Please join us for our first virtual/online EJCA Shogi Tournament on April 3rd, 2021! - EJCA 初のOnline将棋大会へご招待！

みなさん、ご家族揃ってOnline 将棋大会にご参加になりませんか？ lishogi.org の無料のアプリの中に“EJCA Team”を作ります。詳細や準備方法は 一度だけではなくて楽しみのEJCA行事として続けていきたいと思っています。もし今回は参加できなくても登録してEJCA Teamに入ると、将棋を習うことも、誰かに挑戦することもできます。

Shogi - the ‘Game of Generals’ or ‘the Japanese chess’ - played as early as the 16th century, and with a few interesting ‘twists’ compared to traditional chess.

Even if you have never played before (your organizers have not had much prior experience either), you can join in the fun. 

It comes at ‘no cost’, but we will need you to get familiar with the online platform, and with the rules, before the Tournament - so please make sure you come prepared and already have had a few rounds of games under your belt and know how to sign in and play on lishogi.

We very much want to make this one a special “EJCA members only”-event - and sure plan to report about it in the next Moshi Moshi; our goal is not only to have fun this one time, but to repeat this regularly or even create our very own ‘EJCA Shogi club’ - online and offline. 

Althought it's totally free, we need you to sign up for this event as an EJCA member and to let us know your full name PLUS (very important!) your lishogi-username that you will be using on that platform.

So, what do you have to know? - below we have added few more detailed explanations, as most of you may be new to the lichess/lishogi platforms - if you have played on lichess before, it will be all very familiar:

WHEN: Saturday, April 3rd 10am - 11:30am MT

WHERE: the ‘lishogi’ platform at https://lishogi.org/

HOW MANY PARTICIPANTS: unlimited - the more the merrier! We should aim for a minimum of 10-15 to not incur too much of a waiting time between individual games and keep it ‘fluid’

WHAT to do in PREPARATION, and BEFORE April 3rd:

1. On lishogi: register and create your very own user on https://lishogi.org/ (Sign in - register - pick a user name and a password)
   
2. On lishogi: Head to  https://lishogi.org/team/ejca-shogi-team and click “join the team”, write a short message to us, solve the Shogi captcha and click the blue “JOIN TEAM” button at the bottom of the screen once more -> we will review this and add you to the EJCA Team room.  
3. Let us, your organizers, via the registration-form HERE on ejca.org or afterwards per separate email to lenard@ejca.org and stefan@ejca.org , know
   a) the player's real name,
   b) player's lishogi user name,
   c) player's real email address,
   d) confirmation that you/your family are in fact a member of EJCA, then we can make sure to admit you to the lishogi-EJCA-Team-room and also communicate before and after the event
4. Register HERE on ejca.org for the event, so we can gauge interest and collect most of the details already in the process.

   If TWO or MORE individuals of the same EJCA membership/family want to take part, please REPEAT the registration process here on ejca.org as many times as needed (multiple registrations) and provide the individual players details accordingly, one per registration  

5. Note: Above steps 1-3 are needed only once per player - so you are good for subsequent tournaments - and actually you can play freely on lishogi as much as you like even outside our EJCA team room

WHY the lishogi platform: lishogi.org is a relatively new spin-off of lichess.org, the latter became hugely popular for chess clubs particular during the pandemic; for example we know that in Germany entire chess clubs and chess organizations moved their activities onto that platform including on national and international levels, and you can even find the current world chess champion and many grandmasters participating in tournaments from time to time.
It is free for all, no ads, and we were happy to discover that lishogi is following the same principles as lichess and is as easy to play with. 

Tip 1: once you are logged in, you can select a ‘piece set’ of your choice, so if you struggle with the standard ‘Japanese Character’ piece set, you can select an international/symbolic one which better indicates the available moves per piece.
Tip 2: if you are indeed new or fairly new to Shogi (such as your organizers...), lishogi also has some great resources to learn the game (https://lishogi.org/learn#/) and some excellent videos (https://lishogi.org/video) to get started. Enjoy!

Tip 3: a top rated game is usually streamed live on https://lishogi.org/tv - so head there to view a game in progress right now 

HOW will the tournament work: 

• We will meet in our very own Team room (https://lishogi.org/team/ejca-shogi-team) - in fact, as indicated in step 3) above, once you have created your lishogi user, please let us/the organizers know (per separate email if not during registration) your lishogi user name and your real name/affiliation to EJCA, so we can actually admit you to this, our own EJCA Team room! -> please do that a few weeks/days ahead of the tournament, and NOT only on the morning of the tournament!
  
• On the day of the tournament, from the team room clicking on the tournament or directly heading to https://lishogi.org/tournament/UBsYsVuo ‘EJCA April’ tournament, you will SIGN IN to that tournament with your lishogi user name and wait for it to begin. - so please sign in at least 5-10 minutes before the start.  
• It will be an “Arena” style tournament, which means that players play as many games in an allotted overall timeframe as there are opponents available and willing to play on; you can pause and drop off earlier or drop in later, but that means less fun/less opponents for the group and you may be missing some vital points to make it to the leaderboard...
• The tournament will automatically start at the designated time, and you will be paired at random with one of the other players, this repeats as long as the overall time for the tournament has not been passed (we are aiming for a total of 90 mins). There are time controls in place (we plan to go for 5 minutes per player initially and then 20 ec/move after that), so an average game may take 10-20 minutes (really, it’s up to you).
  
• If you have finished a game, you are placed back into the arena; please WAIT and you will be paired against the next available opponent as soon as one becomes available. 
  
• At the end of the allotted time of 90 mins, a ranking will tell us who made it onto the leaderboard. The more games you fit in and win, the more points you will have earned 
  
  
• All games are usually rated, so you will be building your very own lishogi “rating” and can compare yourself to other users on the platform, even after our tournament has ended.
• All of this you can try out ahead of our tournament on the lishogi platform - maybe join one of the “daily rapid arenas” to get familiar with the look and feel and features of a tournament    
  

We sincerely hope you give it a try and that we are off to a good start of creating a small boardgame community in EJCA - even if it is just virtual, for now.

We are curious who will be crowned the very first EJCA Online Shogi Champion.

If you have more questions (or if you are a Shogi-pro and want to suggest some ways we can learn from you!) don’t hesitate to email both stefan@ejca.org and lenard@ejca.org and we will be happy to get back to you asap.