Shogi Is Impossible

 

Back when the Corona pandemic was in full swing there was a bit of a Chess boom.  A few content creators went hard during the lockdowns, some interest was whipped up and a bunch of people starting playing Chess a bit more seriously to pass the time.  Me and a few of my friends also go swept up in the Chess hype and now I like to fiddle with a few puzzles or a game of bullet pretty much every day.

On Stream, one of the segments that I am doing is playing every single Yakuza (Now "Like a Dragon", a lame, overly direct translation of the Japanese title) to at least 75%.  If you have played a Yakuza game then you will now that in order to score some of those sweet, sweet completion points you are required to engage with at least a few of the mini games.  Now I thought, with my new found 1000-ish rating Chess skills I might be able to adapt to Shogi pretty easily and score some easy percent.  Well I was very fucking wrong and Shogi is completely impossible.

On a surface level, the two games are extremely similar.  You have pieces that have different ways that they move, a king that you must lock into place in order to win and a system of upgrading pieces when they get to the opposite end of the board.  Well that's the first big difference because in Chess its only pawns that upgrade when they hit the back rank.  In Shogi, getting a piece, any piece, to the back 3 rows or so allows you to flip it and upgrade it.  These upgrades aren't just into higher tiers of pieces like pawns becoming queens or rooks, they gain a whole new set of movement and if it wasn't for the video game versions of Shogi that I stick to showing me the valid moves I think I'd have hard time remembering it all.

But the large amount of basic shit to remember is just the very tippy top of this fucking iceberg.  The thing that really makes Shogi impossible for me to comprehend, the thing that fucks me up basically every time I play, is the ability for you to play pieces that you have taken back to the board instead of making a move.  Losing a piece in Shogi isn't just you losing strength in your forces, you are handing your opponent ammo to use whenever the fuck they like, takes and exchanges have to be considered way more carefully than they do in chess.  It adds a layer of strategy to the game that is deeply fascinating and that I don't think I will ever be able to get my head around.

It's not just me that struggles with this shit either.  I have lost the link (if I find it I'll edit the post) where there was a Chess grandmaster talking about Shogi.  He said that Chess GMs usually end up eating shit if they try to play Shogi but Shogi players can adept to Chess pretty easily.  However though, apparently Shogi players giving chess a try will absolutely fall apart and shit their pants in Chess endgames because of the lack of ability to put shit back on the board.  It was an interesting chat and I wish I could find the video again to share here, maybe one day.

But this post isn't me complaining about Shogi as much as it's me sharing my reverance for the game and the people who are good at it.  I suck at it, I'm clearly too caveman to understand it on a deeper level but with that said, I sure as shit will keep trying my luck against the easy CPUs in the Shogi halls of the Yakuza games.