Shogi demon professional#
Shogi demon series#

Additionally, although P-76 and P-34 may occur as the first two moves allowing for a bishop trade off, it is always possible that either Black or White can prevent an early bishop exchange by closing their bishop diagonal with a subsequent pawn push – P-66 for Black or P-44 for White. Opening the bishop diagonal as the first move is the most flexible first move, which leads to the largest number of opening possibilities. Moreover, making a bishop exchange constitutes tempo loss, so it is not advised without a good reason. However, it is not advantageous to exchange bishops if your opponent has a better defensive setup or more lines of attack. This allows each player to put their newly captured bishop into play anywhere on the board on their next move although care must be taken to avoid weaknesses in defense which may allow for a bishop drop from their opponent. With a bishop diagonal first move (P-76 or P-34), it is common to exchange bishops by having one capture the other (although not necessarily at the beginning of the opening). Thus, almost all games (over 90%) will start with the one of the four possible combinations of these two pawn push types (see adjacent diagrams). 5.3 Frequency of initial move sequencesįurthermore, these two types of pawn pushes are the most common moves for both Black and White (which would be 1.P-84 and 1.P-34).For example, trap openings like Demon Slayer, while they may have standard moves, are considered to favor one player and, thus, are not balanced play. Note that not all openings have jōseki s. (However, some jōseki s have become outdated when they are reevaluated to no longer give balanced play.) Jōseki s also typically include commentary about the possible reasons to deviate from the jōseki especially regarding blunders.

Shogi demon professional#

Ī jōseki ( 定跡) is the especially recommended sequence of moves for a given opening that was considered balanced play at one point in time for both sides by professional players. The more general Japanese term for the beginning of the game is joban ( 序盤). This board position is after 26 moves (or 13 move pairs).Ī shogi opening ( 戦法 senpō) is the sequence of initial moves of a shogi game before the middle game. This particular popular opening is known as Bishop Exchange since the bishops have been exchanged off the board so that both players have their bishop in hand for dropping at strategic places later in the game. These board games went through constant rule changes until they became what we play today.Both players are using a Static Rook opening against each other in which the rook (飛) attacks along its starting files (file 2 and file 8). Starting in India in the sixth century, these games spread north to China and then eventually to both Japan and Europe. This is just like chess, and there’s a reason for that! Both chess and shogi, along with a number of other board games, share a common origin. The word SHOGI is made up of the kanji characters for “general” and “game.” The players are basically generals controlling soldiers on the board in order to defeat the opponent’s army. The FU character in the title is also part of the word for the pawn piece in shogi. He probably has a long way to go to get to that level though. With shogi being a game of war, MONONOFU as a title must signify that the main character is going to become a board game samurai. Let's first figure out what the name of the manga actually means! It turns out that MONONOFU is an alternate reading of the word BUSHI, which means “samurai,” or in a more general sense, a warrior. Hopefully we can all learn more about shogi along with the main character of Mononofu! You won't become a shogi master in this lesson, but it can be your first step. Shogi is similar to chess, but it also has its own unique characteristics.

Shogi demon series#

This series is all about the ancient and complicated Japanese board game, shogi. This week's lesson will focus on terms from our newest JUMP START series, Mononofu. We strive to give you useful manga-based Japanese language tips and maybe even a glimpse into the translation process.