Shogi - Tournament Play

Tournament Play

As of 2012, there are two organizations for shogi professional players in Japan: Japan Shogi Association (abbr. JSA, founded in 1947) for men and women and its fork Ladies Professional Shogi-players' Association of Japan (abbr. LPSA, founded in 2007) for women. Both organize shogi tournaments for professionals. They may co-organize or affiliate amateur tournaments.

JSA has two ranks of professionals, professionals (棋士, kishi?) that are nominally sex-unlimited but de facto men-only, and women-only female professionals (女流棋士, Joryūkishi?). Sometimes professionals are addressed as seikishi (正棋士?), a word from the Go world for distinction from other player ranks. Professional ranks and female professional ranks at JSA are offset. In 2006, JSA admitted women to the ranks of professionals, not promoted from Shoreikai (奨励会?), leagues of aspirant professional players, but through an admission designed for female professionals.　No female however has got professional status yet through this new admission system.

Since the fork, it is not publicly stated if JSA female professional ranks and LPSA ones are compatible.

JSA is the sole corporate which organizes tournaments for "professionals", seven major tournaments in titleholder system and other type tournaments. In 1996, Yoshiharu Habu won then all existing seven titles. For female professionals both JSA and LPSA organize both type tournaments either jointly or separately. Besides those corporates, tournaments for amateurs may be organized by local clubs, big merchandises, educational institutes or municipal corporates like cities or prefectures.

Since the 1990s, shogi has grown in popularity outside Japan, particularly in the People's Republic of China, and especially Shanghai. The January 2006 edition of Kindai Shogi (近代将棋?) states that there are 120,000 shogi players in Shanghai. The game has been relatively slow to spread to countries where Chinese characters are not in common use.