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Here's a set I made earlier so if people are looking for cheap ways to make a chu shogi set here's an idea. I drew the board but you can also use a 13x13 go board too. The counters cost me about £1.50? And I just wrote on them with sharpie.

If you want to have the images hosted here (if they are just on your computer, not on the web yet and so have no URL), send them to me and I'll put them into the folders for the respective games.  (The text editor doesn't support uploading of images, AFAIK)

Click on the image button and enter an URL to the image. It's to the right of the flag (Anchor button) and to the left of the graph (Table button) in the right center part of the top row. Or go to Source mode and directly enter HTML in the form of

<IMG SRC="image-url">

Oh it looked fine from my iPad? I pasted a photo into the comment. Is there a better way to do it?

It looks like you used a fake URL for your image. It literally says "fake-url" in it.

Here's a set I made earlier so if people are looking for cheap ways to make a chi shogi set here's an idea. I drew the board but you can also use a 13x13 go board too. The counters cost me about £1.50? And I just wrote on them with sharpie.

The rule does not apply to your case for multiple reasons:

• It specifies what happens after a non-Lion captured a Lion, while your case starts with a Lion capturing a Lion
• The rule applies to what happens when the Lions are captured on different squares, while in your case the two Lions are captured on the same square.

So neither the protected-distant-Lion nor the counter-strike rule apply to this case, which by default means the recapture is allowed. There even is a special Japanese term for this, which translates as 'beating/shooting the Lion'.

BTW, the addition 'on another square' is there to handle the unique case of a Kirin (a non-Lion) capturing a Lion and promoting, so that the recapture now hits a Lion too. Recapture of this Lion would be allowed, while a counter-strike against a Lion elsewhere with a non-Lion would be forbidden.

Ok, next question:

If a Lion captures the opposing protected Lion by means of capturing a second piece first, is it then permissible to recapture the Lion, or does this rule prevent it?

A non-Lion cannot capture a Lion when on the previous turn a Lion was captured by a non-Lion on another square.

It sounds like this rule prevents it, but that seems crazy. 

Yes,it is always allowed to capture an adjacent Lion. Even if it means your Lion can be recaptured afterwards.(Which you usually of course can and want to avoid.) In this case the recapture would also be legal.

Can someone please help me with a question regarding this rule?  I need an answer for a game in progress...

A Lion cannot capture a Lion if that would expose it to recapture in the next turn, as if it had become an absolute royal for one turn. ('protected')

My question is this: can a Lion make a 2-step move in which he captures the other Lion (which is protected!) with the first step, and then move to safety with the second step?

Thanks!

I put together my own Chu set based on the mnemonic pieces, by simply cutting their shapes from stickers, and stick those on Draughts chips. Two Draughts sets of 2 x twenty 35mm chips were used for the (32) pieces, while a set of smaller (29mm) chips was used for the Pawns and Go Betweens (14 chips used). The required board is 42 x 42 cm, and was simply drawn on four sheets of A4 paper.

@Bukovski:

Yes, I used my Chu Shogi engine to solve all 224 problems of the A-D series,or prove no solution exists. Series C and D were different from A and B in the sense that the historic documents from which they came containedno solutions. So all problems that were solved when the MSM was published were solved in recent times, and many were still unsolved. Of the latter, 14 problems of the D series could be solved, while18 were proven flawed.

So far I did not put the results of the D series on-line, to keep open the possibility to use them in contests. (I thought I had done the same with the C series,but apparently not.)

Dr Muller, I read your very intriguing presentations of errata in the tsumechushogi problems from collections A, B, and C published in Middle Shogi Manual.  I have to wonder whether there are errata in collection D that your analysis has revealed and whether you would think such fine studies worthy to add to CVP.

Yonin Shogi is a 4-player variant of modern Shogi, so I suppose you mean a 4-player variant of Chu Shogi here.

I don't think that this would be a viable game. Multi-player versions of Chess are troublesome, because there is every incentive to not get engaged in battle: even if your tactics gain material compared to your victim, you in general lose compared to the idle by-standers. This does no longer apply when winning a battle actually gains you someting on an absolute scale, as it does in games where captured pieces can be dropped as your own.

So it is the drops that make Yonin Shogi an interesting game. And Chu Shogi has no drops. Of course you could allow drops in the hypothetical Yonin Chu Shogi, but Chu Shogi with drops is in itself troublesome, because of the very wide strength range of the pieces. I guess this could be fixed too, but if you change too much you will get a game that has so little resemblance to Chu Shogi that it would only be confusing to call it Yonin Chu Shogi.

Well, I have given the reference to the hard evidence: the Middle Shogi Manual compiled by George Hodges in collaboration with the research group at Kyoto. It contains the references to the historic sources on which it bases its conclusions, which I have paraphrased here. The sources themselves are of course all in (archaic) Japanese, which I cannot read at all. But I have no reason to doubt Japanese academic research on this. 

In fact I have a lot more confidence in Japanese academic research than in some western clown that 'just knows things' without being able to tell where this knowledge comes from, and then blames others for his ignorance. But everyone can of course decide for himselve whether he rather believes a Japanese history professor or a bragging westerner, on matters of japanese history.

And the 9x9 game of course became only popular after the introduction of drops. That transformed it from the boring Shatranj-like game to the fast and exciting game Shogi is today.

BTW, just looking at the game suggests Sho Shogi would not stand a chance to rival Chu in popularity. Compared to Chu it is as dull as Shatranj is compared to modern Chess.

This is a subjective claim, and Spengler Georg is right to criticize you for it. Saying something like this just doesn't prove your point. Besides that, the complexity of the game is a strike against it. Popularity is about numbers, and more people are likely to play a game in greater numbers if it is easier to learn.

In addition all historic variants seem to be based on Chu Shogi, and evolved towards larger size. If people would have thought the smaller game was better, you would have expected them to make variants based on Sho.

This is a more compelling point, though it will require some demonstration, and it still doesn't prove that Chu Shogi was more popular. Furthermore, modern Shogi is apparently a variant of Sho Shogi, and that became the most popular Shogi variant in modern times.

If Sho Shogi was more popular, then it followed the same trend seen in China, Korea, and the west of the most popular variant being a game of around the same size with similar pieces, and it better accounts for modern Shogi being more popular today than Chu Shogi is. But if Chu Shogi was the more popular game, it is the exception to the rule, and we are left wondering why its popularity declined in favor of a very different game. So it looks like the default position is that Sho Shogi was the more popular game, and if you want to claim that Chu Shogi was more popular, you will need hard evidence to back this up.

No I do not know any game scores of standard Shogi prior to the 19th century. And that's quite strange.

You must understand, true, I am not really sure about the situation in the Heian and Kamakura period. But in the Edo era, from the end of the 16th century on, if somebody said "Shogi" he meant the game on 9x9 squares. If he meant another variant, he had to specify. It was the most prestigious game in Japan after Go, which was - of course - the game of games. Shogi - the 9x9 game  - was promoted by the Shogunate, the government. Like in Go, the official title of Meijin for the best Shogi player was established and the annual castle tournaments were held, in the presence of the shogun or even the emperor, I'm not sure. At this time the names of the first great players are known. They all played the 9x9 game, not the bigger variants.

My sources? Are you kidding? That's so basic knowledge, you cannot dive into the history of Shogi for one afternoon without knowing that! 

And now to your statement about Standard Shogi and Shatranj being "dull" games and that just having a "look at the game" of Chu Shogi  suggests Sho Shogi would not stand a chance to rival Chu in popularity." and so on...

Now I have NO opinion at all which one is the "better" game. But you have disqualified yourself so much stating such a nonsense, that I really think that you do not know ANYTHING about what you are talking and just arbitrarily pick it from the web, and actually I do not feel like replying to you any more. Sorry, bro.

> So from which time are the first extant Sho Shogi game scores? Do you know that?

No, do you? You still haven't told me your sources.

BTW, just looking at the game suggests Sho Shogi would not stand a chance to rival Chu in popularity. Compared to Chu it is as dull as Shatranj is compared to modern Chess. In addition all historic variants seem to be based on Chu Shogi, and evolved towards larger size. If people would have thought the smaller game was better, you would have expected them to make variants based on Sho.

I believe you that they are actually played games. But you probably know that most of the extant game scores of European chess prior to the 19th century are composed games, especially in handbooks written to teach the game (for example ALL games of Greco are compositions). Also the oldest extant game scores of Chinese Chess are from such handbooks and are assumed to be compositions. So my assumption was not THAT farfetched. I do not know though if this "strange hobby" as you call it was common in Japan also.

And again, I never denied that Chu Shogi was a popular game. But I'm still not convinced that it ever was more popular than the smaller one.

So from which time are the first extant Sho Shogi game scores? Do you know that?

The MSM doesn't mention they are compositions. Why would anyone compose complete games? And even if they were, because people in those days would have such a strange hobby, it doesn't seem to make it less significant they composed Chu rather than Sho games, instead of playing them.

The MSM further states: "By the time of the Northern and Southern Courts period in Japan (1336-1392), Middle Shogi, played on a
board with 12 squares each way and with 46 pieces on each side, had evolved. In subsequent years it
enjoyed considerable popularity and our first clear record of the game dates from 1350." 'Record' here must not mean 'recorded game', but just a reference specific enough to recognize it unambiguously as Chu rather than Sho or Dai Shogi.

First published description of moves and rules is claimed to be the book "Aro Kassen Monogatari", volume 4, by prime minister Ichijo Kanera, dated 1476.