Yagura Kuzushi
Hello. I'm familiar with the idea of this strategy, but my question is, how do you play against it? I have lost too many games when I tried to go for Yagura, and my opponent plays migi shikenbisha (right side fourth file rook). Even though I don't castle my king inside Yagura when I see this, I still can't defend the attack.
For example, it offten happens after this sequence of moves - 1.P26 2.P34 3.P76 4.P84 after which I play 5.P66 because I want to avoid the yokofudori (side pawn picker) or kakugawari (bishop exchange) openings, and try to form Yagura, but then if my opponents go for migi shikenbisha, I just don't know how to defend against it effectively.
Can someone point me to some materials about this or offer any advice? In Tony Hosking's book "The art of shogi", the only thing that is says is that I can't play passively against it, but that's a very vague advice that isn't telling me much. What is a good piece formation against migi shikenbisha and how to get my king to safety?
Thank you, I'll look into it.
Try this to explore more formation patterns:
http://www.shogi-chess.net/senpouzukan/
Even if you do not know how to read japanese, you could still make educated guess by looking at the flash kifu
Yagura is from 122 to 136
And two more important points to help you get a higher rating:
in fact in the game of http://system.81dojo.com/en/kifus/1988117
you are doing well until move 31
At move 31, your king is not castled while your opponent's king is somehow guarded. So it would be uncomfortable for black to open the full scale battle here. B7g and P*5d are two possible moves. So, point one: Avoid full scale battle when your king is less safe than your opponent is
Point two: Do not use defenders to attack. At Move 33, 35 you uses your defenders to attack. It has two disadvantages: first, your king becomes unguarded; second, if they are exchanged by your opponent, you lose moves (consider how many moves you have deployed in moving them ended up being exchanged by your opponent's pieces, which might only be activated several times)
I would say Black loses in this game not because he has deployed a wrong castle, but because (1) he opens the battle while his king is not safe, (2) he disarms his castle by removing his defenders
I am not sure if the castle is called Nagare Yagura
But one point to note is that, in a standard yagura games (e.g. yagura bonin), gold yagura would be sufficiently solid, and the king is safe to move into the castle; while against migishikenbisha, king stays at 7i instead of 8h to stay away from the enemy bishop attack
So it is important to watch out what your opponent is trying to do, said if he moves his silver to 5d, you could assume that he will be using migishikenbisha so you avoid a standard yagura; on contrary, once you figure out that he is using ibisha, you could castle your king as usual
normally it should lead to an even game, the reason why you still lose with the appropriate formation could simply be that your opponent's rating is much higher than you are!
OK, but all of these are pretty much standard Yagura moves, aren't they? I was trying to go for Nagare Yagura, as mdarg suggested in the first reply to this topic. In his opinion, it's the best defense against strategies where the opponent's bishop diagonal remains open, and he advances his silver by playing P64, S63 and S54, while also playing P74 and N73. Every time I went for regular Yagura against a formation like this, I lost very quickly. That's why I was trying to avoid it by playing the Nagare Yagura formation, although I don't know anything about it.
There are some ways you could improve:
(i) your bishop is inactive. At move 17, you might want to consider S7g instead of G6g. It has 2 advantages: first, it blocks the future bishop attack from your opponent if 6f is opened as the game progresses; second, it opens a passage for your own bishop to move from 8h to 7i and finally 4f attacking the rook (given 5g and 7c are opened)
(ii) you rook is inactive. At move 15, instead of P9f, P2f seems more balanced. It gives pressure on your opponent's bishop head, so he must spend moves on defending the 2nd file
So, in the future games, you could always ask yourself if your rook and bishop are active or not: are they aiming at your opponent's weakness
Hope these might help!
This one for example. It's not a right 4th file rook but it is a strategy where the bishop stays on it's original diagonal, and the diagonal doesn't get closed. Please don't pay attention to the moves played later in the game because they were played in time trouble and don't make much sense. I would like to know how I could have defended better and created an attack of my own, which never happened in the game.
http://system.81dojo.com/en/kifus/1988117
Do you have a kifu? Without so it could not be discussed in detail
81Dojo Web System
nexxogen (1453) 2016-12-07 17:09
