Please join us for next regular online EJCA Shogi Tournament! 

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 you can join 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.

This is a “EJCA members and family only”-event, and although totally free, we like 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.

If you have been playing with us before - head straight into  https://lishogi.org/team/ejca-shogi-team on tournament day and join the arena - We still appreciate if you register here for the event as well!

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

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

HOW MANY PARTICIPANTS: unlimited - the more the merrier! 

NEW to Shogi?: You may find our beginners presentation helpful.

WHAT to do in PREPARATION, and BEFORE the tournament date:

1. On lishogi: if you have not yet, register and create your very own user on https://lishogi.org/ (Sign in - register - pick a user name and a password)
2. On lishogi: if you have not yet, head over 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. If you have not before, let us, your organizers, either via the registration-form HERE on ejca.org or per separate email to lenard@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, especially if you are joining for the first time, so we can see the 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
   
   Technically, if you are already a member of  https://lishogi.org/team/ejca-shogi-team  you can skip step 4, and show up on the day and time of the tournament.
    

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 ad-free, easy to use and fun to play with. You will build a rating, and you can analyze your games afterwards.

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 international or more symbolic ones 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. Chances are, that if you are playing, you will also sometimes be featured on lishogi-TV! 

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! -> if you are new, please do that a few days ahead of the tournament, and NOT only on the morning of the tournament!
• On the day of the tournament, -when signed in with your lishogi user name - starting from the team room click on our tournament for that day and JOIN it and wait for it to begin. - so please sign in at least 5-10 minutes before the start.  
• It will usually 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. There are time controls in place, which are noted on the tournament settings.
• 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, 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    
  

If you are new, we hope you give it a try; if you have played before, we hope you return!

We are curious who will be crowned the next 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 lenard@ejca.org and we will be happy to get back to you asap.