2: kmullin (1100) 2017-01-01 08:16

Shipping cost from Nekomado is high to the US. It might be better to get some books from Amazon if available if the shipping cost is lower. Same with the Shogi Foundation books from the UK: it might be cheaper to ship from England.

Of course, the books that are published by Nekomado will probably have to be gotten from them. (And, there's nothing wrong with supporting a small business!)

I think the best book is 'The art of shogi' by Hosking (1997). However, it doesn't cover the newest strategies. For example, it looks at Classic Yagura but not the New Yagura opening. There's nothing on Cheerful/Gokigen Central Rook nor on One-Turn Loss Bishop Exchange. And so on.

The Kitao translated books from Nekomado contain newer information. But, they act sort of like flashcards (compared to the Hosking book). So, for the openings (joseki) book, they sort of expect that you already have learned the opening to some extent and are using the book to check your knowledge 'at a glance'. However, even these books don't have everything. For example, there's nothing on Bishop Exchange/Open Diagonal Fourth File Rook, and so on.

So, yes, to learn lots of things, you will need to go to Japanese sources. I find it useful to google for Japanese terms find blogs that go through some of the theory. Even if you can't get all of their commentary, you can still go through the move sequences and think about the meaning behind the moves. But, it's unfortunate for a non-Japanese speaker. 

Idea: Maybe some folks should write their own books. However, that's a lot of work. Crowd-sourcing could be cool: for example, filling out Wikipedia articles. (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Shogi_openings) But, that's still a lot of work, too. And, maybe the good players are too busy playing & studying shogi themselves to actually write a book. Oh well....

I can't comment on level of play. I'm still at such a low level myself. It will probably vary for different people. Depends on your motivation, amount of practice/study, previous knowledge/skill with similar type games as well as much theory info you can get your hands on.

1: thekiyote (949) 2017-01-01 01:33

1)  I'm not sure about russian, but the best source of english books on shogi is from the site nekomado (http://shop.nekomado.com/). Also,
while the mate-in books are in Japanese, you can still use them without knowing the language. 

Be warned, if you're used to the amount of chess books available, there isn't that much out there in English for shogi.   Japanese speakers will always have an advantage.

2)  To 1 kyo, or by 1 kyo?  Either way, I have no idea.  Outside of Japan, shogi is the wild west.  You're going to have to teach yourself everything, with very little available to help.  If you discover anything new, post about it!