I remember first coming to Japan and playing a round of chess with someone who had mostly never played but was very strong at Shogi. I'm not master or anything but had played a lot and was still generally confident in tactics, and had experience playing with new players, adjusting to keep a good game pace while still winning.

Got obliterated.

Also then started playing Shogi with him for the first time and while it didn't take that long to triumph with an all pawns handicap, after much effort finally reached being able to win including rooks/bishops. But it was obviously basically cheating since eventually you realize how easy it is to win with handicap be just putting 100% into defense.

Anyways, with those games to me it really felt that Shogi is the more strategic game, having similar mechanics to chess but being more dynamic. Chess in the end, even looking at GM matches, looks like much more pattern matching, i.e., tactics.

So my takeaway from that was that as much as I enjoy chess, Shogi is just the more complex game and its experts may just be able to defeat masters if they cared to because of the otherwise similar mechanics, as one of the anecdotes in the article.

Random share this is just personal but honest feeling from past experience and not an endorsement. Really fun memories.