Check out Atomic Chess, our featured variant for November, 2024.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
H. G. Muller wrote on Mon, Feb 16, 2015 03:52 PM UTC:

Playing mini-Shogi with western equipment

I now have developed a convenient way to play mini-Shogi 'over the board', using western Chess and Checkers equipment. I represent the pieces as follows:

  • King: King
  • Gold: Pawn fixed on top of two stacked Checkers (e.g. with double-sided tape)
  • Silver: Pawn fixed on top of a single Checker
  • Bishop: Bishop
  • Rook: Rook
  • Dragon: Rook on Checker
  • Horse: Bishop on Checker
  • Pawn: Pawn
All pieces (except King) are present twice for each color, so you use an entire Chess set except for the Queens, Knights and two Pawns of each color. Six of the Checkers of each color are fixed 'permanently' to Pawns.

Each player has (on his side of the board) two sets of pieces: the 'hand' with pieces of his own color, and the 'stock' with pieces of the opponent's color. Initially all pieces not needed to set up the initial position go into their respective stock.

When a piece is captured, it goes into the stock of its color (controlled by the player that captures it), and the opponent gives the player that made the move an identical piece (of opposite color) from the stock, to go to his hand for dropping. The captured piece is stripped from any Checkers that are not fixed to it: the Checkers go onto a heap next to the board, so both players can grab one of those of either color, when they promote a piece.

To promote a piece, you slip a Checker (from the heap) underneath it. Bishops turn into Horses, Rooks into Dragons that way. A Silver, which already is a Pawn on a Checker (of the same color) turns into a Gold (which already had two Checkers of the same color). To keep the difference visible, you could slip a Checker of the opposite color underneath the Silver. To promote a Pawn, you put it on top of two loose Checkers, so that it also takes the shape of a Gold. To keep it uniquely recognizable as a promoted Pawn, you can take both Checkers of the opposite color as the Pawn. Perhaps it would be good for consistency (and visibility) to always use Checkers of opposite color to promote a piece (so also in the case of Bishop and Rook).

The same system can be used to play Judkins Shogi. The only imperfection there is that a promoted Knight, represented by a Knight on a Checker, now does not look the same as a Gold, while it does move like one.


Edit Form

Comment on the page Minishogi

Conduct Guidelines
This is a Chess variants website, not a general forum.
Please limit your comments to Chess variants or the operation of this site.
Keep this website a safe space for Chess variant hobbyists of all stripes.
Because we want people to feel comfortable here no matter what their political or religious beliefs might be, we ask you to avoid discussing politics, religion, or other controversial subjects here. No matter how passionately you feel about any of these subjects, just take it someplace else.
Avoid Inflammatory Comments
If you are feeling anger, keep it to yourself until you calm down. Avoid insulting, blaming, or attacking someone you are angry with. Focus criticisms on ideas rather than people, and understand that criticisms of your ideas are not personal attacks and do not justify an inflammatory response.
Quick Markdown Guide

By default, new comments may be entered as Markdown, simple markup syntax designed to be readable and not look like markup. Comments stored as Markdown will be converted to HTML by Parsedown before displaying them. This follows the Github Flavored Markdown Spec with support for Markdown Extra. For a good overview of Markdown in general, check out the Markdown Guide. Here is a quick comparison of some commonly used Markdown with the rendered result:

Top level header: <H1>

Block quote

Second paragraph in block quote

First Paragraph of response. Italics, bold, and bold italics.

Second Paragraph after blank line. Here is some HTML code mixed in with the Markdown, and here is the same <U>HTML code</U> enclosed by backticks.

Secondary Header: <H2>

  • Unordered list item
  • Second unordered list item
  • New unordered list
    • Nested list item

Third Level header <H3>

  1. An ordered list item.
  2. A second ordered list item with the same number.
  3. A third ordered list item.
Here is some preformatted text.
  This line begins with some indentation.
    This begins with even more indentation.
And this line has no indentation.

Alt text for a graphic image

A definition list
A list of terms, each with one or more definitions following it.
An HTML construct using the tags <DL>, <DT> and <DD>.
A term
Its definition after a colon.
A second definition.
A third definition.
Another term following a blank line
The definition of that term.