbairn book. My search for a good shogi set continues. :)
At any rate, here are a few photos. The first is in comparison to a floor goban to get a feel for the size and poor wood quality.
Here is a close-up of the pieces and the board grain.
And finally, a shot of the plastic hinge. I doubt this will last very long.
All in all, a disappointment. But at least I have something to work with while following along with the Fairbairn book. My search for a good shogi set continues. :)
Friday, September 19, 2008
Progress Update
Ugh. Shogi is a TOUGH game. It is a VERY tough game. I feel like I have made no progress at all, despite the fact that I'm studying tsume shogi problems, playing many games against Shotest Shogi, and trying to make my way through the Fairbairn book. I get the feeling like Shogi may turn out to be like golf...it's difficult enough to drive you crazy, yet every once in a while you make a good solid shot which keeps you addicted and makes you play another 20 lousy games until you experience the feeling of making that one good shot again. In Shogi, it's not a golf shot...it's a tesuji or, for me, something as simple as finding a pin or a fork.
In Chess, I feel like I've made quite a large amount of progress...certainly enough to beat many humans and weak computer problems. I'm at the stage where I actually can think about why I'm making moves and my game has purpose. Chess isn't *that* much different from Shogi, is it? Well, I think part of the problem is simply that there is no quality learning material for Shogi here in the West. If the Fairbairn "Shogi for Beginners" book was a chess book, I'd have tossed it by now and moved onto another one. I suppose I'll save a full review for some point after I finish it, but for now it's safe to say that there is very little I like about his teaching style or the actual book layout. It's very disappointing.
On the Shotest Shogi XBLA front, I've made a couple friends from the xbox.com forums but have yet to play them online. They're beginners just as I am, so hopefully we'll be able to play at some point and maybe learn a few things together.
In Chess, I feel like I've made quite a large amount of progress...certainly enough to beat many humans and weak computer problems. I'm at the stage where I actually can think about why I'm making moves and my game has purpose. Chess isn't *that* much different from Shogi, is it? Well, I think part of the problem is simply that there is no quality learning material for Shogi here in the West. If the Fairbairn "Shogi for Beginners" book was a chess book, I'd have tossed it by now and moved onto another one. I suppose I'll save a full review for some point after I finish it, but for now it's safe to say that there is very little I like about his teaching style or the actual book layout. It's very disappointing.
On the Shotest Shogi XBLA front, I've made a couple friends from the xbox.com forums but have yet to play them online. They're beginners just as I am, so hopefully we'll be able to play at some point and maybe learn a few things together.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
More Shotest XBLA Impressions
I've had the chance to play more Shotest Shogi for Xbox Live Arcade and am still very pleased with the game, especially considering its low price. I've completed the Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced Tutorials and each was worthwhile, though short. I touched on the Beginner Tutorial in a blog entry yesterday.
The Intermediate and Advanced tutorials introduce four castles (mino, boat, yagura, and anaguma - "bear in the hole" for Hachi-one Diver fans), a handful of tsume shogi, and a couple hisshi ("brinkmate") problems. I plan on revisiting the Intermediate and Advanced tutorials since a lot was presented in a short time and I certainly did not absorb it all. Apparently there will be future DLC (downloadable content) that contains more instructional material. I definitely would pay for more tsume shogi.
I also played a few games versus the lowest ranked (1000) AI. It would be interesting to see how the 16 personalities compare to the PC version since I cannot even compete with the lowest skill level on the PC. It's fun to win every once in a while. :) Like I wrote earlier, the interface doesn't get in the way too much and it works about as well as can be expected with a game controller.
The game is not without its problems, though. As I mentioned yesterday, the piece placement sound is not a wood click as it should be. The presentation is nice, but there's far too much wasted space. On an HDTV, the screen is wider than it is taller.
In the screenshot above, just look at all the space wasted to the left and right of the board. Instead of placing the text somewhere like my artistically rendered red box, they put it at the bottom, which covers the board. That wouldn't be too bad, except for the fact that they put the file coordinates there! Why not move the coordinates to the top where they won't be obscured? There's no option to change anything, which is extremely disappointing. I'd love to be able to move the text so that I can fully expand the board and get a better resolution on the pieces. They look so excellent on the PC version, but they don't get a chance to truly shine here because of the layout.
The sound and layout problems are issues that the developers can deal with. However, a much more tricky problem is that there seems to be nobody playing online! Last night around 8pm Eastern Time, I could not find a Ranked or Player (unranked) match at any time settings. Part of my initial excitement about Shotest Shogi on XBLA is that I thought it would become my main way of playing online. I see the Leaderboard is full of Japanese Xbox users so I know that people are playing. I wonder if we in the US are segregated from the Asian users? If so, that is a major problem. There seems to be very little interest in this game here, and posts I've made in the xbox.com forums barely receive any page views, let alone responses.
I sure hope the online situation improves, but for now I'm going to continue to enjoy playing the AI.
The Intermediate and Advanced tutorials introduce four castles (mino, boat, yagura, and anaguma - "bear in the hole" for Hachi-one Diver fans), a handful of tsume shogi, and a couple hisshi ("brinkmate") problems. I plan on revisiting the Intermediate and Advanced tutorials since a lot was presented in a short time and I certainly did not absorb it all. Apparently there will be future DLC (downloadable content) that contains more instructional material. I definitely would pay for more tsume shogi.
I also played a few games versus the lowest ranked (1000) AI. It would be interesting to see how the 16 personalities compare to the PC version since I cannot even compete with the lowest skill level on the PC. It's fun to win every once in a while. :) Like I wrote earlier, the interface doesn't get in the way too much and it works about as well as can be expected with a game controller.
The game is not without its problems, though. As I mentioned yesterday, the piece placement sound is not a wood click as it should be. The presentation is nice, but there's far too much wasted space. On an HDTV, the screen is wider than it is taller.
In the screenshot above, just look at all the space wasted to the left and right of the board. Instead of placing the text somewhere like my artistically rendered red box, they put it at the bottom, which covers the board. That wouldn't be too bad, except for the fact that they put the file coordinates there! Why not move the coordinates to the top where they won't be obscured? There's no option to change anything, which is extremely disappointing. I'd love to be able to move the text so that I can fully expand the board and get a better resolution on the pieces. They look so excellent on the PC version, but they don't get a chance to truly shine here because of the layout.
The sound and layout problems are issues that the developers can deal with. However, a much more tricky problem is that there seems to be nobody playing online! Last night around 8pm Eastern Time, I could not find a Ranked or Player (unranked) match at any time settings. Part of my initial excitement about Shotest Shogi on XBLA is that I thought it would become my main way of playing online. I see the Leaderboard is full of Japanese Xbox users so I know that people are playing. I wonder if we in the US are segregated from the Asian users? If so, that is a major problem. There seems to be very little interest in this game here, and posts I've made in the xbox.com forums barely receive any page views, let alone responses.
I sure hope the online situation improves, but for now I'm going to continue to enjoy playing the AI.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
