First and foremost, let me reintroduce myself to the community since it's been so long. I'm going by the name Riko now, and I'm still living in Louisiana. I was a shogi promoter in 2010, running many events in person and online to attempt to popularize Shogi. I also created and maintained The 81-Square Universe for several years.
There were a couple of reasons I fell out of the shogi community. The biggest is... I was tired. I was very active. Shogi was my life. And while in retrospect I realize what amazing things I helped accomplish, at the time, it just didn't seem like it was worth all the effort I was putting in. I had utterly failed my #1 goal of creating a Louisiana shogi club, and each goal I watched fail took more and more out of my morale. In addition to that, my ADHD has been getting worse with my age, and my inability to focus on a shogi match made playing it unfun on top of everything else. So I quit, and disappeared, instead choosing to focus on competitive video games such as Super Smash Bros. and other fighting games.
I regret being careless with 81SU. While not every website is going to last forever, I think very frequently about all the information, especially in Shogi Wiki, that was not my creation, but the creation of many volunteers that I let go away. For that, I cannot apologize enough.
But anyway, it's not all sad news here. Obviously, you're reading the first post of a new blog. Does anyone actually blog anymore? I have no idea. But I'm coming back to the shogi world, and I would like to lend my voice to popularize it once again. My first step to doing that, aside from playing of course, is this blog. It will be structured to have scheduled posts as follows:
Monday: Tsumeshogi Drills. I will be collecting a handful of interesting tsumeshogi problems and sharing them, not giving away the move count, as a sort of weekly practice.
Wednesday: Topic articles. I'll be writing articles on various parts of shogi. I haven't quite decided what the first theme will be yet, but for example, they may be about proverbs, or strategies, or even the culture of shogi. We'll see when we get there.
Friday: Pro game review. Pretty straightforward, I'll review an interesting kifu that I came across throughout the week.
Between those there may be other, unscheduled articles if there is some news I want to share, but you can expect these posts on these days at the very least.
For everyone who knew me when I was active, it's great to see you again. For everyone I have yet to meet through shogi, I'm looking forward to getting to know you. Let's all have fun playing and talking about shogi together.
おねがいします
Welcome back! Although it seems like the community was stagnant when you left, Shogi has been progressing through a sort of renaissance recently! The shogi content and communities being developed online today remind me of the limitless potential for shogi I felt back in the early 2010’s. I feel the 2020’s will be a good decade for shogi across the world! Thank you for part in helping towards that goal. :)
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