There are a lot of online resources related to shogi, how to play it, learn openings, tactics and so on but after a while it all feels overwhelming. Being old school, I prefer books. So I searched for books that would be good for beginners and accompany them along their evolution. I immediately found mention of two books: "The Art of Shogi" and "Habu's Words". Unfortunately, they are not sold on the big platforms but you can find them on the publisher's site: http://www.shogifoundation.co.uk/.
I bought them then and I'm happy I did. They are quite complete and the author signed them. 🙂
I'll post their table of contents in another post so that you can make an idea.
The Art of Shogi by Tony Hosking (http://www.shogifoundation.co.uk/aos.html), table of content:
PART I
1 - HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION
Chaturanga
The Western Way
The Eastern Way
2 - PIECE IDENTIFICATION
Free association
3 - RULES OF MOVEMENT
The starting position
Piece promotion
The kings
The major pieces (rooks and bishops)
The minor pieces (gold generals, silver generals, knights, lances, pawns)
Further examples of piece movement
Captures and drops
Check
Checkmate
Illegal moves
Draws
Time limits
Etiquette
Notation
Five rule recap
4 - COMPARISON OF SHOGI WITH CHESS
The starting position
The capturing difference
The pieces
Pawn movement
Castling
Kings in the endgame
Draws
Time limits
Handicap games
Blindfold variation
Notation
In conclusion
5 - INTRODUCTION TO SHOGI STRATEGY AND TACTICS
Good or bad shape
Tesuji and Joseki
Absolute kings
Relative major and minor pieces
Forks and pins
The major pieces
The minor pieces
6 - THE ENDGAME
Hunting and harvesting
Casting a mating-net
Some basics checkmates
Checkmate problems
Checkmate solutions
7 - BALANCING ATTACK WITH DEFENCE
Sitting kings
Static rook or ranging rook?
8 - CASTLES
(Double) static rook castles (Crab and kinds of Fortress, storming a fortress)
Ranging rook castles (Edo and kinds of Mino, breaking a Mimo)
Castles against ranging rook (Boat, Triad, Lozenge, Twin Gold...)
Anaguma (Bear-in-the-hole, attacking an Anaguma)
9 - ATTACK!
Rook's pawn exchange
Opening the bishop's long diagonal
Bishop and Knight heads
Rook's pawn and breakthrough tesuji
Climbing silver
Reclining silver
Sacrifice to draw the enemy closer!
Not promoting
The humble but vital pawn
Bad shape
Aji and sabaki
10 - TWO HISTORICAL GAMES
The oldest recorded complete shogi game (1607)
Edo Castle Game 1856
11 - SHOGI HANDICAP GAMES
Introduction
8-piece
6-piece
4-piece
2-piece
Rook & lance
Rook
Bishop
Lance
PART II
STATIC ROOK
1 - WING ATTACK Introduction
2 - FLOATING ROOK
Introduction
Section 1: Clanging Silvers
Section 2: Versus Centre Vanguard Pawn
Section 3: Cat Variation
Section 4: Hanamura Variation
Section 5: Tsukada Special
3 - BISHOP EXCHANGE
Introduction
Section 1: Reclining Silvers (Kimura's Joseki)
Section 2: Parallel-diagonal Bishop
Section 3: Bogin Attack
Section 4: Rushing Silvers
4 - SIDE PAWN
Introduction
Section 1: 8... B33 (Naito)
Section 2: 10... B'45 (Tanigawa)
5 - FORTRESS
Introduction
Section 1: Bishop Exchange
Section 2: P45 / ... P65 Attacks
Section 3: Black's S37-46
Section 4: Bogin Attack
Section 5: Spearing-the-Sparrow
6 - SLEEVE ROOK
7 - PRIMITIVE PARALLEL-DIAGONAL BISHOP
RANGING ROOK
1 - CENTRAL ROOK
Introduction
Section 1: Black's 2 P56
Section 2: Versus Left-side Anaguma
Section 3: Black's G57-46
Section 4: Versus King's Head Vanguard Pawn
Section 5: Black's 12 S(68) 57
2 - FOURTH FILE ROOK
Introduction
Section 1: Versus Left-side Anaguma
Section 2: Versus Central Vanguard Pawn
Section 3: Versus King's Head Vanguard Pawn
Section 4: P35 & S46 Attacks
Section 5: Versus Bogin
3 - THIRD FILE ROOK
Introduction
Section 1: Versus Early P36
Section 2: Versus Left-side Anaguma
Section 3: Ishida Quick Attack
Section 4: Bokin versus Ishida
Section 5: 1971 Meijin Match
4 - OPPOSING ROOK
Introduction
Section 1: White's ... G32 ... P24 Attacks
Section 2: Black's R88 Delaying P66
Section 3: Sakata's ... R22
Section 4: Ono's Rx88
5 - DOUBLE RANGING ROOK
Double Third File Rook
6 - BISHOP'S HEAD PAWN
7 - DEMON SLAYER
APPENDICES
I The first 8 professional title games played outside Japan
II Habu's Seven Crowns 1995-96
III The Meijins
IV The main professional tournaments
V Reading a Japanese game score
INDEX 108 shogi games references
Notes on 3 main developments c.2000
I learned it by playing. I never felt like browsing books about Shogi when I could be playing it instead.
Habu's Words by Tony Hosking (http://www.shogifoundation.co.uk/habu.html), table of content:
Notation
Translator's note
Introduction by Yoshiharu Habu
Chapter 1 Fundamental strategy
Chapter 2 Make a plan
Chapter 3 Advancing a piece behind a pawn
Chapter 4 The moment to engage an enemy piece
Chapter 5 A vanguard pawn
Chapter 6 The main battleground
Chapter 7 King safety
Chapter 8 Developing attack through exchanges
Chapter 9 Thickness
Chapter 10 Speed
Chapter 11 How to continue the attack
Chapter 12 Progress
@ladyontheshogiboard
Thanks for the suggestions and the tables of contents. I didn't see the table of contents in the normal spot for the first one.
I'm a long way away from allowing myself to buy anything ($) or allocate study time. Still, it's nice to see.
For the question: Right now, I'm simply doing at least a puzzle per day when I can make time for it. You can see in my profile that I'm not very consistent yet. I'm sorely lacking in the basics, like how to build a castle.
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@Mining4GldNSlvr
> I learned it by playing.
This is a mindset I should try to be faster to adopt since it affects everything. I tend to sit and improve at a slower rate than I could by walking an active or competitive path. I felt a bit silly when seeing Tyler1 rocket his way to competency on a couple things.
@ladyontheshogiboard, I was about to ask for book recomendations when I saw your post. Thanks for this information, I am very gratefull about it. I was also thinking about buying "Better moves for better shogi" by Aono Teruichi. Have you read it? If so, what do you think about it?
@stupidguy Who is Tyler1? An English Shogi streamer, maybe?
@Mining4GldNSlvr
He's a streamer that speaks English, but he doesn't stream shogi. He's streamed things like League of Legends, chess, World of Warcraft, and Warcraft 3.
He was known for toxicity in League of Legends, but I didn't watch him back then.
I watched him during OnlyFangs in World of Warcraft (hardcore) and during his preparation for a streamer competition in Warcraft 3. For those two things that were completely new to him, rather than get stuck in traps like premature optimization, he tended to just do the thing and keep doing it, and that showed with rapid progress. He'd set time aside for getting tutored or coached, but he also consistently dumped his extra time into practical application.
Since he's reached a significant level in chess, shogi's probably not much of a leap for him. Even if it were, I think he'd climb the learning curve very quickly. But he focuses mainly on "content," so it'd take some extra work if it were to happen.
You can't post in the forums yet. Play some games!