hirohiigo's Shogi Thoughts

After two long years of popularizing shogi down here in Louisiana, it looks like my dream of starting a Louisiana Shogi Club is finally becoming a reality!!  We’re going to have our first meeting on September 16 in Baton Rouge, at Highland Coffees near LSU campus.

What seemed like a far off dream when I began playing shogi is finally happening, and now that it is, I’m realizing that this isn’t anywhere near the end.  This is only the beginning of shogi in Louisiana.

I’ll be sure to write a report of our first meeting.

After constant pressuring from Tellmarch and lots of temptation, I decided to go to the International Shogi Festival this year in Paris.  I wasn’t able to make it to the US qualifier in Philadelphia for the main ISF tournament, but I’ll be participating in the George Hodges Memorial Open.  I’m really looking forward to meeting all the great people I’ve been chatting with for the past two years.  I need to start training, though; I don’t want to embarrass myself in my first European shogi event.

I’ve paid for the registration, now I just need to pay for the plane ticket and I’ll be all set.

If you’ve been following my shogi popularization attempts, you’re undoubtedly aware of the shogi panels I’ve been hosting at the Mechacon anime convention.  If you haven’t seen them, check out these articles on Louisiana Shogi: Mechacon Shogi Panel and Mechacon Shogi Panel 2.

I’ll be back at Mechacon this year with a bigger show than ever: Instead of doing a single panel on shogi, I’m hosting the entire Asian board games facility at Mechacon!  I’m going to be popularizing three different games this year: shogi, igo, and mahjong.  I already own an igo set and I just ordered a mahjong set the other day.  I’m very excited.  When I first presented the idea to Stoney, the man in charge of tabletop gaming at Mechacon, he loved it and wanted to do it immediately.  The idea is to, instead of have convention attendees show up and specified times and maybe miss out on playing, all three games can be run throughout the whole weekend to maximize exposure to the games.

I met with Stoney about a week ago to discuss the idea with him, and he seemed pleased with all of my ideas and is completely supportive of everything I’m doing.  I also taught him to play and gave him one of my sets.

Wish me luck!

I took a pretty decent break from shogi.  Everything I was doing wasn’t coming out as I wanted it to, and I was only getting more and more frustrated.  The breaking point was losing two games in a row that I’m confident I should have won against a relatively new player.  I made no endgame analysis and it ruined both games for me, even though I was in great positions in both.  I just needed a break from shogi.

I kept my mind active with another strategy game, though.  I’ve been playing a lot of Starcraft, a real time strategy game.  Although it’s a video game, it’s very deep and complex, just as much as shogi and chess, and incorporates the need for precise response time, which is a factor that doesn’t exist in board games.  It’s pretty exciting – although frustrating as well – so you should definitely check it out if you haven’t.  It even has a pro league that’s very exciting to watch.

But I’m back to shogi now.  It’s going to be a bit tough, but I’ll have to find the correct way to dive back into the 81-square universe.