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
    2·
    5 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.