About ToriShogi.com
Dave Brandl began playing chess at the age of six. World travels brought opportunities to collect chess sets from all over the globe. Dave favors Asian chess games such as Xiàngqí, Makruk, Janggi, and particularly, the many variants of Shogi. Tori Shogi, with its pieces named for birds and its unusual starting position, was an enigma to be solved. No publications of the game could be found, however, beyond basic rules and six game scores from an 1830 tournament. So, Dave enlisted fellow chess enthusiast Bill Croke to write this book that apparently dd not exist. They continue writing together, including an article in Montessori Life titled, “There’s a Uke in My Class.” Dave also writes plays and musicals. He lives happily with his wife, Terry, in Denver, Colorado, where they married in 1980.
Bill Croke was introduced to Tori Shogi by co-author Dave Brandi. That introduction rekindled Bill’s prior studies of the Momoyama period where many classical Japanese art forms developed—Ink painting, flower arrangement, the tea ceremony, Raku bonsai, and Noh theater were all familiar to the great samurai warrior Miyamoto Musashi, the creative inspiration for this book. The opportunity to work on this book with a seasoned writer like Dave on a book that explores chess strategy in art & nature rather than only military strategy has been very gratifying. The reader need only to start playing this fascinating game to gain the same experiences of insights and awareness that anyone achieves through Tori Shogi. Bill continues to co-author publications with Dave on teaching music that have been equally rewarding as working on this book.
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