Is there anywhere to buy a cheap(er) magnetic demo board?

[hirohiigo]

As I'm sure most if not all of you know, I've been fairly active in promoting shogi in my home state of Louisiana. One major problem has inhibited my ability to promote it effectively, however: the lack of a large, demo board.

When I went to Mechacon this year (you can see my report of it in the Shogi Promo forum), unprepared for how many people showed up, all I brought was three small, standard-sized shogi boards. Which means that I had to demonstrate how to play and what the pieces were to 30 people with small pieces! Quite a problem, I'm sure most people couldn't even see how the pieces looked.

I have two solutions to this problem: 1) Use a projector and lecture using BCMShogi. This would be an easy solution and would allow me to lecture on other topics (such as playing on Shogi Club 24 and PlayOK as well), but I also would need a projector, which I don't have. 2) Use a large, magnetic demonstration board.

I think using a large demonstration board like professional commentators would be preferable to me because I would not have to bring my computer to demonstrate shogi, such as if I'm holding an event outside or something similar. It would also allow people I'm teaching to have hands-on contact for examples and whatnot.

So here's the biggest problem: I've only found one place to buy such a demonstration board, at the Ohishi-Tengudo website. The demonstration board is on this page, near the bottom. But it costs 27,300 yen?? That seems like it's quite a lot of money, and coming from a relatively low income family, I don't have any way to purchase this.

So what I'm asking is: Is there anywhere else, online or via mail-order, that I could buy a demonstration board like this for cheaper than 15,000 yen? If not, I may have to delay buying one until I establish a shogi club and can generate enough donations to make the purchase.

Thanks.

[Lukas1]

there is another possible solution also, if you would have more people explaining the rules, people could split into some smaller groups. Also if you are ONLY lecturing, not acutally going to play with people, computer and projector seem to be okay. Since you don't have to speak about rules. We have separate workshop and lecture, well we have something like powerpoint presentation(instead it's some macintosh soft, not microsoft) and there are rules told, but we'd like to change this and when lecturing, speaking only about history, culture and these things, leaving explanation of rules for workshop. This would actually work great, because people that haven't seen the lecture come to our workshop anyway... So when somebody wants to learn, we teach him individualy, or when a small group comes, we tell them all, but there are at least 2 of us, which allows us to explain rules to more people.

[shogismive]

well maybe produce a leaflet or something to people as well so they can follow it as you speak

[Lukas1]

well maybe produce a leaflet or something to people as well so they can follow it as you speak

great idea, actually we are using them too

[hirohiigo]

there is another possible solution also, if you would have more people explaining the rules, people could split into some smaller groups. Also if you are ONLY lecturing, not acutally going to play with people, computer and projector seem to be okay. Since you don't have to speak about rules. We have separate workshop and lecture, well we have something like powerpoint presentation(instead it's some macintosh soft, not microsoft) and there are rules told, but we'd like to change this and when lecturing, speaking only about history, culture and these things, leaving explanation of rules for workshop. This would actually work great, because people that haven't seen the lecture come to our workshop anyway... So when somebody wants to learn, we teach him individualy, or when a small group comes, we tell them all, but there are at least 2 of us, which allows us to explain rules to more people.

Having separate lectures and workshops is a great idea, I'll definitely look into this.

well maybe produce a leaflet or something to people as well so they can follow it as you speak

I've done this already and my audience still had trouble following along, which is why I'm looking into this route.

[takodori]

I think the one you found in Oishi Tengudo is the cheapest one on commercial basis. If it's too expensive, then another solution is making it DIY.

[hirohiigo]

Thanks for the information, Takodori.

I have been thinking of making a demo board out of cardboard, but I'm not entirely sure how to make it work without using pins and poking holes into the board. I'll think of something eventually, I'm sure.

[Palomedes]

Here's an article on making a demo board for go that might be useful:

http://www.usgo.org/teach/HomemadeDemo.htm

[hirohiigo]

Thanks for the link, Palomedes. That'll definitely be helpful. Now I know how to make the board - now I just need to know how to make the pieces...

(On the other hand, I can use this to make a demo board for Mechacon's igo panel as well.)

I also see there's a link on how to make igo boards! I'll have to look into this as well.

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