Diagrammatic Pieces define the pieces moves on the item itself. This removes the need to memorize the moveset to the symbol needed in many forms of chess

Western Chess - Maple Landmark

Wooden Pieces with the moves written on the bottom (so you have to lift them up to see)

Maple Landmark Image

Japanese Chess - Dobutsu Shogi (in the greenwood)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dōbutsu_shōgi

Cute animals with the moves indicated by dots around the edge of the piece, probably the best diagrammatic set I’ve seen

Dobutsu shogi image

Japanese Chess - Kumon Study Shogi set

Very similiar to dobutsu shogi, but with the original character written in the middle instead of a cute animal. The wood feels good in the hand

Study Shogi image

Eastern chess sets will often have “westernized” pieces, that are different non-language characters symbols, but still require people to memorize a symbol lookup table.

I’d love to find diagrammatic options for Chinese Chess (XongQi), but I haven’t seen any - do you know of options?

  • jet@hackertalks.comOPEnglish
    22·
    4 days ago

    Sadly the Dobutsu Shogi (in the greenwood) is out of print right now.

    out of print store link for evidence

    http://shop.nekomado.com/products/detail.php?product_id=144

    I’d love to see a better western chess option

    And I’d love to have any chinese chess option at all!

    Obviously I can learn the symbols for a single game myself, but if I want to play with other people or teach them how to play that is quite a learning curve!

    • jet@hackertalks.comOPEnglish
      21·
      4 days ago

      Happily lishogi.org lets you select the diagrammatic pieces which makes playing online really nice.

      lishogi dobutsu piece set

      Sadly lichess.org does not have the same diagrammatic options!

      • gon [he]@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        2·
        4 days ago

        LOL lishogi?! Amazing, had no clue this existed.

        Do you know what website (if any) Japanese people (and international shogi players) use to play shogi with others? Is it lishogi?

        • jet@hackertalks.comOPEnglish
          2·
          4 days ago

          lishogi is kinda new (5ish years I think), i was around when it got forked from lichess.

          I use lishogi because you don’t need an account and it just works, but I think its pretty niche. It does have a adapted stockfish engine to play against.

          Inside japan I think shogiwars is the most popular, but its kinda impenetrable for me, so I just tried it now… they have english in 2026 which is nice! But you can’t change the pieces, however its a real experience worth visiting once.

          Have you seen Chu Shogi? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chu_shogi - It’s a whole thing, intense, its on lishogi but without a ai bot to play against, so human vs human only. It would be nice to play chu shogi against a bot to practice, but I don’t know where to do that.