shogi

Shogi is the asian version of chess. I tried to play once, but in my first game, I had too much trouble telling the pieces apart, so I quit. I might try again once I feel I've mastered chess.

 Does anyone know how to play? Do you think that regular chess carries over? Also, does anyone (bill wall) know any interesting facts about shogi, such as it's origins?

<doo grammer> Everything you want to know may be found here at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shogi

Outside of spacial concepts learned from chess not much else carries over to Shogi. I believe captured pieces may return to the game, and the king is forced to stay within it's box or temple. More information is at the above link as well as a push to create pieces like that of chess instead of using Japanese symbols.  

There are a lot of chess variants, An estimated 2000 of them! Some of these variants have come before chess and some had come after chess.

Here is the pre - chess list of variants {not all of them!} : chaturanga, shatranj, xiangqi, and shogi

Here is the post-chess variants [not all of them] : Chess960 , Displacement chess , Transcendental chess , Upside-down chess , Patt-schach and many others!

There are also some wierd variants like  Atomic chess where when you capture a piece there is a "atomic exploision" That kills anything in the 8 squares around it!

There are many more chess variants then i posted! Check them all out they're so funny!