Talk:Tenjiku shogi

message: Hi JT,
The article said, "It can return to the square it started from after its first move, allowing the player to “skip” a turn.  This cannot be done on two consecutive turns without a capture." Adams' booklet says, 
:Repetition is not allowed. If a move would yield a whole board position that has already occured in the game (with the same player to move), then that move is not allowed. 
However, neither of these phrasings make sense. The first, because it's not possible to skip a turn twice in a row with a capture, and the latter because this would prohibit skipping a move at all. 
I'm going to say that you can't make a move that would return the board to a previous position with the same player to move. This is not stated in any source that I know of, but is the closest I can get to making sense of this. Please correct if I'm wrong. kwami 08:47, 2005 September 6 (UTC)
:I took it to mean "If skipping is allowed, it can’t be done on 2 consecutive turns."  Ignore the “capture” part as I thought it to be the best (only) way not to repeat a board position.  Steve Evans (who gets a lot of his rules from George Hodges) and C.P. Adams both say that skipping is posable.  Adams says it is so your opponent cannot put you in Zugzwang, but does not say you have to be in zugzuang to make a skipping move.  In Go, I belive zugzuang is called "seki", maybe it is seki in shogi as well.  --JTTyler 23:39, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: If a move would yield a whole board position that has already occured in the game, with the same player to move, then that move is not allowed. This is similar to the ko rule in Go. As a consequence, if one player skips a turn, the other player cannot skip a turn immediately after. 
kwami 01:02, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

text: I never mentioned repeating a move - just the position.
It is just like ko in Go.
You won't find any references to this rule - it's an interpretation. [Colin Adams]
[I just moved this paragraph down into its own.] Okay, the same position, with the same person to play - if you skip, you return the board as it was after your opponent moved, not as it was as he was about to move. But if he skips as well, then he's returning the board to you as it was before your last move, which is not allowed. So one player can skip as many times in a row as he likes, but his opponent is then obliged to move. kwami 06:48, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Repetition rule

message: Why is 炮 given as the abbreviation for the Rook General, and 砲 for the Bishop General? I've tried checking the ja.wiki pages for these pieces, and for the Bishop General "砲" is not anywhere on the page (http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%A7%92%E5%B0%86), and for the Rook General "炮" only occurs in the Taikyoku chart at the bottom of the page (http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%A3%9B%E9%B7%B2). - TKR101010 (talk) 06:52, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: As one might guess, they aren't really called by those names.  For some reason that I've never been able to quite grasp, there seems to be an inclination to adopt Western chess piece names/appearances to Far Eastern chess pieces that look and move differently, and already have their own names.  I expect that it's a misguided endeavour to make the Far Eastern games seem less foreign to those already familiar with Western chess; unfortunately, as the Far Eastern pieces in question nearly always look differently, move differently, and are called by different names, it's always struck me that this was more likely to create unnecessary confusion than simply calling the pieces what they actually are would.  I could be wrong.  Heather (talk) 20:54, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Not really; the rook general and rook's Japanese names have one kanji in common, as to the bishop general and bishop's. And they move largely the same way. The provenance of the abbreviations 炮 and 砲 are more dubious: these characters are for the cannons of xiangqi. I suppose it's to eliminate the problem of conflicting abbreviations. These single-character abbreviations seem largely to come from Steve Evans' Shogi Variants program; does it use 炮 and 砲? Double sharp (talk) 10:08, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

text: ...nope, it uses the full names (squished into one-character height). Yet here it's hard to do this squishing (CSS should probably work though), so I suppose that's the reason for the original abbreviations. Double sharp (talk) 10:10, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I think that was the reason, a way to fit them in a single cell.  We do create our own abbreviations sometimes, when they are needed.  A footnote to that effect would be appropriate. — kwami (talk) 23:41, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Incorrect abbreviations? 

message: I dislike the extensions of Betza notation used here, which seems kind of ad-hoc. This is mainly because I proposed an extension to Betza notation myself (Betza 2.0), which I feel is far more flexible and general, based on the use of the hyphen as an operator to chain conventional Betza elements into multi-leg moves. The Lion double-step would be indicated as cK-aK in this notation (the 'a' being a new directional qualifier meaning 'any', which in non-chained Betza expressions would be default), while the HF double-step would be cW-fbW etc. (This was all for the purpose of having a universal method for piece description in order to allow a game AI to send the game rules to a universal graphical user interface, so that the latter would be able to generate decent move notation.) The need to describe the Betza extension in all the Wikipedia articles on Shogi variants in inconvenient, and seems to go beyond the scope of these articles. The only Wikipedia article that seems to gloss over standard Betza notation is that on fairy-chess pieces, and the extensions used here are not mentioned there (or in any source for Betza notation I am aware of). H.G.Muller (talk) 10:28, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: These ad hoc extensions were my ideas, and are completely unreferenced elsewhere. You have described yours extensively, and I think we should switch to use yours: it certainly smacks less of WP:OR, as your extensions have been published online outside WP. Double sharp (talk) 12:33, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps Betza notation together with proposed extensions would deserve a separate Wikipedia article, rather than being buried in the article about fairy pieces? H.G.Muller (talk) 21:33, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I think that would work very well, given that Betza notation isn't just used in the fairy chess piece article. Double sharp (talk) 01:15, 28 June 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I finally got to making a draft on Betza notation and the various proposed extensions: Draft:Beta's_funny_notation. Perhaps you could comment on it. Btw, I have now implemented most of the XBetza extension in XBoard, where engines can now describe how the pieces they want to use move, by sending the corresponding Betza strings to the GUI. The latter can offer all services (such as legality checking, highlighting target squares of a lifted piece, one-click moving, SAN disambiguation) it provides in standard variants at the same level in variants it has never heard of. The new Fairy-Max engine now uses this feature in all its variants. H.G.Muller (talk) 23:05, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Betza notation 

message: The description of the promotion rule currently contains an inconsistency: it states that moves leaving the zone are a special case of moves ending in the zone! The rule that pieces that deferred on entering the zone can only promote after a delay of one turn (also mentioned in the article on Chu Shogi) seems to be unique to Wikipedia: it is different from the rule mentioned in the Middle Shogi Manual (which requires a move with that particular piece, rather than just any turn), which again is different from what the Japanese Chu-Shogi Association uses today, as well as the historic Chu-Shogi rule (where non-captures only can promote on entering the zone). As Tenjiku Shogi is so obviously derived from Chu Shogi, I consider it rather unlikely the promotion rules would have been different, although they could have been added to Chu as a refinement after the two games branched. (The Lion-trading rules are also different, namely non-existing in Tenjiku, but this is a logical consequence of the Lion being not nearly the strongest piece there, so it seems they were dropped by design.) I wonder what is the source of the rule details mentioned here, such as that multi-leg moves (Lion-power or area moves) passing through the zone can promote, and any non-promotability after deferral. The TSA rule description on the 'Ten Shogi Variants' CD-ROM does not mention any of this! It just states that promotion is mandatory for pieces that would have no moves after deferral, but it also states that this is true for all forms of Shogi, while the current rules of the Japanese Chu-Shogi Association do not have this rule for Lances. (But if there is no rule against promotion on in-zone moves, as the TSA seems to imply for Tenjiku, this is a moot point, as turning the piece into dead wood is always inferior to promotion, so you would never do it if it could not somehow be forbidden.) Personally I think it very illogical that a multi-leg move merely passing through the zone (but starting and ending outside it) would allow promotion. In Chu Shogi this issue does not arise, as the only pieces capable of making such moves are non-promotable, so unfortunately we cannot get any guidance from there. H.G.Muller (talk) 21:33, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it might have some logic to it, depending on whether I've understood the chu shogi promotion rules correctly. Is "part of the move must be in the promotion zone" an accurate simplification for the promotion rules of chu shogi for capturing moves? If it is, this seems like a logical extension for tenjiku shogi, as part of the move would then be in the promotion zone (even though it starts and ends outside it). Your page on the chu shogi promotion rule has convinced me that WP is very probably erroneous on the rules for non-capturing moves, though. (But why would you ever decline the promotion for a lance? If so it makes sense that there is a punishment for forgetting to do so.) Double sharp (talk) 16:36, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

text: Sounds eminently logical, as your rule interpretations always are. I'll change it. Double sharp (talk) 12:46, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Promotion rule 

message: Allow me to quote myself for an unanswered question above:
I've been trying to at least show plausible "rule urtexts" for some of the historical shogi variants. Chu is unproblematic due to it having way more literature than any of the others; dai can follow on from it quite nicely. (Regarding the rules on lion-trading in chu; it is true that there are a few lacunae there, but we can extrapolate by simply assuming that the rule is "a lion is only allowed to capture another lion that is two squares away if immediate recapture is impossible, unless it gains more material than a pawn or a go-between along the way". Though I would personally ignore the lion-trading rules completely: if tenjiku can survive with fire demons possibly disappearing in the opening, and the prospect of promoting to them being an endgame threat, and chess can do this with the queen too, I see no reason why we should go out of our way to preserve the lions.) With some of the move variants for tenjiku in Western sources, the Edo-era sources quite clearly show evidence that they are erroneous (the free eagle, heavenly tetrarch, fire demon, and lion hawk). But the Edo-era sources are quite sparsely worded on the above problem about the jumping generals. Certainly the initial position is tactically quiet with the current WP rules; the question is, would it be so if they could jump without capturing? I would guess not, since the tactical quietness is on thin ice: minor changes to the rules destroy it. But this would be our only avenue of ruling it out, besides logical arguments backed up by quotes from the original sources. (I am not interested in whatever bastardisations of the rules, passed off as historical fact and defended passionately, that the TSA came up with. What they did to this game clearly shows they are an unreliable source on large shogi variants: useful perhaps in study, but not the text that should be used as the formal "Laws of Tenjiku Shogi".)
I would add the caveat that I judge the TSA so harshly for this only because they passed off their strange readings as historical fact and managed to (amazingly) denounce the true moves as incorrect. If we are trying to artistically change the game, accepting the historical rules and departing from them, that is totally fine. I would even personally do that myself, using FIDE pawns in chu and tenjiku (to avoid lion attacks on slanting pawn chains), FIDE knights (so that they're not silly jokes), "FIDE" go-betweens (which can move as backward or forward pawns), the latter also replacing the dogs in tenjiku. (BTW: can anyone explain why dogs are used in tenjiku instead of go-betweens? Is there some instant win for the first player – which I still think should be called White – when go-betweens are reinstated?) Double sharp (talk) 14:15, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think the Dogs perform an essential fuction. More likely the Tenjiku designer was dissatisfied with Go Betweens, which are confined to their file, doomed to annihilate each other. If I were pressed to find a justification for the GB->Dog upgrade, I would come up with this: In Tenjiku it can be very important to keep an unbreached front, to keep the Fire Demon out of your camp, where he could easily be traded for 7-8 pieces in one move. When you hide behind a close line of Pawns (all protected from a distance) he can at most burn 3 pieces + 3 Pawns. But you cannot develop without breaching the Pawn front, and Pawn moves are irreversible. So it would be very convenient if you could plug the hole when the Fire Demon comes knocking with a cheap piece. The Dogs can do this. H.G.Muller (talk) 14:37, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Makes perfect sense. Thank you for the very reasonable suggestion! Double sharp (talk) 14:50, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

text: "They might move like any other ranging piece, or they may capture a piece by jumping over any intervening pieces (of either player)."
So I don't think there is any controversy for whether you can jump over friendly pieces. And it seems self-evident you can only capture enemy pieces. I consider it quite possible that the idea you can only jump while capturing is a contamination by Xiangqi thinking. This is probably also the reason why people sometimes doubt whether these pieces can capture without without jumping. I don't think that non-capture jumping would destroy the quiescence of the start position: when jump-capturing of anything except Kings is allowed, the start position is quite robust, as the Demons are behind a shield that bites back, and checks can be ignored. When the King is not unassailable, the start position would be smothered mate in one, with a VG non-capture jump checking the King. No-capture jumps would have sigificant impact on the game, though, and up the value of the jumping generals: without them it is often tactically unattractive to capture an unprotected piece by jumping, because there is noway to escape again. So on the next move you likely have to sacrifice the general for the best you attack from the new location, making entry into the enemy camp always a suicide mission. I am not sure how to value the jumping generals, but it seems they need all the value they can get to make the promotion of HF and SE to BG and RG attractive. In the late end-game the ability to jump isn't worth much. K+BG vs K is still a dead draw. But perhaps it is very unlikely that Tenjiku games ever reach a late end-game.
Further note that the rule that you can "capture, but not jump over" is sort of a default rule in chess-like games: normal Rooks and Bishop can capture the pieces that block them from going beyond. H.G.Muller (talk) 09:54, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, the Japanese Wikipedia page on the great general (giving this interpretation) is cited. OTOH, one of the cited authors (Isao Umebayashi) also wrote a book giving the inconsistent rules for taikyoku shogi that are likely a modern invention. Indeed I find the prospect of promoting HF or SE to BG and RG of rather questionable desirability if the BG and RG can't jump, and I think middlegame concerns outweigh endgame concerns in such a game. But I am reluctant to change it without seeing the historical sources, because this is by no means a clear-cut affair. Double sharp (talk) 13:00, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Regarding the jumping generals 

message: Japanese Wikipedia says "なお単に天竺将棋と呼ばれることもあるが、本将棋の変種の天竺将棋とは別物である。" (Let me try: "Note that while it may simply be called tenjiku shogi, there is a different contemporary variant of modern shogi called by that name?" Their article is titled "天竺大将棋" (tenjiku dai shogi).
Additionally, there are apparently standard one-character abbreviations for the names of the pieces (駒の1文字表記). Let me quote them:
;1文字目を採用するもの (first character used)
* 玉将:玉
* 金将:金
* 銀将:銀
* 銅将:銅
* 鉄将:鉄
* 桂馬:桂
* 香車:香
* 獅子:獅
* 奔王:奔
* 麒麟:麒
* 鳳凰:鳳
* 車兵:車
* 反車:反
* 火鬼:火
* 水牛:水
* 龍王:龍
* 角行:角
* 大将:大
* 副将:副
* 飛車:飛
* 竪行:竪
* 横行:横
* 歩兵:歩
* 犬:犬
* 太子:太
* 雜将:雜
* 鯨鯢:鯨
;2文字目を採用するもの (second character used)
* 醉象:象
* 猛豹:豹
* 盲虎:虎
* 龍馬:馬
* 飛鷲:鷲
* 角鷹:鷹
* 飛牛:牛
* 飛鹿:鹿
* 奔猪:猪
* 四天王:天（棋譜で「四」だと4段目の四と衝突するので） (because "四", "four", would result in obvious conflicts in the game notation)
* 白駒:駒
;特殊なもの (special cases)
以下の駒に関しては、上下どちらの文字を採用しても重複が避けられないので、特殊な表記を用いる。それには日本式と中国式がある。 (These characters have no unique characters and thus need special abbreviations corresponding to neither of the characters in their full name. There are both Japanese-style and Chinese-style abbreviations.)
* 獅鷹:(日)師、(中)鶳
* 奔鷲:(日)就、(中)殧
* 竪兵:(日)立、(中)値
* 横兵:(日)黄、(中)休
* 飛将:(日)升、(中)衢
* 角将:(日)用、(中)觸
Hence the initial position should look as follows:
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 
 	 	 	 	犬     	 	 	 	 	 	 	犬     	 	 	 	 
歩     	歩     	歩     	歩     	歩     	歩     	歩     	歩     	歩     	歩     	歩     	歩     	歩     	歩     	歩     	歩
横     	竪     	飛     	鷹     	鷲     	用     	升     	大     	副     	升     	用     	鷲     	鷹     	飛     	竪     	横
黄     	立     	角     	馬     	龍     	水     	火     	師     	就     	火     	水     	龍     	馬     	角     	立     	黄
反     	 	車     	車     	 	虎     	麒     	獅     	奔     	鳳     	虎     	 	車     	車     	 	反
香     	桂     	豹     	鉄     	銅     	銀     	金     	玉     	象     	金     	銀     	銅     	鉄     	豹     	桂     	香
Since standard abbreviations apparently exist, we should probably stop using our own ad hoc ones for this game. Double sharp (talk) 14:27, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notes from Japanese Wikipedia 

message: Regarding the heavenly tetrarch, there is also a reasonable question that could be asked. Pieces with lion power can igui, literally stepping to capture a neighbouring piece and stepping back. They can also "capture" an empty square this way, thus passing their turn. Now the tetrarch can igui but cannot actually make either of the stepping moves the lion's move could be said to contain, so can it pass its turn by shooting an empty square?
Japanese Wikipedia says:
;Heavenly tetrarch
"非常に特殊な動きをする。隣接8マスには直接移動できないが、敵の駒があれば1手で動かずに取ることが出来る（居喰い）。また、斜め四方には隣接した駒のみ飛び越えて何マスでも進める。横には隣接した駒のみ飛び越えて3マスまで進むことができる。すなわち、1マス目にだけ駒があっても飛び越えて2マス目や3マス目に行けるが、2マス目に駒があれば飛び越えて3マス目に行くことはできない。"
"A very special movement. Although it cannot move directly to the adjacent eight squares, it can capture in one turn any enemy piece on these adjacent square without moving. [Thus I assume that if there is no such enemy piece it cannot shoot.] In addition, in the four diagonals it can move any number of squares, skipping the first square and anything on it. In the horizontal direction it can only move to the second or third square, again skipping the first square and anything on it. It is not blocked by a piece on the first square, but can be blocked on the second [and therefore presumably anywhere else on its path]."
Thus far we have the Western description (and its diagram), lacking the vertical ranging move. But then we have a note:
"『諸象戯図式』では「如車兵亦近八方不行其外周二三要用歩」となっており、隣接したマスには移動できないものの、前後と斜めは（2マス以上）何マスでも動け、左右は2～3マス移動できると解釈できる。"
"The SSZ says 'like a chariot soldier; cannot move to the eight adjacent squares, but can go two or three squares outside the periphery'. [How sparsely worded. Presumably there is more to the description than this short quote, because I see nothing about igui in there.] This adds the possibility to move vertically any number of squares, again skipping over the first, to the previous descriptions." (Somewhat freely translated.)
;Lion hawk
Japanese Wikipedia, of course, does not mention the nonexistent controversy made up by the TSA by their obtuse translation of "moves like lion and bishop combined" into "moves like two-step area-mover and bishop combined".
;Free eagle
"全方向に何マスでも動ける。斜めの場合は飛び越えては行けないが、縦横の場合は飛び越えて行ける。"
"Moves as queen. It cannot jump on the diagonals, but can jump on the orthogonals." The diagram shows an orthogonal range jump, but this must be discarded as it is not in the range-jumping hierarchy.
Double sharp (talk) 11:10, 20 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Piece moves: Japanese Wikipedia 

message: CVP does not allow this, stating that pieces can only promote without restriction if they start the turn outside the zone and end inside it.
Furthermore, if we look at the fire demon's burn (another effect that only is calculated after the turn is finished, like promotion), we note that it only takes effect after the move, and not on every step of the 3-square area move. I do not see why promotion should be any different. Thus you only look at where the piece starts and ends the move to determine if it is eligible for promotion (assuming it isn't a capture). Double sharp (talk) 06:29, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: A little clarification: if a White Lion is just outside the zone (say on 12f) and then captures by igui a victim inside the zone (say on 11e), is it allowed to promote? I would think so, because the move is a capture. But then: suppose that Lion is on 12f, and a victim is on 10f. Does that mean that if the Lion took the route 12f-11f:10f, it could not promote, but if it took the route 12f-11e:10f, it could? Double sharp (talk) 10:57, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: We can only speculate about this. It seems that 'igui' means "stationary eating". Not "back-and-forth eating". So apparently the players of those times imagined the Lion / Falcon / Eagle not to move at all, rather than sneak into and out of the zone. And if it never enters the zone, there is no reason to assume it can promote. I don't see a reason why stepping to other squares than the one you came from (but out of the zone) should be treated different from igui. The rules "start outside, end inside" or "start inside and capture" seem straightforward, and do not need separate detail rules for lion power. This is an almost-never occurring situation anyway. H.G.Muller (talk) 11:33, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you! I've edited the article to reflect your eminently sensible interpretation. Double sharp (talk) 13:10, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  promoting lion movers on in-out moves 

message: Here's a parroter of the Japanese Wikipedia rules. Double sharp (talk) 19:45, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Japanese site 

message: Given that the Heavenly Tetrarch is an improvement of the Chariot Soldier in every way, why is it worth so much less than its predecessor? Idiacanthus1 (talk) 15:55, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: As stated, the table of piece values is based on the interpretations of the English-language sources (which are likely mistaken, but widely used). In these the tetrarch lacks the orthogonal ranging move, as is stated in the section on disputed moves. (The sections above may also shed some light on this matter.) Double sharp (talk) 23:24, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Piece Value of Heavenly Tetrarch 

message: I've updated the article based on your findings. Double sharp (talk) 04:32, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jump-capturing the king 

message: Try to use the following mnemonic set for Shogi variant boards.
Here's what it will look like for Tenjiku shogi. 301fieriw (talk) 16:02, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mnemonic device piece set