I'm Glad I'm Not You

This article is translated from this link:
https://www.facebook.com/shogi.jsa/posts/437990166600028:0

Toshiyuki Moriuchi

When a great talent is located nearby, he can comprehend his own talent. In the masterpiece of both film and stage play “Amadeus”, Antonio Salieri is suffering due to jealousy of Mozart’s musical talent. However, jealousy could be excessively stronger since music masterpieces are usually created by a single person.

On the contrary, the game record of Shogi can’t be created by a single person. The Kifu can only be developed when an opponent exists to trade Shogi pieces. The more talented your opponent is, the more strength you’ll be able to draw out within yourself.

Yoshiharu Habu’s achievements were clearly ahead of Toshiyuki Moriuchi. Instead of giving up, Moriuchi chose to chase after Habu’s shadow, narrowing down the difference even by 1 millimeter.

Moriuchi gained his first title as Meijin in 2002.Habu acquired the title of Ryu-Ou (Dragon King) during his teenage years in 1989, which is 13 years before Moriuchi’s first title.

Despite having fierce matches with Habu in the title match, he was able to acquire the Meijin title five terms before Habu. Chronologically by attainement of the title “Lifetime Meijin”: 15th Meijin Yasuharu Oyama, 16th Meijin Makoto Nakahara, 17th Meijin Koji Tanigawa, 18th Meijin, Toshiyuki Moriuchi and 19th Meijin Yoshiharu Habu. Although Moriuchi is not as popular as Habu in the history of Shogi, however Moriuchi’s name was first recorded before Habu’s name.

Photo Courtesy of 日本将棋連盟

Article by: 日本将棋連盟 (Japan Shogi Association)
Translated by: Ryou Takehito
Proofread by: Karolina Styczyńska

Shogi meet in Brunei

Hey all,

Recently I've been in contact with the founder of Brunei Go Association (many great thanks to Chin Sin Voon!) in Brunei to let me use some part of the room during their regular meet.

As such, starting since last week (9 April 2016), there will be a regular Shogi meet. For those who resides in Brunei who are interested to learn or play Shogi we will have the meet at this location:

Details:
Day: Every Saturday
Time: 8pm till 10pm
Location: Capital Residential Suite (behind Pusat Belia)

I personally will be there to either study Shogi or teach so please feel free to come and join us!

We also have Go (weiqi), and I'll also showcase Dobutsu Shogi for newcomers and curious players!

Brunei players, hope to meet you all soon! =)

Regards,
Ryou Takehito

Welcome Back?

Hey all,

It was been a long time, hasn't it? Checking back at this blog, it has almost been 3 years since my last post. So here comes the important question: have I given up on Shogi?

I'm sure most of you all might not believe me, but Shogi has always been on my mind. As much as I hate saying this, other things have occupied in my life that I couldn't dedicate much of my time in Shogi. Ever since my graduation in Melbourne, I've returned back to my hometown in Brunei Darussalam to pursue my career. Meanwhile, I've also taken up a new hobby in learning piano and other various activities.

Despite all these, it certainly has not stopped me from playing Shogi with computer AI and practicing tsume Shogi from time to time. Still, sometimes I just feel sad that there are no strong Shogi players that I can have a game or two in Brunei.

Now that I'm pretty much stable in my career and my life, I would like to once again be active in Shogi, a mind game that I greatly respect and adore when I first learned about it.

Reflecting on my performance and skills, I came to a realization that I'm more of an all-rounder player. I guess it's time for me to start focusing on one type of playstyle and start polishing my skills. And to that, I will start dedicating my time to study central rook Joseki (nakabisha).

Why Nakabisha? I've always been highly interested in specializing in Nakabisha when I first started Shogi, but never really had the chance to spend enough time on it.

It will definitely be a great challenge, but I'm sure I'll enjoy every moment of learning it. Afterall, I really love Shogi.

Thanks for reading, and although I won't be updating too regularly, but my love for Shogi will never waver.

See you guys around and I'll try to update more often!

Regards,
Ryou Takehito

Conclusion?

Hey all,

How's everybody? I hope everyone's Shogi has improve alot since my last post! Haha!

Anyways, last Sunday I was promoting Shogi with Darren in Boxhill during the Japan Festival and it was amazing! I definitely have fun to meet interested people and old friends and I absolutely have fun teaching people how to play Shogi! =) Too bad I wasn't able to take any photos to show you guys, but it's definitely a blast spending the whole day promoting Shogi! Promoting Shogi this time has got me thinking about how I should approach to make newcomers get more interested in Shogi. I tried various approach, and I hope I'll be able to convince them to play more Shogi!

Is there anyone in Melbourne who's interested to learn Shogi, or just have a few casual Shogi games? Darren, the main promoter of Shogi in Melbourne, will be holding regular Shogi lessons on Tuesday from 7pm to 9pm in the city so if you're interested please let me know and I'll pass his contacts to you! This is definitely a great opportunity for people staying in Melbourne to learn more about Shogi if you're interested in it! PLEASE make sure to leave down your e-mail in my comment and I'll drop his contact to you!

Lastly, you might be wondering why this post title is named "Conclusion?". That is because I will be graduating soon, and won't be staying in Melbourne anymore. I've already bought my air ticket back to Brunei, and I will be leaving on 17th July 2013. It has already been three years since I'm in Melbourne, and I'm happy to say that I've meet a lot of wonderful people and friends through Shogi. Shogi has definitely make my stay in Melbourne delightful.

I was able to meet Darren, a friendly and wonderful person, who's been trying so hard to find ways to promote Shogi in Melbourne. It's always nice to see him whenever we meet up for Shogi.
I was able to promote Shogi in Melbourne, and see that alot of people are interested in learning how to play Shogi.
Finally, I was able to make new friends thanks to Shogi (and Darren too).

Exams are coming in less than a month and it really saddens me that I will be leaving Melbourne in less than 2 months.Shamefully, I haven't been improving much in Shogi (in fact I've gotten worst!), but my Shogi journey in Melbourne has definitely been an enjoyable one. And it's going to be the closing curtain for my Shogi journey in Melbourne.

I'm really thankful to those whom I've met through Shogi in Melbourne, and I really enjoy playing and talking about Shogi with you all. Thank you all very much (especially Darren!) and hope that one day when I travel back to Melbourne again I'll be able to meet you all wonderful people once again!

THANK YOU VERY MUCH, MELBOURNIANS!

 ありがとうございます！

Regards,
Ryou Takehito



PS: Any Shogi players in Brunei? Want to hang out and play Shogi with me? If yes, please contact me! I'll be more than happy to meet you have a casual Shogi game together! =)

Japan Festival in Melbourne

Hey all,

We will be promoting Shogi on the 19th May 2013 in Boxhill, Melbourne, Australia. So if you're staying in Victoria, and would love to experience or learn how to play Shogi, please visit us!

There are no further details on the location and time, but I will update this info as soon as I get more information from the main promoter, Darren.

Regards,
Ryou Takehito

Kunio Yonenaga

Hey,

Consolation to the president of Japan Shogi Association (JSA), and one of the greatest Shogi player of all time, Kunio Yonenaga.

http://www.shogi.or.jp/player/kishi/yonenaga.html

May his soul rest in peace. Hope the future Shogi players will take some time to look over his kifu and be amazed at his magnificent gameplay and great Shogi sense.

Regards,
Ryou Takehito

A New and Fresh Start!

Hey all,

Wow. I can't believe it's been more than a year since I've updated my blog! It feels really ashamed that I haven't put any efforts into updating it!

Eventhough I've been hiatus for a long time, all this time I'm still paying attention to Shogi news, play Shogi games in my phone and even practice few tsume problems. Although it still saddens me that I might not have the strength of 2-dan anymore (unless someone's willing to spark the fire in me once again. lol).

To be honest, I'm going to graduate soon and my life will be move into the working society once I graduated.  Now that I have a serious love relationship, it's really time for me to think about working hard in my career and create a beautiful family with my girlfriend. lol.

Anyways enough about my personal life. Now let's talk about Shogi. Before I begin, I would like to thank all the readers out there for supporting me and have some faith with me. Now that I'm approaching my "working life", I'm sad and depressed that I had to forsake the dream of becoming a professional (although I am still seriously considering of becoming a teaching professional in my later life. lol). If I were single, I would definitely move to Japan after my studies in Melbourne and try to aim for the top. But as a Chinese (I'm not Japanese, mind you! lol), it is in my nature to be responsible to take care of my family (including potential future family members.). Also as a man, I cannot bear the thought of abandoning my family so I can pursue my dreams in Japan. There are always sacrifices in having a relationship, and I'm sure I won't regret this decision.

To be frank with everyone, I did not create this blog to be famous. The main reason why I created this blog is because I want to express my love and experiences in Shogi. The posts are also created to serve as a self-reflecting journal, so that if one day I looked back at all my past blog entries I would reminisce the good old times and also how I could further improve my skills. The secondary purpose of this blog is to share my experiences with everyone in the world. I want people to feel the joy and love that I've felt from Shogi and hope that others could start playing Shogi to enjoy it. As a normal person, I want to show people the proof that you can improve your skills in Shogi if you worked hard, like I did. I sometimes would get comments from people that I'm a prodigy or I'm a genius that's why I'm so good at Shogi. I was never good at chess (or any other variations) in my whole life! I'm not exactly a bright student either in my studies too (average about 65%). I want people to see that the sole reason why I got strong in Shogi is because of effort, time, hard-work and passion that I've put into learning Shogi and as a result I improved my skills. If a normal average person like me can become  a Dan player, I believe you can do it too. It wasn't an exaggeration that I used to spend at least 8 hours per day every single day reading Japanese Shogi books, which I don't understand most of the Japanese words (although I only knew how to read the kifus. lol).  Anyways, I am still trying my best to improve my skills (as I really love playing against tough opponents), but not for the sake of becoming a professional. I just want to improve my skills as much as I could.

Shogi definitely has a major impact in my life that I really hope I could return the favor. Therefore, in this post, I would like to discuss that from this post onward, future blog posts will not be solely focusing on my Shogi experiences. I will start interviewing people about their Shogi experiences and how it had impacted their life. I would also review Shogi books (if I have the chance to complete them in a short time), and I 'might' post about my afterthoughts of current professional games. However, I will not post about latest Shogi news as I believe Takodori (http://shogi.typepad.jp/eweblog/) and Yamajunn (http://yamajunnshoginews.blogspot.com.au/) has covered up the news very well. I usually read latest news from their blogs and I certainly do not want to take all their credit and post their news in my blog. I am highly interested in sharing my Shogi friends' experiences, especially Shogi promoters, so that in the future people could easily look for their contact information. I really think that they should take credit for spending alot of time and effort to promote Shogi in their country (or state) and yet does not gain the recognition they deserve.

Here's a summary of the topic I will covered in future blog posts:

1. Personal Shogi experiences

2. Advertisement of Shogi events (depending on where I'm currently located)

3. Interviews of Shogi players (especially promoters, or inspiring players)

4. Shogi book reviews and thoughts

5. Shogi improvement suggestions for beginners (won't be posting much about this)

6. Personal views and thoughts about interesting Shogi articles

7. Personal thoughts about current professional games (not sure I will be doing this or not)

Thanks for reading and I hope to see you again in the next post!

Yoroshiku Onegaishimasu!

Regards,

Ryou Takehito