Tori Shogi: Why It's So Interesting

 Tori Shogi is not just standard shogi but smaller with weak pieces. It has many elements that are not present in any other variant. Tori is very fast paced because of the cramping on the board, and opposing pawn lines are always in contact with each other. 

Tori Shogi on Pychess!

The main goal of the opening and middlegame, which are practically merged with each other, is to push the pawn line forward supported by generals (which are of course all birds), eventually breaking through the opponent's defenses and promoting a falcon to an eagle (kumataka, washi), the most powerful piece in the game. At this point, the game would have entered the endgame (this can happen before even 20 moves in the Shogi way of counting). 

As you can see from the starting position, Tori shogi allows doubled pawns (doubled swallows?), and this leads to funny shapes like a pawn cube (swallow shield). This introduces pawn structure (swallow structure?) that is a little bit more like chess, where pawns restrict both players' movement and pawn breaks are an important part of the game. There are also edge attacks from standard shogi, which use some of the same tactics. Knight forks from shogi are also there, but they consist of a forward attack and an attack diagonally backward by the pheasant (kiji). Just like in shogi, the quail and pheasant, equivalent to the knight and lance in terms of purpose, are rarely used, and usually only end up moving after being captured and dropped back.

At the end of the book The Way of Tori Shogi (as far as I know the only English book on Tori), we see an interesting theory that Tori Shogi is a Chu Shogi variant rather than having originated from Standard shogi. After all, the two generals are not equivalent to shogi generals, but rather to the Chu Shogi Drunk Elephant and Ferocious Leopard, and the Pheasant reminds me a bit of the Kirin, and the Quail of the Vertical Mover, with it's ability to range both forward and backward (diagonally) unlike the Lance. When I read this it seemed like it made a lot of sense, as in the 1700s Chu Shogi was still quite as popular as normal Shogi, and it might just be a combination of Standard shogi's drops with the unique generals from Big shogi.

Another interesting thing about Tori is that it became popular enough (if only for a very short period of time) for a tournament to be held in England, though I have not been able to find kifu.

Currently, the strongest online Tori players are shibamizo57, Olekaze, and Tepin. They all only play on Pychess, which lacks some features such as studies and correspondence games, because Tori has not yet been added to Lishogi, the main website for shogi and variants. Hopefully, we will be able to add it to Lishogi in the next server update.