Hobbies The Chess Thread

lilyhollow said:
Would it be appropriate to discuss Shogi ("Japanese Chess") in this thread?

I hope it gains more traction outside of Japan; in terms of pure game design, I feel Shogi is easily the most 'modern' game in the chess family.

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The game has drops (you keep captured pieces and can return them to the board), and most types of pieces can promote, which is a significant part of the game. The pawns also only capture forwards, which is a big adjustment.

As someone who has played a good amount of "Crazyhouse chess" (chess with drops), I've been really surprised by Shogi's subtlety. In Crazyhouse, you can basically explode your opponent off of one mistake right out of the opening, and it's kind of a game of constant haymakers.

But in Shogi, because the pieces are relatively weak, there's a feeling of richness that is brought out through the blending of the drop system, piece promotions, and the limitedness of piece movements. You have to think carefully about how to coordinate your pieces properly for an attack.

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Obviously the endgames are completely different from Chess due to the drop system. Well, I guess I could blab on and on about it, but I just want to say that this game deserves to grow a lot!
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it doesn’t sound bad, since it’s a variation of the game.
 
We stan Sindarov, what a player.

4.5/5 points in the Candidates is crazy work, including exciting/dominant wins against Praggnanandhaa, Caruana, and Nakamura.

Hikaru failing to consider castles in his prep (and delegating shared blame to his team) is some weak sauce; then calculating for an hour only to immediately blunder is funny/tragic.

Sindarov is the new main character now.
 
Outside of his win against Prag, I have not actually been all that impressed by Sindarov so far and I wouldn't be surprised for him to return back towards the rest of the field as the tournament goes on. He is playing very confidently and accurately and he deserves his current score, yes, but his other wins besides the one against Prag have largely been handed to him. In those other games he basically has just been playing solidly and it's been his opponents who try to imbalance the position and have largely miscalculated while doing so. And with white against Bluebaum, they played a very uninspiring draw.

Both Fabi and Hikaru (especially Hikaru) played dubious openings they were under no obligation to play and that didn't ever actually go anywhere. In round 1 Esipenko tbh had the more comfortable position and an easy draw until he for some reason decided to simplify things with Bxf3, god knows why, and then an exchange sac. Playing precisely to hold all these wins after opponents messed up is commendable, but I'm just not seeing that he actually did all that much of anything to put them under pressure to induce the mistake in those games. He did against Prag.

Fabi lost to Sindarov already (with the black pieces) due to a mistake in opening prep, and he also made an endgame mistake late against Hikaru that didn't get punished... but aside from those two specific moments I've otherwise been the most impressed by Fabi's play. If he can win when he has white against Sindarov, I think he will win the candidates tournament. Achieving pretty much effortless draws with Black like he got against Giri + interesting opening play like the games against Wei Yi and Bluebaum are a lethal combination if he can limit mistakes.
 
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