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Why isn't chess popular in Japan?

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Re: Why isn't chess popular in Japan?

#51

Post by RetroTechie »

Jigsy wrote: post #9

Probably because they have Shogi, which is also fun to play. They also like Go, which I hate. Absolutely love Mahjong, though. (Thanks Yakuza series!)

> They also like Go, which I hate.

To each their own... :-)

What I like about Go, is its combination of simple rules, contrasted with the rich set of ever-more advanced tactics. And (using handicaps) players of different skill can still enjoy a somewhat-balanced game.

There are just a few basic rules (board sizes, placement of stones, groups, freedoms, atari, capture) that are easily explained. Beginners may think it's a simple game then. Wrong!

From these follow more basic concepts like eyes, living/dead groups, effect of corners vs. edges vs. center, snapbacks, etc.

And then you get into more advanced tactics like netting, semi-connected groups, forcing moves, thin/thick positions, Ko fights, responding to opponent vs. just leaving a position as-is & play elsewhere on the board, etc.

Strong players can read ahead further than weaker players, or play more from their intuition ("that position looks weak, let's step in there & take some territory" style).

This is what makes it interesting computationally: it's difficult to evaluate positions, to put a number on how good a move is (although experienced players can easily spot a bad move when they see one), or getting a grip on the # of possible board positions.

So it could take a lifetime to master Go. AlphaGo has thrown another curveball into this.

Other games add complexity through their ruleset, board or # of pieces. Kind of: mastering the rules of the game, vs. mastering the game itself.

Re: Why isn't chess popular in Japan?

#52

Post by freddie_mercury »

lifthrasiir wrote: post #27

The article does give this away early, but the answer is "no, chess is popular but not (yet) for the western variant". AFAIK this is same for all East Asian countries. That does make me wonder if chess (or more accurately, all games thought to originate from Chaturanga) is the first ever internationally distributed game.

Go became "international" 200 years before the earliest forerunner of chess had even been invented. That's when it spread from China to Korea. And it reached Japan around the same time chess's earliest forerunner was being invented in India.

Beyond that it seems likely that dice games from e.g. Romans, Egyptians, Assyrians were likely the first to spread as those empires spread and the soldiers who played them played them with locals.

Re: Why isn't chess popular in Japan?

#53

Post by Mizza »

autocorr wrote: post #3

For those interested in playing and learning Shogi, take a look over at the great site https://lishogi.org -- a fork of LiChess for Shogi that includes real-time and correspondence play, AI opponents, analysis, puzzles and more. One of my favorite variants, Kyoto Shogi, is also available. The website https://pychess.org also has a ton of interesting and unique variants both traditional (Makruk) and modern (Chennis!).

This is awesome, thank you.

If you want to play chess-meets-shogi, try the 'Crazyhouse' variant on lichess. I'm often fighting anonymous bullet games while waiting for CI pipelines to finish..

Re: Why isn't chess popular in Japan?

#54

Post by rtpg »

jstanley wrote: post #48
rtpg wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not too cold, but definitely too hot to be in direct sunlight. I meant chill in the “not caring that you are playing chess in the place”. Most cafes or restaurants here have express rules against playing card games or the like at tables, for example (for good reason)

What's the good reason?

If you're sitting there playing card games (especially if you're young and cash-strapped), you're gonna hog a table for a while and order the bare minimum. All the while there might be people lining up to come in, or even worse people deciding against coming in cuz it's full.

This is more of a problem in high traffic areas ofc, but like on the weekend _lots of places_ are high-traffic.

Ultimately the deeper problem is that places like cafes and restaurants are mostly "give us money so we can pay the building's rent". The margins are super thin from the get-go, and rent is so high that places really really really need to cycle through people during peak hours.

High rent means smaller restaurants, means that (say) 4 tables locked in for a long period is a much bigger deal, and the variability is a much higher problem.

Of course if you go to a place that's very empty from the get go and is pretty big, people don't really care. Just that there aren't that many places like that in major traffic centers.

Re: Why isn't chess popular in Japan?

#55

Post by tromp »

hakuseki wrote: post #36
29athrowaway wrote: post #30

Chess Shogi Go Board Size 8x8 9x9 19x19 Branching Factor 35 92 250 Complexity 10^123 10^226 10^360

How were these numbers arrived at?

I think the numbers are taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_complexity

We discuss the numbers for Go in the introduction of our paper https://matthieuw.github.io/go-games-number/AGoogolplexOfGoG...

Re: Why isn't chess popular in Japan?

#56

Post by rtpg »

bobthepanda wrote: post #50
rtpg wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are nice spots, but a lot of them do not want you organizing events inside them. Like many things this is all pretty funancialized (it doesn’t help that new constructions are almost all filled with chains staffed by part-time staff). On top of that parks don’t tend to have that many tables (Yoyogi exists but Yoyogi is one park). Community spaces kinda work but you need a quorum of people who live in the ward, s…

At least in US which is also usually pretty commercial it is a lot more palatable to propose to a business owner if you promise to come in during an extremely slow time period (e.g. Monday for a bar). But otherwise the worst for the owners is a bunch of slow people sitting a long time ordering very cheap things, taking seats from more spendy, higher turnover customers. It also doesn’t help that my impression of Japan…

Yeah that's a good point. I know a couple events whose scheduling is "we ask the bar what day they usually have ~0 people, and we will instead bring 30 people". Always seems a bit limited to bars, but it's something!

Re: Why isn't chess popular in Japan?

#57

Post by retrac »

yakubin wrote: post #37
nikanj wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The emphasis here is on chill, those are all outdoor spaces and Tokyo gets quite cold during the winter

Is that true? According to Wikipedia: > The coolest month is January, averaging 5.4 °C Doesn’t sound very cold to me. If anything, I’ve only heard complaints about how hot it often is in Tokyo (and most of Japan, except Hokkaido).

Looking at these temperature plots, it seems comparable to late March here in Toronto, or Chicago, or New York. Slightly lower temperature swing. Some days could be quite nice - warm, even. Others could be near freezing, with wind chill making exposed hands uncomfortably cold. Not great for chess.

Re: Why isn't chess popular in Japan?

#58

Post by mrob »

falsandtru wrote: post #15
BryanLegend wrote: post #2

It's because Go is a much better game. Shogi is inferior though to Chess because it takes too long to play with the pieces being returnable.

It is painful to spend long time chasing in chess after a few pieces in the endgame.

My favorite endgames are in Arimaa[0], an abstract strategy game that can be played on a chess board. The goal is to advance a pawn-equivalent piece to the back rank. This becomes easier for both players as the game progresses and pieces are captured. Arimaa endgames are generally "sharp" in the chess sense (as in requiring extreme tactical precision because each move is so impactful), and don't involve any chasing. Surprising comebacks for players with lesser material are possible.

However, the opening can be very slow if both players play defensively.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arimaa

Re: Why isn't chess popular in Japan?

#59

Post by Yizahi »

sleepybrett wrote: post #11
Jigsy wrote: post #9

Probably because they have Shogi, which is also fun to play. They also like Go, which I hate. Absolutely love Mahjong, though. (Thanks Yakuza series!)

My understanding is that Mahjong is more of a rummy style game than a tactical game like a chess/shogi/go so not really applicable here.

Japanese version is probably very close to the tactical game, with a lot of random of course. Over the course of several full games in a row, strong players are consistently ahead in the ratings even if they are set back by some random big loss in a single game. It is not a chess or go level of course, but also not a simple solitaire with tiles game anymore. The main tactical problem in the riichi is that discarding someone's winning tile makes you responsible for full amount of points, and to avoid that you need to discern what could be such tile just by looking only at the discards and player actions, which is possible for high level players.
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