Talk:Taikyoku shogi

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I'd like to piont out that all of the piece movements have been verified using a Japanese source, a playable Java game, before the article was posted. The Japanese wiki had not been used as a sourse at that time nor have any English sources been used for the verification of piece movements. I'm stuck in Alaska for a few weeks on buisness but I will look into it as soon as I can. --JTTyler, 3 Oct 2005.

：Thanks, JT. I'm verifying Tai shogi with Japanese wiki and have started posting inconsistancies on the Japanese pages. Once that's done, it should be easy to extend to maka, and then all articles will be in sync with the Japanese pages except taikyoku and ko shogi. I would much appreciate it if you took over confirming taikyoku! (And of course if you could resolve any of the outstanding issues on the other pages.) kwami 03:07, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm back! I've started on this page but I may not post the changes untill I'm about done. All of the non-promoted pieces have been verafied with jp wiki with allmost no change. The pronounciation guides are also a big help. --JTTyler 5 Nov 2005

Good. That helps. I adjusted about a quarter of the names. I'm afraid one or two may have slipped by, but this should be good for now. kwami 08:52, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

I noticed that the stone chariot and soldier swap places on the board in the Japanese wiki. This seems to make more sence so I may make this change. I've also noticed the earth dragon's moves are reversed. My previous sorce may have been mistaken. Their are 300 types of pieces when you include promotions, however many pieces coppy the movements of others', hence 253 different moves. JTTyler 6 Nov 05.

(Note to readers: the stone chariot and soldier have been reversed, and both variants are now listed for the earth dragon.) kwami

[edit] new draft

Hi JT,

Comments on the new draft:

You have the jumping order for the flying pieces as

1. King, crown prince
2. Great general
3. Vice general
4. Rook general, bishop general
5. Violent dragon, flying crocodile
6. All other pieces

However, Japanese wiki fuses 4 & 5 for

1. King, crown prince
2. Great general
3. Vice general
4. Rook general, bishop general, Violent dragon, flying crocodile
5. All other pieces

Under 'area movers' you say that the lion and lion hawk can only capture once per turn.

What you list as 'limited range multiple capture/partial lion power' pieces are just jumpers according to Japanses wikipedia. The golden bird, fire bird, and great elephant jump the first 0 to 3 squares (without capture), and then continue as ranging pieces in the directions you list for multiple capture. However, the ancient dragon has a ranging jump (flies) in the foreward & backward orthogonals, without capturing anything it jumps. (Like the generals in tenjiku.)

kwami 19:37, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Because I still have some difficulty reading Japanese, I based many of the rules on material I could find, including the Java game. Some are errors I still need to address. Primarily, v2.0 fixes most of the formatting issues; I even discovered that I had left a couple piece movements out of the original article. Further proofing and normalization of promoted pieces still need to be done so expect a v2.1. Thanks a lot for your input, it is helpful as always. JTTyler 22:20, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, Japanese wiki isn't necessarily correct either. I've just proofed the first rank, and am making adjustments. Actually, for the golden bird etc. it doesn't say they can jump up to the third square, it says that they can jump up to three pieces, which could be very different, depending on how literally we take it. (Is it a ranging jump, potentially crossing the board? Do the pieces have to be adjacent? If there is no adjacent piece, can it still jump one on the second square? Etc.) I translated it literally, leaving it ambiguous, so this is one we might want to confirm. (Of course, any source we get might be more precise than the original documents warrent.) kwami 21:54, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree, though it reminds me of the cannon from Xiangqi. JTTyler 10:56, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that would make it an interesting piece.

Actually, I think you're right. If it could jump to the second to fourth square, it would probably show that specifically on the diagram. The fact that the jump is indicated with a numeral 3 suggests that it is something that cannot be readily shown in a simple diagram.

Proofed the second rank. One possible correction, for the wooden dove, involves an error in Japanese wikipedia. I've changed our account to the Japanese verbal description, as that makes more sense given the promotions. I only noticed this because I read the Japanese for complex moves, but rely on the diagrams for basic ones, so there may be other discrepancies like this that I haven't caught. kwami 00:05, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Third rank: Phoenix & kirin masters cannot move on after jumping according to Japanese wiki. It only says,

また、斜め前 (or 前と後ろ) には3マス目まで飛び越えて行ける。

Also changed bishop & rook generals and croc to range capturing pieces, and added proviso that no such pieces can jump a royal. Substantially changed the croc and rain demon. Might be a good idea to verify with your sources and and variant movements if necessary.

Fourth rank: odd change in the silver chariot. there are seldom disagreements in simple pieces like this.

Fifth rank: the teacher king has no lion power in taikyoku. It instead has a 3-piece jump. The mountain stork agrees with the diagram, but not with the japanese text, which doens't mention moves to the side: 前後と斜め前に何マスでも動け (forward-backward and diagonally forward...)

Sixth: added a couple warnings. It doesn't make sense to me that the tengu and capricorn should have the same move, but that's what japanese wiki says. Also, the kirin is limited compared to Chu, but the phoenix is not. Just noticed by chance that one of the promotions was wrong: the flying goose promotes to sparrow's wings, not dragon king. Haven't checked any of the other pieces, though, so this needs to be done.

Can you double check poisonous snake? No jump move per japanese wiki. I'm just changing it on the assumption that what you had was the move of a smaller board version.

The royal proviso was in the text above the individual pieces, it was accidentally deleted.

[edit] Reference

As stated in the second paragraph “Several documents describing the game have been found; however, there are differences between them.” This may be the cause for some of our headaches. I liked the Java game because the piece movements where easer to define, however, it may not be as reliable a source as I thought, or it may be based on a different document than the jp.wiki. I have noticed some of the piece movements are reversed or different all together. Promotions may be affected also. The game is never updated so some of the info may be old.

A set of scans from Sekai no Shogi by Isao Umebayashi, a Japanese book about shogi variants, published in 1997 by Shogi Tengokusha, is archived at the Shogi Variants Group at onelist.com. The scans include diagrams and some explanations of the moves of the various pieces, as well as the initial setup. To view these, it is necessary to register with onelist. Of course, this information is never updated and may be based on only one document.

I got an expert, Colin Adams, to help with tenjiku shogi. The expert to ask for taikyoku is George Hodges. He posts to the Yahoo shogi club but I don’t know his E-mail address. I’m not a member of onlist or the Yahoo club but it might be worth taking a look.

Update: I have an address; george.hodges@talk21.com but I don’t know if it is current. Same with the address; George F. Hodges P.O. Box 77 Bromley, Kent BR1 2WT England Tel. (44) 81 - 468 7050, Fax (44) 81 - 295 1550.

It might be nice to get a copy of his booklet: George F. Hodges, Rules for historic Shogi variants. It can be ordered from the address above, though I can’t be sure if taikyoku is in it. JTTyler 14:21, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the reference! I'm fairly certain that taikyoku is not in Hadges pub, as that's fairly old. kwami 19:59, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Do you mean in Yahoo! groups? Houston-chess is the only one I see. kwami 21:25, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Divide and concur

It has come to my attention that User:-Ril- (one of the more prolific editers of article space) or one of his bots, belives that this article is too long on the basis of the limitations of obsolete web browsers (IE 6.0 and Firefox not among them). Therefore, when I get to it, I may divide this article accordingly. One of the visual tables will be greatly expanded and two of the textual tables will be integrated, creating at least one new article. It will be some time before this happens, unless someone else wants to assume this daunting task, so opinions may be left here to conciliate the suitability of doing this. JTTyler 02:38, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

User:JTTyler is indifferent –

User:Kwamikagami seams to like it as is –

User:-Ril- or one of his bots, votes to devide the article -

TheLateDentarthurdent suggests we divide the article by pieces or category of pieces since most of the information is regarding the movement of the ungodly number of pieces required to play. Category suggestions include Jumping, Diagonal, Orthogonal, Mixed Diagonal and Orthogonal, Mixed Jumping Diagonal and Orthogonal, etc. Or categorize them by row, which leaves only eleven sub-articles or so.

Keep it as it is. Splitting it into subarticles will make it more confusing, not less.