GO & SHOGI japanese Board Games

BOTH go and shogi are games that require the power of concentration and an adept mind.

These games have been played by Japanese for hundreds of years, and the interest continues

today. Many people avidly read books on go and shogi, and they read articles in newspapers daily to improve their playing skills in much the same way that Westerners do with chess and bridge.

            In go two players alternately put their stones on any unoccupied intersection on the board. There are 36 1 of these intersections. The stones are all the same shape and are distinguished by their color-black or white. The black player always goes first, unless more than two handicap stones have been placed on the board. If the abilities of the two players are unequal, the weaker player is allowed to place extra handicap stones on the board before play begins. A weaker player's handicap is usually from two to nine of these prepositioned stones, although even more of them may be allowed.

            A stone that has been played cannot be moved unless it is captured. The rules for playing

are not very complicated and, generally, if a stone or several stones are surrounded by the

enemy's stones, they are considered captured and are removed from the board. Each prisoner or point within an enclosure (as determined by the number of intersections within a territory)

counts as one point. The advantage of the opening move has been determined as five

points; thus, if the players' abilities are the same at the outset of the game, the black player must

finish with at least six points more than the white player to be the winner. In Western chess

no provision is included to compensate for the opening-move advantage.

            Shogi originated in India, and from there it moved to China, Korea, and finally to Japan;

the Indian original was the same game that became chess in the West. The shogi board has

81 squares while the Western chessboard has only 64. In shogi both the board and the pieces

are natural wood, not colored. There are eight kinds of pieces, with their names written on

them. The pieces are placed so that they point in the direction in which they are moving

across the board. The player can change the power of four of the pieces (gin, keima, kyosha,

and fu) once they cross the opponent's third row or "promotion" line. At that point the

pieces are turned over and they take on the power of kin, the "gold" piece. Two other pieces,

kaku and hisha, can be strengthened in the same manner, although they do not assume the same

power as kin. In chess only the pawn can change power, and then only when it has

reached the opponent's back row.

            The truly distinctive feature of shogi is that a captured piece becomes the property of the capturing side and the piece can be returned to the board for that side's use. At any time,

instead of making a move, a player can drop one of these pieces on any vacant square. This

gives shogi a peculiar excitement because the players must be very much aware of the strategic

advantage that one effective drop of a captured piece can have on a game.

            Both shogi and go attract foreign players in Japan. Because shogi more closely resembles chess, it usually is mastered quickly by Western enthusiasts. On the other hand go, while generally regarded as the more complicated of the two games, has many more adult players and clubs to play in, thus presenting the foreigner with a greater number of opponents to play against.