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Introduction
This is a step-by-step study plan starting from complete beginner at Shogi.
There are many different ways to learn, and everyone has different
goals and priorities. It’s not important what you study or in what order.
Just spend time playing and/or studying.
I emphasize getting in there and playing lots of games (and reviewing), don’t be shy.
At the end there are links to many other good resources Just the links
The Plan
Your first three games
- Register on Lishogi
- Pick your favorite piece set style
- Click your username in the upper right, and Piece Set
- I recommend Engraved_cz because it has the traditional Kanji on top and shows how the piece moves on the bottom.
You will naturally start to recognize the Kanji alone (important for sites that only have the Kanji).
- Learn how all the pieces move
- Play a 10-piece handicap game vs the computer
- The goal is to practice recognizing and moving the pieces
- From the main Lishogi page, click play with the computer
- Variant -> From Position
- 10-piece (Computer starts with 10 pieces missing – only King and Pawns left)
- Select Sente (Black King)
- Play a second game
- If you lost, try the same handicap
- If you won, move up to the next handicap on the list (8-piece)
- Play a third game, continue adjusting the handicap
- Congratulations, you’re starting to get an idea how the pieces move!
- No small feat in such a different game, even if you’re used to chess
- Most English speakers will have a hard time even recognizing the pieces!
Time for some study
- Complete KD’s Beginner tsumes (checkmate problems)
- In Shogi, when you get an advantage you cannot simplify the position by trading all the pieces
- In fact, trading pieces makes the game more complicated, because of the drop rule.
- The safest way to win is to checkmate quickly
- To do this, you’re going to need to know some common checkmating techniques.
- Play 3 more handicap games
- Complete KD’s Game concepts and tactics
- The first few chapters focus on Rook Pawn tactics
- Go through this List of Castles
- Pick one of these to try out
Playing your first human opponent
- Try finding another beginner
- Lishogi is new and there are not many human opponents, so you need to be proactive to find one.
- Or ask in the Shogi Harbour Discord
- Or go to a Lishogi arena, and ask if a beginner there wants to pause the arena and play
- Or try 81dojo, there are more humans there
- See the 81dojo section here
- If you cannot find a beginner, try playing a handicap game instead.
- Congratulations for finishing your first even game!
- Play two more games!
The long haul
- You’re starting to get an idea of what Shogi is about, congratulations!
- Keep playing games!
- Start watching Shuji Muranaka’s commented Shogi Wars games, with English subtitles (turn on CC)
- A great resource to quickly see a wide variety of openings
- He covers the main points in the game
- The level is above an absolute beginner, if you have questions, ask in Discord.
- Solve problems
- Studies about openings
- Review your games
- First review with your (human) opponent or by yourself
- Once a week, pick an interesting game and submit it to Shogi Harbour’s weekly game reviews on her twitch channel.
- Ask your opponent to join you in the review
- Video of the steps
- Analysis Board
- Menu (bottom right of move list) -> Study -> Create Study
- Add members (top left)
- Type opponent name -> close add member box
- Make opponent contributor (top left)
- Opponent will get a notification (top right bell)
- Everyone turn SYNC and REC on (bottom left of board)
- Think of 2 or 3 points in the game where you wonder if you made the right choice
- Check with the computer on those points
- Lishogi can analyze the game with it’s servers, and interactively with the webengine
- Or install ShogiGUI
- Also check the computer suggestions for a few other points
- For the opening and middle game, focus on 2 or 3 of the places where the graph changed the most
- For the endgame, focus on a few of the shorter checkmates that you missed
Just the links
The main plan has a bunch of extra advice about how to study, but here is a
list of resources and the order to use them.
- Register on Lishogi
- Complete the Learn section to learn how all the pieces move
- Complete KD’s Beginner tsumes (checkmate problems)
- Complete KD’s Game concepts and tactics
- Go through this List of Castles
- Start watching Shuji Muranaka’s commented Shogi Wars games, with English subtitles (turn on CC)
- PlayShogi problem collections
- Lishogi puzzles - > tsume
- Automatically adjusts puzzle difficulty to your level
- You can also adjust difficulty level
- Try Easier or Easiest if you like to quickly solve many easier puzzles
- In Normal mode lishogi will give harder puzzles until you get around 50% wrong!
- In the tsume (checkmate) category, every move must be check, and ends in checkmate
- Studies about openings, pick a few you like
- Some more problems/studies