SHOGI MALAYSIA THREAD

Henlo ebrywan! It's me jienjien.

Just wanted to share our Shogi Malaysia story to you all.

Shogi Malaysia started from nothing by my senior Mr Ng, a fellow Shogi enthusiast in 2017. He gathered fellow chess friends to learn this new and weird game that you can deploy captured pieces back to the board.

Mr. Ng started the Shogi Malaysia Facebook Page and would organize Shogi Workshops to promote and spread the game of Shogi in Universities, but Shogi was really not that popular as it is now, because of the lack of exposure to the general people, not many people know or are interested in playing Shogi. He then felt disappointed and became dormant.

I started my Shogi journey in 2018, one year after Mr Ng's efforts to promote Shogi. I found the Shogi Malaysia Facebook page and contacted the admin, that was the first contact. Mr Ng told me to get stronger and learn more about Shogi by myself. During that time, it was a lonely journey alone, but I soon found online friends to mingle and learn Shogi.

I then took a year of absence due to busier work life. I came back at 2020, and I managed to convince Mr. Ng to make me one of the admins of Shogi Malaysia! I guess he saw that I have a very enthusiastic spirit to share the joy of Shogi. Even though I was esctatic about the news, the reality of the current state of Shogi players is still very scarce to do anything.

But soon enough, with the uproar of the Shogi related Japanese animation series Sangatsu no Lion (March Comes Like a Lion) and Ryuo no Oshigoto (Ryuo's Work is Never Done) slowly gained popularity, more and more people started to play Japanese chess in 2021, and I was actively recruiting people to join our Shogi Malaysia Discord Server! Of course, the progress was slow, but soon enough a few Shogi hobbyist joined, and we have our first few OG members!

Come year 2022, we finally have our first Shogi Malaysia IRL SHOGI MEETUP, albeit only 4 members meeting up, it was a huge success to me.


First IRL SHOGI MEETUP

Late 2022 was a lucky time for Shogi Malaysia to grow exponentially, as I inquired about boothing details in the AniManGaki event "Quay to Japan" and "AniManGaki 2022", we joined their community group and was able to do Shogi promotion to the Japanese culture loving masses.


Quay to Japan Shogi Promotion Efforts


Shogi Malaysia in AniManGaki 2022

We were also invited to do Shogi promotion in our local universities like IMU Japan Culture Club in their Tsukimi Bunkasai event!


Tsukimi Bunkasai Shogi Promotion event

Shogi Malaysia also had the chance to teach students how to play Shogi in a Shogi Workshop for APU Japanese Culture Club! If you're a Japanese Culture Club and would like to collab for a Shogi Workshop, please do not hesitate to contact me. *wink wink*


Shogi Workshop for APU JCC

Thanks to AniManGaki, IMU JCC, APU JCC, Shogi Malaysia managed to gain more members, then we continued organising more and more IRL SHOGI MEETUPs, and our members continue to grow! We even have a few Japanese friends who frequent to our meetup.



That said, do you guys think that Shogi is interesting? It has many openings like in Chess, but even the more tactical due to the piece drop mechanic! If you're interested to learn, you can join our IRL SHOGI MEETUP tomorrow at Old Hands Cafeteria at Glomac Centro! 12pm to 5pm!

RSVP here: https://fb.me/e/3witqK4XH (Facebook event link)

If you want to join our Shogi Malaysia Discord group, here's the link: https://discord.com/invite/AzX8ZsDszq

Thank you for reading my entire post, here's a potato for you. (It's me.)


This post has been edited by jienjienjien: May 27 2023, 09:30 PM

Nice. Should include more physical activity so it becomes healthy hobby

Yeah, I'm currently promoting Shogi via engaging with all the Japanese Culture Clubs and promoting it with booths at some ACG and Boardgame events. I wanted to start a kids class but Shogi is not well known yet plus there's no tournaments for them to participate.

After 2 years of promoting, next year I want to start to focus more on organizing tournaments.

We also have 2 Shogi meetups every 2nd and last Sunday of each month in Klang Valley. The next one will be in Cheras area on 11th June, haven't decided on the venue yet. The last one was on 28th May, you can see the highlight video here!

https://youtube.com/shorts/OsHi_cvLtf8

This post has been edited by jienjienjien: Jun 1 2023, 01:05 AM