One day, Shogi will be the most popular board game on Earth. The more people will learn about it, the less Chess will be on everyone's mind. Shogi is more personal than Go, it is more complex than Chess. It's more fun than any other game I have ever known. It deserves more attention, and I'm sure that coming generations, with increased knowledge, will come to the same conclusion. And if everything I said will come true, there will be a meijin in many countries, most pros will be non-Japanese, and there'll be hundreds of thousands of games happening at every second of the day.
I believe the following
Shogi is certainly an interesting game, but it is unlikely to become as popular as chess.Chess is a more dynamic game than shogi, and of course, not everyone wants to learn hieroglyphs just to play shogi.I would like to add that shog is poorly developed in Europe, so people often learn about the game only through the internet, i believe that in order to make people want to play shogi, we need to open shogi training sections to get children interested in this amazing game.
The kanji can be replaced with symbols, words, animals, numbers or whatever else comes to your mind. The idea of Shogi doesn't even need a physical board. An idea of a game is not restricted to any physical form; you could play Monopoly blind and it would still remain the same game. But of all possible ideas for games, I believe that Shogi is the forerunner for number one of all the other games we humans ever invented. It's surprising that this process of worldwide recognition even takes this long, as it does.
Yeah, but you could say the same about Xiangqi. Or chess, which is already very popular, and has a much lower skill floor than Shogi. I do like this game, but it's unlikely it'll ever be more popular than chess.
Shogi strikes the perfect balance between complexity and simpleness. And the drop rule is unique among the other major Chess-like games and keeps Shogi unpredictable and mysterious, even from the very opening moves. Chess gets simpler as a game goes on and more and more pieces disappear, Shogi otoh accelerates to such a point that every move can pose an existential threat to your camp, if you don't watch out and stay in a constant state of vigilance. So why isn't this great, exciting game more popular? I can only explain it by reasoning that it's just not known enough, and other inferior games steal its spotlight. All these years I wasted on Chess could've been avoided if I just would've learned about Shogi earlier. I'm sure that many former Chess players feel the same way.
Btw, everything I write is purely my opinion. Feel free to disagree with me. Everyone has their own tastes.
I think that some chess players don't even know that Shogi exists.Many people love chess for its simplicity. Chess openings are mostly the same, which makes the game much easier, but when you play shogi, you need to understand promotions and other nuances. Chess is simply simpler than shogi.
According to GM Larry Kaufman "the evidence is strong that shogi is the best game in the entire chess family"
http://www.shogi.net/shogi-l/Archive/1999/Nfeb07-06.txt
But this has nothing to do with "the most popular board game" thing.
1. The language barrier is huge. Yes, I know that any abstract board games can be played with any type of pieces or even in your had, but Japanese play it with kanji pieces and their all written literature uses kanji. Xiangqi and Janggi has this exact same problem.
2. Even in Japan the popularity of the game slowly declines. From a high of over 20 million in the 1980s (when it rivaled major sports), shogi's player base has fallen ~80% due to aging demographics, competition from video games/digital media, and fewer youth entrants.
Can you explain the point that it is more personally than Go?
It should get more mainstream before we can thing about making the pieces without Kanji. Many players may started this game because it is a japanese game
Chess has crazychess so it wont go away
In Shogi, each piece is its own unique character, with its own attributes and meaning. Don't you also, in your mind, see them as people? And just like people they have different skills, strengths and weaknesses, they can sacrifice themselves, or even change sides and betray their former master.
It would be super cool if we had 3d figurines like in Chess, to make that even more obvious, but this can only be done in the virtual world, because the soldiers frequently change color.
What are the pieces in Go? Placeholders, markers, perfectly bland and replaceable. I don't like to shit on Go too much, but it's just not possible to have any emotional bond with any of the stones you place on the board. It doesn't feel like a fight, with you as the supreme commander of your own army, but more like a modern mobile puzzle game. The optics of Go can't be improved, because how could you make a small plastic disc look cooler? Meanwhile, you can replace the Shogi kanji with anything your imagination allows. Because the Shogi men represent real, living people (in the context of the game, of course).
Crazychess has the same problems as normal Chess does: The board is too small, the pieces are too powerful. It gives Chess a new, interesting twist, but the fact remains that, if you don't like Chess, you won't like its crazy sibling all that much either. And just a minority of Chess players even play it.
If you know and love Shogi, you will begin to see the flaws of similar games as clear as day. Am I preaching to the choir right now? In my mind, everything I wrote here so far simply makes sense.
As a player who playes all three games. Each game has its own merrit
While chess is faster and for fast games (bullet, blitz ) shogi is more complex so it merrits lies in the longer games nsd for me in the missing endgames
Go is godd but not best in all time modes and can be played more philosophicial than the other two in my opnion.
Go and shogi at least in the internet has the more polite people. On the board itself I would think so too.
So all game has its merrits and can get more people in it. It need to be organised well to do so.