Shogi

Do you play Shogi/Japanese chess? Nov. 17 is Shogi day, which hails back to the annual Shogi competition held by the Shoguns from Edo era.
The origin of Shogi is "Chaturanga" in India around BC200 - BC300. Chaturanga passed to the West as Chess. It also spread East, the you can see many similar games in Asia: Shatranj in Arabia, Makrook in Thailand, Karton in Vietnam, Tjyangi in Korea, Xiangqi in China,
etc.
The original game "Chaturanga" is a game for 4 people with 8 x 8 grid chess board, and it has 4 different forces, infantry, cavalry, tank, and elephant troops. It reflects the battle scenes around that time where many small nations fought with elephant troops. Likewise, Shogi has its characteristics influenced by the Japanese way of war. You can use the opponents pieces after you capture them. It might reflect that they use to accept captives as their slaves.
We use a 9 x 9 grid chess board for Shogi now, but there use to be more variety in size and rules: 12 x 12, 15 x 15, 17 x 17, 19 x 19, and 25 x 25!
As chess is a game of strategy, I guess that being in LINC for some of our staff is like playing 4 to 5 games of chess at the same time....